Salomon/Crested Butte
presented by Salomon USA

Only a few more days and we will once again be heading out to the desert of Utah to compete against some of the best teams in the region. The Adventure Xstream finale is a 3 day expedition style race that tends to race like a much longer event - Moab's epic terrain where you can go from desert heat to winter snow in a matter of hours is likely to thank for that. The series has been hotly contested and the expedition will no doubt be much of the same. Chances are whoever wins the Expedition will go home with the series title too!

I think of a better location to close out the season either - we are pretty much coming full circle as our season kicked off in Moab with a 12 hour race where we took the top step on the podium. The win was particularly special because Mike Kloser and Michael Tobin were there with Jay Henry and Keri Nelson (aka Nike). Sure Nike made a mistake that we were able to capitalize on but it was a big win for us none the less.

Come to think of it Moab has been really good to us! Last summer's Primal Quest turned out to be a hell of an epic and proved to be one of the team's best international finishes to date. And one of my first AR races was the the Moab Adventure Xstream 12 hour - we won by less than a minute!

It's not just the results either - I have some of my best AR memories from Moab.
We did the Expedition a few years back and there was this treking section that brought us up from the desert heat into the cool fall air in the La Sal's. It was one of those perfect autumn days that you wish would last forever. The mountains had seen some early snow and the aspen leaves were blazing yellow. The sky was blue of course and I swear it was so clear you could see all the way to California!

It's not all heavenly though- some folks who raced the last couple of years probably don't have the same gorgeous images burned into their memories. Last year the race was a bit scary due to some unbelievable rains. The conditions deteriorated to the point that the race had to be called early. The year before that early snows caused a similar scenario.

This year though, I have a pretty good feeling we're in store for another magic weekend -not to mention weather.com is reporting only a 10% chance of anything but sunshine!

Jon