The King of the Mountain competition finished off its fourth year early Friday afternoon, with a brave group of racers waiting to hear the results in the post-race atmosphere of Rafters at Red Mountain.
And for anyone who watched or took part in last year’s competition, the winners were familiar faces.
For the second year in a row, Pete Golden proved to be the fastest in the races three disciplines; alpine, telemark and snowboard.
Queen of the Mountain honours went to Andrea Mccormick.
Both competitors are Rossland locals.
Golden was back for his third year of competition in the race and second year in the row of winning.
Racers start the race at the top of Face of Red, but below the Cliff. Golden explained that most racers start with their weakest discipline, because the second and third runs include the steep and bumpy Cliff run, while the first run starts beneath it.
Racers are let out of the gas one at a time and race through the slalom course to the bottom, where they transition to the next gear set up.
“I snowboarded, skied then teled, (telemarked)” Golden explained. “I’m worst at snowboarding and my tele boots are the hardest to get off.”
Golden attributed a lot of his success at winning to his main competition not being there.
“My main competition is hurt, Duncan Browning,” he said. “He was the king for two years but I just got him last year.”
Golden had worked on his transitions and said he skied clean.
"It’s being fast in the gates and the transitions. Transitions are big,” he said. “Probably about 20 per cent of your time is in the transitions I bet.”
Tyler Merringer, who has organized the event since its inception, said the event went well.
“It’s coming down to a fine science now and it’s running well,” Merringer said. “ I had lots of help, which is always crucial.”
Merringer was a bit disappointed at not having more competitors this year.
“The mention of the race scares people off, because there’s not actually that many people that feel like racing all three disciplines,” he said. “But those that do certainly have fun and it was a good race. Good course conditions for that and it was just a great fun race. Lots of costumes, always fun to see that.”
He said the race isn’t too difficult to put together, because though they have only a few people to put the actual event together, there is a lot of support from the overlying organizations.
“It’s not that difficult. We have the winter carnival and that whole committee helping us out with things like insurance and prizes so that’s crucial and we owe a big thanks to the winter carnival for helping us easily pull off a race,” he said.
“Because you know, once we have Red Mountain Racers lending us the gates and we have Red Mountain and Winter Carnival working together for the insurance and prizing, it really is just a matter of throwing out some dates.”
Merringer added that there were a lot of returning racers this year, as well as a few new faces.
Also a few regulars weren’t around this year, so he hopes they’ll be back next year.