Best snowshoe field in New England

During the warm-up at Sidehiller double-j mentioned that he thought there was a great field assembled, maybe the best in New England. My first reaction was to think “Jim is sandbagging”, my next thought was that he was just hyping the race. After finishing and looking at the results, I’ve got to admit it was a very strong field. “Best field” or “great field” is a very subjective term. I think the deepest field (and as such the best) was when the Nationals were held at Bolton Valley VT back in 2006. I like to use % behind the winner, this gives an indication of how close the race was. Of course, this doesn’t take into account conditions (such as deep snow) where people tend to group up. There was a North Pond race a couple of years ago where basically the entire field ran together until the final 100m. I haven’t included that race. Here are what I think are the most competitive snowshoe races ever held in New England.

#1 the 2006 National championship at Bolton Valley. This field had incredible depth, 11 guys finished within 10% of the winner and an incredible 44 finished within 20%. The top 10 was, in my opinion, the best top 10 to ever finish in New England. Paul Low and Richard Bolt were at the top of there game, tearing up the WMAC series in 2006 with Bolt winning three races and Low winning three (his only loss was to Bolt at Northfield mountain).

#2 Sidehiller 2010. The top 11 all finished within 10% of the winner. Very few of the top snowshoe racers in NE were missing from this race. The top 27 finished within 20% of the winner. Kevin Tilton, Josh Ferenc, and Jim Johnson had already combined for over 10 wins in the WMAC and Granite state series and it was only the end of January! The three finished within 17 seconds on this lightening fast course.

#3 Northfield Mountain (national qualifier) 2005. The top 10 were all within 10% of the winner and 19 finished within 20%. The top five had been (or currently were) members of the US mountain running team. Paul Low and Richard Bolt again battled as they did all year. The two combined to win 7 WMAC races and had some epic battle with Bolt beat Low four times and Low beating Bolt three times.

#4 Bolton Valley qualifier in 2006. Not many of the top NE guys were missing at this qualifier. Tilton, Bolt, Nephew, Barrett took the top 4 U.S. spots. The top five were all within 10% of the winner and the top 18 finished within 20%.

#5 – Chime in! Tell me what race I missed…

2006 National championship

1	Greg	Hexum	42:42:00	MN	100.00%
2	Paul	Low	43:11:00	MA	98.88%
3	Bill	Raitter	43:52:00	CO	97.34%
4	Rich	Bolt	44:13:00	NH	96.57%
5	Mark	Churchill	45:09:00	VT	94.57%
6	Scott	Gall	45:38:00	IA	93.57%
7	Bernie	Boettcher	46:04:00	CO	92.69%
8	Antonio	Holguin	46:21:00	MEX	92.13%
9	Christian	Vachon	46:28:00	CAN	91.89%
10	Mike	Decker	46:36:00	MI	91.63%
11	Kevin	Tilton	46:53:00	NH	91.08%
12	Jimmy	Gobeil	47:05:00	CAN	90.69%
13	Gregory	Hammett	47:37:00	NH	89.67%
14	Cory	Brown	47:46:00	NY	89.39%
15	Thomas	Beckum	47:52:00	ME	89.21%
16	Ben	Nephew	48:08:00	MA	88.71%
17	Jesse	Haynes	48:11:00	CA	88.62%
18	Alan	Evans	48:19:00	NY	88.38%
19	Aaron	Robertson	48:22:00	NY	88.28%
20	Dewey	Peacock	48:33:00	MT	87.95%
21	Martin	Ladouceur	48:45:00	CAN	87.59%
22	Gary	Fancher	49:12:00	NY	86.79%
23	Dan	Verrington	49:34:00	MA	86.15%
24	David	Schuneman	49:50:00	MN	85.69%
25	James	Pawlicki	49:52:00	MA	85.63%
26	David	Dunham	50:04:00	MA	85.29%
27	Jean-Nicolas	Duval	50:17:00	CAN	84.92%
28	Peter	Maksimow	50:48:00	MA	84.06%
29	Allen	Mead	50:58:00	VT	83.78%
30	Steve	Peterson	51:09:00	MA	83.48%
31	Chad	Denning	51:21:00	NH	83.15%
32	J.F.	Lindsay	51:31:00	CAN	82.89%
33	Stefan	Bibb	51:39:00	VT	82.67%
34	Ty	Strange	51:40:00	CA	82.65%
35	Jason	Urckfitz	52:04:00	NY	82.01%
36	Nate	Huckle	52:08:00	NY	81.91%
37	Carl	Johnston	52:18:00	NY	81.64%
38	John	Daly	52:27:00	VT	81.41%
39	Nathaniel	Grabman	52:36:00	AK	81.18%
40	Rob	Smith	52:38:00	MA	81.13%
41	Kasey	Schmitt	52:59:00	IA	80.59%
42	Kasie	Enman	53:07:00	VT	80.39%
43	Bob	Nugent	53:09:00	NY	80.34%
44	Jamie	Boese	53:20:00	CO	80.06%

2010 Sandwich

1	Kevin	Tilton	0:31:08	100.00%	NH
2	Josh	Ferenc	0:31:20	99.36%	NH
3	Jim	Johnson	0:31:25	99.10%	NH
4	Peter	Mallett	0:31:47	97.95%	NH
5	Charles	Therriault	0:32:12	96.69%	NH
6	Ben	Nephew	0:32:32	95.70%	MA
7	Bob	Jackman	0:33:25	93.17%	RI
8	Tim	Cox	0:33:44	92.29%	NH
9	Danny	Ferriera	0:34:01	91.52%	NH
10	Dave	Dunham	0:34:04	91.39%	MA
11	Steve	Wolfe	0:34:05	91.34%	NH
12	Eric	Morse	0:34:44	89.64%	VT
13	Jim	Pawlicki	0:34:51	89.34%	MA
14	David	Principe	0:35:03	88.83%	RI
15	Stan	Snow	0:35:05	88.74%	VT
16	Dave	Quintal	0:35:33	87.58%	NH
17	John	Pajer	0:36:05	86.28%	MA
18	Reeder	Fahnestock	0:36:15	85.89%	NH
19	Chris	Dunn	0:36:35	85.10%	NH
20	Kurt	Gustafson	0:36:47	84.64%	MA
21	Richard	Lavers	0:36:55	84.33%	NH
22	Jeremiah	Fitzgibbon	0:37:51	82.25%	NH
23	Sam	Wallis	0:37:52	82.22%	MA
24	Ken	Poulin	0:37:53	82.18%	MA
25	Eddie	Habeck	0:38:20	81.22%	VT
26	Ryan	Welts	0:38:39	80.55%	NH
27	Amber	Cullen	0:38:39	80.55%

2005 Northfield

1	Paul	Low	100.00%
2	Richard	Bolt	98.91%
3	Peter	Maksimow	97.83%
4	Ben	Nephew	96.74%
5	Dan	Verrington	95.65%
6	Gregory	Hammett	94.57%
7	Stephen	Judice	93.48%
8	Leigh	Schmitt	92.39%
9	Elijah	Barrett	91.30%
10	Mike	Cohen	90.22%
11	Mark	Churchill	89.13%
12	James	Pawlicki	88.04%
13	Greg	Ward	86.96%
14	Jason	Ayr	85.87%
15	Rob	Munro	84.78%
16	Stephen	Peterson	83.70%
17	John	Daly	82.61%
18	Kelli	Lusk	81.52%
19	Peter	Keeney	80.43%
20	Judson	Cake	79.35%

2006 Bolton qualifier

1	Jimmey Gobeil	CANADA	0:47:49	100.00%
2	Kevin Tilton	NH-USA	0:47:59	99.65%
3	Richard Bolt	NH-USA	0:49:28	96.66%
4	Ben Nephew	MA-USA	0:51:46	92.37%
5	Elijah Barrett	NH-USA	0:52:50	90.50%
6	Joel St-Louis	CANADA	0:53:11	89.91%
7	Christian Vachon	CANADA	0:53:16	89.77%
8	J.F. Lindsay	CANADA	0:53:31	89.35%
9	Don Verrington	MA-USA	0:55:00	86.94%
10	Dave Dunham	MA-USA	0:55:57	85.46%
11	Greg Hammet	MA-USA	0:56:23	84.81%
12	George Adams	USA	0:56:30	84.63%
13	Thomas Beckum	ME-USA	0:56:57	83.96%
14	James Pawlicki	MA-USA	0:58:11	82.18%
15	Allen Mead	VT-USA	0:58:27	81.81%
16	Adams Robertson	NY-USA	0:59:12	80.77%
17	John Conillard	MA-USA	0:59:15	80.70%
18	Jad Daley	VT-USA	0:59:16	80.68%
19	Peter Dafault	USA	1:01:32	77.71%
20	Jean-Nicolas Duval	CANADA	1:02:37	76.36%
21	Ross Saxten	USA	1:02:46	76.18%
22	Todd Peterson	USA	1:03:17	75.56%
23	Matt Marawski	USA	1:08:44	69.57%
24	Pete Malinowski	MA-USA	1:08:57	69.35%
25	John Doty	VT-USA	1:09:24	68.90%