Before they can roar downhill at Hilltop’s Shifty Drift fat bike slalom races, bikers are hikers first

At the start of the Shifty Drift fat bike dual slalom race Saturday at Hilltop Ski Area, an organizer asked the 60 riders assembled at the bottom of mountain how many wanted a chairlift ride to the top, where the races began.

About 60 hands went up in the air.

“OK, then donate today, so you don’t have to hike next year,” they were told.

The Shifty Drift was a fundraiser for a bike park planned to be constructed this summer at Hilltop, a project that will enable chairlifts to transport bikes as well as people.

Until that happens, bikers have to be hikers first. For Saturday’s race, every high-speed race down the snowy slopes was preceded by a plodding hike up the mountain as racers pushed their bikes to the top of the slalom courses.

The trip up took about 10 minutes.

The trip down took less than a minute for the fastest riders.

Wipeouts were plentiful during the first-time event, held on a fenced-off section of Hilltop’s northern-most runs.

“A few went into the fencing at the bottom,” organizer Bill Fleming said. “They had to stop pretty quickly there, and some of them were flying.”

Eric Sinclair and Christine Phillips claimed victories by compiling the fastest cumulative times for four downhill runs.

Sinclair recorded a total time of 3 minutes, 38.56 seconds to edge Gavin Keslo by about six seconds. Keslo’s cumulative time of 3:44.46 included the fastest run of the day — 52.71 seconds. Sinclair put together runs of 53.23, 54.48, 53.34 and 56.51.

Among the women, Phillips’ total time of 5:06.14 gave her the win over Kristina Woolston (5:15.65). Phillips had the fastest times in the first two runs — 66.93 and 73.64 seconds — and Woolston was fastest in the final two runs — 70.4 and 91.84 seconds.