A Grand Reverse and then a hop over the pond for a PDG cancellation has Alex Lee pondering if a 2026 PDG is in his future.
Three skiers walked into a bar in Zermatt, Switzerland, at 10pm a few Mondays ago. Far from the first of their kind, they joined a house packed with skinny men and women wearing La Sportiva or Ski Trab t-shirts and long faces at the Brown Cow Pub on this particular evening. They found a table in the corner, ordered a beer and a shot of schnapps each, and clinked glasses to what could have been…I was one of these three.
Every five minutes or so another group of three would walk into the bar with solemn looks and Dynafit outwear giving them away. We were the first wave of this year’s Patrouille Des Glaciers, teams of 3, and we were just informed the race was canceled.
Drowning the sorrows post-PDG cancellation. See you in 2026…maybe.
After nine months of scheming, more than a quarter million vertical feel in skimo boots this season, three planes, three countries, and countless afternoons of shuffling up bad snow alone, this bucket list item stays in the bucket.
Mountain weather is fickle. We all know that. The Swiss military, who puts on the race, knows that. They spend the weeks leading up to the race wanding the route, fixing lines on booters, and conducting avalanche control. But they still can’t control the weather. Five people died of exposure, caught in a storm while training on the PDG course a month ago. Two hundred thirty people have been caught in 164 avalanches in the Swiss Alps this season; 17 did not make it. Folks here are understandably conservative. On the eve of the race, the organizers found themselves looking at high winds and new snow arriving on high passes just ahead of when all us speed weenies would show up in lycra and carbon fiber. They pulled the plug.
The PDG runs every other April, from Zermatt to Verbier. It’s an epic 35-mile course with 15,000ft of elevation gain. A short course also joins the field in Arolla. The several thousand racers participating are broken into two start dates three days apart. We were slated to start Z1, meaning Tuesday night. The Friday night Z2 start was still on, so some still raced the PDG in 2024. Unfortunately, with 2500 racers already in each bracket, they do not let anyone switch dates, so we Z1 racers were out of luck. Some years, they have postponed the race, but this year, the forecast for Wednesday night looked a little better (though, by my estimation, Thursday night could, perhaps, have worked, but this is Switzerland, and I am not sure they have a form for that). But, as illustrated below in the IG post, the weather came in like precise Swiss Timing.
The start of this year’s A2 race. Photo: Arolla_Fachof-Samuel-Ebneter/PDG
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The cancellation news was posted to the PDG website and social media channels, and it was duck-taped to a post in the middle of Zermatt. We racers, however, never received direct contact on the cancellation. They will still give us our free race T-shirts (and by free, I mean very expensive) if we can pick them up at the Swiss barracks an hour away in Sion. We have to change trains nearby on our way back to Geneva, so we might just get ours.
I came to Europe after a Grand Reverse a few weeks ago, making this feel like a double whammy—I am still unsure if this past month has made me want to throw my skimo gear in the trash or sign up for next year’s Pierra Menta. My teammate Andy jumped on board for the PDG instead of us putting our time and effort into a big mountain objective this spring. My other teammate, Maresa, jumped into the skimo deep end this season just for the PDG. The logistics gamble sucks.
A PDG cancellation notice. Cold temps, high winds, and some bummed “patrollers.”
Okay, I still love skimo skiing, and I won’t throw any sticks in the trash. I am just grumpy. I am eating Swiss cheese on a baguette, looking at the Matterhorn, and am grumpy.
Back at the Brown Cow, a French firefighter from Lausanne struck up a conversation with us. He didn’t speak much English, and we don’t parle pas much Francias, but we still commiserated. This would have been his fourth race. On his first, he got stopped in Arolla, the race cut early due to weather, his second went off without a hitch, but his third was also canceled. He then asked if any of us had ever done the Barkley Marathon.
I do not fault the organizers for calling off the race. They must prioritize safety in a field of racers that, we must admit, go into these things chronically under-clothed. I do, however, wish they still got the racing community together, maybe with a “kings and queens of the mountain” uphill on-piste, or at least an athlete gathering. Putting this thing on is a monumental effort, and they still put in the work for the Z2 start, so I get it… Like I said, I am just grumpy. Our bags were packed. We’d sworn off really good French wine for the past few days. I’d already carbo-loaded. If the race was on, we’d be heading into our final climb right about the time I am writing this. Instead, I’ll have another cup of coffee and head to the lifts.
As they say on the other side of the mountains, c’est la vie.
As an alternative to racing—the touring is the glass half-full in the Alps. So, yes, there is an upside to this tale.
Learn more about the PDG here.
