Athlete Profile: John Gaston — A Local Pioneer Of American Skimo Racing

Photo by Ron Winset.

John Gaston never intended to be a trailblazer. His cutting-edge career as one of the first serious skimo racers on this side of the pond started as nothing more than a way to withstand a back injury that stole his first love: alpine skiing.

Gaston couldn’t have imagined himself ever willingly fighting against gravity. His younger self much preferred the ease and excitement of sports oriented around controlled falling. He grew up chasing adrenaline in motocross and mountain biking, and spent his college years at the University of Colorado Boulder racking up over 100 days at Aspen each winter. “My brother and I spent most of our free time back then hunting for powder in the Aspen Highlands bowl,” Gaston remembers. “I was such a freeride wannabe.”

But, the two soon realized that the best powder took a bit more grunt work to find. They started venturing beyond where the lifts could carry them to reap the rewards of fresh snow.

“The hike went from being a torturous trek that I would do anything to avoid to all of a sudden becoming a ‘juice that’s worth the squeeze’ situation,” says Gaston. “The snow was so much better there. We got pretty good and fast at going uphill with that as motivation.”

So, when Gaston broke his back in the middle of his senior year at CU, he was grateful to have spent so much time cultivating a begrudging appreciation for the uphill grind. The accident took his freeriding dreams off the table. Logging vertical feet in the opposite direction, however, didn’t put nearly as much strain on his healing body.

At the time, skimo hadn’t yet touched down in the U.S. The few who took part had gotten their introduction to it in Europe, where skimo had just taken off in a big way thanks to pioneers like Kilian Jornet. Gaston remembers his first impressions of the sport while watching Jornet tackle the sport’s most iconic race, the Pierra Menta.

“There was this heli shot of the race where these guys in neon spandex were running around in the alps with these huge crowds cheering them on as they booked it up these mountains. We joked about their little ‘elf boots.’ It was all so foreign that I didn’t know what to think.”

The scene, no matter how strange, planted a seed for Gaston as uphill adventure continued to grow on him. Gaston spent his first season in the sport “fumbling around and getting fit.” There weren’t many others around for him to learn from. His experience came mostly by way of trial and error.

That turned out to be enough for Gaston and his brother to take first place in their first skimo race, the Power of Four, in 2012. The impressive endurance effort scales more than 10,000 vertical feet and takes athletes across all four mountains of Aspen Snowmass. The pair won by a mere two seconds. The fight to the finish was the ultimate catalyst for Gaston’s future in skimo.

“That race exposed my weaknesses as a relative newbie,” Gaston reflects. “I remember feeling so inspired to improve before the next Power of Four, since that was a World Championship year in skimo, and they’d select members of the national team there. I made it my goal to be one of them.”

With that in mind, Gaston spent the rest of his season filling in the gaps: skinning the absolute steepest sections of the mountainsides and honing his technical skills for faster transitions and cleaner climbs. The work paid off with back-to-back wins in both of the 2013 qualifying races and a spot on the national team. He’s held that spot for a decade now. Gaston has also won the Power of Four every year since and has dreams of taking his streak further by breaking the elusive four-hour mark there. And, that’s just his domestic track record. He’s represented the U.S. in the biggest skimo races across Europe — including the Pierra Menta event that started it all. His proudest accomplishments include taking 15th in the individual event and 11th in the vertical at the 2017 World Champs in Italy, 10th overall at both the 2018 Pierra Menta and Tour du Rutor, participating in 13 National Championships and holding course records at the Power of Four and the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse.

COVID and kids have kept Gaston largely state-side for the past few years. He’d planned to make a triumphant return to the Euro racing scene this season until a recent mountain biking accident threw off his trajectory. Surgery on a torn UCL ligament has left his right arm completely immobilized for at least a month, with plenty of rehab to follow.

Gaston hopes to be back at it in time for the bulk of spring racing in Europe. “I’m having to take the longest actual break I’ve had in years,” Gaston’s realized, because he shifts his focus to elite mountain bike racing during the skimo offseason. “That’s daunting, but I’m readjusting my goals in real time, and I know I’ll get back to full strength. I just wish I had a clearer timeline.”

But like all things in life, and especially in sports, there’s no such thing as predictability. Hiccups happen to everyone. Hard-earned success doesn’t just disappear when they do. This unwelcome interruption will only add to his wealth of athletic experience in the end. Injury led him to skimo in the first place, after all. There’s no doubt that he’ll find value in this setback, too. Keep an eye out for Gaston whizzing through the Aspen Highlands on “elf boots” of his own this winter as he builds back — and send him off with well wishes for a speedy recovery.

Originally published in the Winter 2023-24 issue of Spoke+Blossom.