My Pants Aren’t Tight Enough for this Skimo Race

By: Dakota Jones

The first image on the race website is a snowcapped mountain. In the foreground is a sunlit slope cut by winding ski tracks, with the cities of northern Italy spread out on a plain extending to the horizon. Two figures stand on the peak above, small enough that their details merge into your imagination. That could be me, you think.

That’s what they want you to think. 

There’s a rule enforcing tight pants. At least, I assume so. The website’s written in Italian, what am I supposed to do, translate it? But this is the impression that I get from 15 years of watching all my trail running friends do skimo, and the whole point of this article hinges on me not changing that belief while purporting to be an objective observer. They wear tight pants, ok? There must be a rule about that somewhere.

So I go to Transcavallo in search of this rule, in search of the answer to the tight pants, intrepid reporter that I am. But I do not go there to race. My pants aren’t tight enough and I don’t speak Italian and I haven’t trained in weeks and I’m no good at skiing and my personal insecurities are mounting daily and blah blah blah – you’ve heard it all before. I go to Transcavallo to see the spectacle of the tight pants in big mountains.

Surely this is important. Because the sport is incredible and what they’re wearing seems so incongruous in these big mountains. Indeed, they’re not just wearing pants; it’s a whole suit – a spandex sleeve stretching from shoulder to ankle displaying an arcade’s worth of bright colors, flashy designs, and sponsor logos. As part of my research I asked the woman I live with – a fierce competitor in the skimo scene for years – to show me one of these suits. It zips up the front. There are so many panels. And each panel is made of a different material. On top of this suit, she wears a backpack with required equipment as well as a climbing harness for the roped sections. She shows me all its benefits, and then there’s only one question remaining.

“How do you poop during the race?” I ask.

She looks at me fiercely. “I don’t poop,” she says, competitively.

Our relationship is still relatively new. 

It’s worth noting that skimo is short for ski mountaineering, which implies winter conditions. By contrast, this race outfit has a thickness of 10 atoms and does not at all look like something I’d like to be wearing in the cold. I’m told these races are conducted at a high physical intensity and therefore people aren’t cold, but in my experience that means everyone is freezing at the start, sweating on the climbs, and then freezing again on the descents with the wind rushing through their wet skinsuits. Maybe that’s why the suits have so many panels. It’s hard to say. What I can be sure of is that my pants aren’t tight enough for this race, but at least they’re comfortable for standing around.

It’s easy to develop this kind of cynicism when all you’re doing is standing around. Yet I can’t help but notice a kind of dream that seems to be shared among the crowd gathered at the start. You can see it in their nervous smiles, in the jerky way they check and recheck their equipment, in their furtive glances at the ridges above. These people, painted in colors muted by morning shadows, are barely containing their energy. But that’s not the right word, energy. It’s more like passion, because they don’t just want to move, they want to move in a specific way, in a specific place. The group is brimming with hope. Maybe today, they seem to be thinking, I’ll get to feel like I’m doing something important.

And what is important about a race like this, or the many other ski races happening around the Alps this time of year? They are doing a very unnecessary activity, sliding on snow, climbing up mountains, running along ridgelines, and they’re doing it as fast as possible. How can any of this possibly matter enough to warrant the physical and mental stress they are about to endure? Everyone here knows what’s coming, and what’s coming is struggle and difficulty and frustration and hunger and cold. Why would anyone do this?

I can only guess that there is some reward. And something tells me this reward is not simply on the other side of the experience. No, these people are not here to have done a thing. They are here to be doing that thing, to embrace the experience of purchasing fulfillment with the only possible currency: their own passion and effort. They are going to expend themselves for the feeling of expending themselves, and they are going to do so in the most beautiful place imaginable. They are going to do it alongside other people who share this dream and this passion. They are going to try to make themselves a little better today and see what their effort can bring on these ridges, under this sky, buffeted by these winds. And then they are going to go home.

At the start, before the race has begun, they are connected as much by this dream as by the tightness of their pants. They share it with looks and words and movements. They smile and shiver and move into position. They look up. 

The gun goes off.

Read More Skimo Articles

Skimo for Trail Runners: A Brief Primer

Vertical Skimo Races in the Alps

Pierre Gignoux: Making the World’s Best Ski Mountaineering Boots