The Vertical Challenge is excited to announce our first event dates for 2021! Here’s the “Super Six!”
- Saturday, January 23, 2021 – Jiminy Peak, MA
- Sunday, February 7, 2021 – Pats Peak, NH
- Saturday, February 20, 2021 – Lost Valley, ME
- Saturday, March 6, 2021 – Berkshire East, MA
- Sunday, March 7, 2021 – Catamount, MA
- Saturday, April 10, 2021 – Jay Peak, VT (Finals)
We’ll look to add more, certainly. In a normal VC season, we travel to 20-plus resorts. We line them up during the summer and then visit during the winter. While we wouldn’t call the process simple, because we have lots of regions, dates, and expenses to juggle, we’ve had a certain formula for it since 1991. As you can imagine, the 2020 offseason has not lent itself to formulaic solutions.
We started the process by working out how we could safely conduct our races and the activities that go with them. We’re fortunate to hold VC events on huge mountains outdoors. But we’ve built our brand on being so much more than racing, and person-to-person connections have been vital. We tried to come up with ways to still make the event fun, and worthwhile for our sponsors to who pay for the tour, while keeping everyone safe.
We’ll supply more details on the protocols we worked out in the coming weeks. But we still had to watch what happened with the virus and how state and local governments were implementing policies in response to it. Resorts were watching those, too, and they tended to change frequently. Without knowing which restrictions the authorities would adopt (and official guidelines may continue to evolve), our partners on the mountains couldn’t commit to hosting events no matter how good our safety protocols might have been.
But the bottom line is that we’ve gotten the above resorts set to go and will continue discussions with many more. We’ll be racing on mountains this winter. We don’t have the final number yet, and we may add some at the last minute. We also encourage you to buy your lift tickets in advance from the mountain websites because they’ll have reduced capacity. Once we get our forms online, please pre-register for the VC as well, because our onsite registration will be limited.
Follow our Facebook and Twitter feeds for all the latest updates as we continue to make progress. Thanks for your patience with us and we look forward to seeing you (and your masks) this winter!
Update: We have now added Nashoba Valley in Massachusetts for Saturday, February 27, 2021!
