Adventuring Racing in Moab at CheckpointTracker Nationals

Newly engaged, Kathy and I decided it was time to visit both sets of parents, who all live in Utah now. I conveniently chose a week which coincided with the Checkpoint Tracker Nationals 24 hour Adventure Race in Moab. After visiting her parents for a few days in Salt Lake City, we headed down to Moab on Tuesday to visit my parents and do some wedding research. On Thursday, Christi, Murray and Ian joined me at my parents' townhouse in downtown Moab for the Friday race. We raced as Team Verve.

On Thursday evening, we staged our gear. We discovered that we would riverboard from Red Cliffs Lodge to Sandy Beach, where we staged our kayak paddles and a small backpack with food and water. From there, we would kayak 25 miles to Goldbar Campground, where we staged the rest of our gear, including food, extra bladders of water, bike/trekking/climbing gear, and even our maps and passport. The first 25 miles of the race we could do without a map (just aim down-river). We kept only our riverboarding gear for the 8am start. At Goldbar, we would be doing a trekking/climbing loop that would return to Goldbar, then a bike/hike section that would take us all the way back to Red Cliffs Lodge. At each stage, we would be given further maps and instructions about the exact nautre of what we were doing next.

Frankly, I was a little discombobulated by dropping off all of our gear the night before the race. Only later in the evening did I realize that we should have a tow rope on the kayak; however, I had not only left my kayak tow rope in Seattle, but I had left my extra bungies/cord and mini-carabiners in my gear box at Goldbar where I could not access it any more. Argh!

I was also a little concerned about being too cold during the riverboarding section. I had decided not to bring gloves (a mistake) and to bring a farmer john wetsuit instead of my drysuit. However, temperatures were dipping down to freezing at night here, and I did not look forward the early morning swim. Although the weather for Friday looked pretty nice, I knew that I would get pretty cold. I decided to wear a long-sleeve wool shirt and gortex jacket as an upper layer. I only needed to endure the cold and wet for a couple hours before the sun warmed everything up to reasonable temperatures.

Friday morning, Team Verve showed up at Red Cliffs Lodge for the 8am start. At the start, teams ran 30 yards or so to a ramp, then filed down the ramp to spread out and launch off of the boat dock. My team found each other, then headed down river in the front third of the pack. The first rapids was the only one that had a hole worth avoiding, and safety kayakers directed teams safely around it; otherwise the riverboard section was fairly tame. However, I did find it more difficult work than I expected. By, the end, only half an hour later and two miles downstream, I was out of breath. I briefly struggled to stand up once we hit dry land again. My hands were blocks of wood.

After a quick transition, we were on the water in two-person inflatable kayaks. Ian and Murray took the lead, with Christi and me in the boat behind them. Ian saved the day by producing a tow rope for us! He made it from a 10 foot long 2mm bungie cord, which he used to attach himself to Christi (rather than to our boats, so that they could unattach quickly if needed). I think that the tow really helped us to move forward more consistently and quickly, and we passed many other teams during our 4 hours on the water.

At Goldbar, we received an aerial map of Poison Spider mesa and checkpoint (CP) coordinates. Each team member also received a wristband as well, which we each had to punch at every CP to show that the whole team had been to the CP (I really liked this idea). The aerial map was a bit confusing to read, as it did not have topology information. Additionally, the CPs did not have any extra description as to where they were beyond their coordinates, and they were reasonably well hidden in many cases. Navigation was tough.

We headed up the Corona Arch trail, then past it to CP3 and a via ferrata. This hand line took us up a slickrock wall, then across the top of Bowtie Arch to access Poison Spider Mesa. At this point, we had to find 5 CPs in any order, then do a tyrolean traverse and a rappel as we headed back down Culvert Canyon back to Goldbar. We decided to do the CPs in the following order: 4,7,5,6,8. A couple top teams decided to do the traverse/rappel before finishing the rest of the CPs, and were severely penalized for doing CPs out of order. It pays to read the directions carefully.

We took a bearing and headed generally west to CP4 while Ian got a handle on how to read the map. Cliffs could be discerned only by their shadows on the map. Copses of trees showed up as gray smudges, and sand was generally a slightly different color than slickrock. In the heat of the chase, it was somewhat difficult to digest this new way of reading the terrain. Nevertheless, Ian took us straight to CP 4, which was a steep climb up and down slickrock to a copse of trees. We turned and headed along the canyon rim to CP 7. I wanted to stay somewhat inland from the rim in case we were blocked by any side canyons. In retrospect, I should have avoided trying to make decisions when I was not the one holding the map, as following the rim was quicker. We found CP 7 at the bottom of a short, steep climb down into the canyon towards its upper end, then cut back across the mesa towards CP 5.

We skirted left of several steep fins and cliffs to ensure that we could access the appropriate bluff, then turned and headed to its end. CP 5 was well hidden near the end, accessible by climbing up a narrow slot to a high ledge. We headed back off the bluff towards CP 6 when our navigational wheels fell off. I decided at some point that we could go right until we reached the canyon rim which we were traveling parallel to, then follow it to a trail; however, we had already gone far enough that we were beyond it, and we crossed the trail without seeing it (trails are not very visible on slickrock). We veered too far right of CP 6. Meanwhile, a high hill with a left-facing cliff lay ahead of us, which was exactly where we wanted to go. Looking back at what happened, I think that Ian was being too quiet and unassertive of a navigator for my tastes, and so I started interjecting my thoughts and opinions about what to do without enough data to back it up, leading us astray. I could have been more constructive. We recovered, however, and backtracked to CP 6.

From CP 6 to CP 8, we planned to follow the Golden Spike trail most of the way, then drop down to CP 8. We followed the trail for a while, but then got off onto a side trail that eventually dead-ended overlooking a canyon wash. We turned north and headed up to the rim to pick up the Golden Spike trail, but when we found it again, we were unsure how far along it we were. Ian had a foot pod that placed us earlier on the trail, but bearings to recognizable points below us put us much further along the rim. We spent some time discussing options, then dropped down in the general direction of the CP. After way too much fruitless searching, we eventually got close enough to the canyon to recognize specific features and reorient ourselves enough to find the well-hidden CP. After our dallying, however, the cut-off for the tyrolean traverse and rappels was now quickly approaching.

We dropped down along the canyon rim to the location of the tyrolean traverse to find 35 to 40 people ahead of us in line for the three ropes. The cut-off was in 15 minutes (and for the rappel, in 45 minutes). The staff assured us that they would make every attempt to get everyone across. I considered that we could skip the Tyrolean and do the rappel instead (which would probably have fewer people waiting), but I really wanted to do this 350 foot ropes traverse across the canyon. We can do a rappel any day. So we waited.

A team that was on-deck for one of the three ropes complained to the staff that they wanted to use a different rope. A person in front of them had been stuck on the rope high above the canyon floor for 15 minutes, and the staff had not reacted. Finally, the staff closed down another rope briefly to retrieve him, and traffic started flowing again a little faster across the traverse. Almost everyone after us decided to skip the traverse and the wait, so we ended up being one of the last teams across, 45 minutes later.

Ian demonstrated the correct technique on how to do a Tyrolean. Push off with your feet, lie horizontal and reach out with your hands early to pull yourself along and not lose momentum. I demonstrated the incorrect technique and slowed to a stop out in the middle of the canyon. I had visions of the guy who eventually had to be rescued as I huffed and puffed, eventually pulling myself to the far wall. We then headed down canyon towards the rappel to find that they had taken it down already. Drat.

In the dark now, we stayed along the left side of the canyon as we descended following ledges just above the canyon floor, eventually exiting Culvert Canyon across the street from Goldbar. At the TA, we were given instructions to go to the next CP, which was at the Slickrock Trail trailhead. Time to gear up for the bike ride. We decided to take our trekking shoes as well, just in case there was a lot of hiking on the "bike and hike" section. I'm glad we did so.

We jumped into a pace line heading back up Potash Road, across Hwy 191 onto the bike path, into town, then up Sand Flats Road to the Slickrock trailhead. Christi's back brakes were rubbing badly; both Murray and I tried to fix it to no avail. She would just have to work harder on her bike. At the Slickrock trail, staff presented us with another rogaine-style loop of CPs using an aerial map, which we could do either on foot or on bike. I choose that my team do it on foot, as the trail is incredibly technical and I cannot navigate well on a bike, especially at night while trying to follow little white dots across the slickrock marking the trail.

Slickrock Trail navigation went better, as we had a well-marked trail to watch out for that allowed us to get reasonably close to the CP before we had to search for it. I plotted CP 17 incorrectly, and after a couple attempts at finding it, we rechecked the coordinates and found it on the other side of the trail. CP 19 was also difficult, as the trail that overlayed our map seemed to be slightly off the trail in the aerial map, which caused us to look in an area 50 to 100 meters away from the actual CP for several minutes. Otherwise, we ran the loop with few problems.

The only remaining CP was on La Sal Mountain Loop Road at the top of the Kokapelli Trail, many miles away and 4000 feet above us. We worked our way up the road at what felt like a crawl. The only navigational decision that to make was whether to go up the Kokapelli Trail (3.5 miles) or to go around on Sandflats Road/La Sal Loop Road (7.9 miles). The former was difficult single track and the latter was flat 2WD road. When we arrived at our decision point, the team in front of us had just turned around and come off the Kokapelli trail, having decided it was too difficult. We conservatively decided to go around on the easy roads.

At the top now (8300 feet elev.) we stopped to put on every piece of clothing that we had carried, and I texted Kathy to let her know that we were an hour from the finish. I wore a puffy jacket, a wind shirt and a gortex jacket. Christi and Ian wore balaclavas. Temperatures were in the high 30s at 6am and we had a 17 mile, 4000 foot descent back to Red Cliffs Lodge. One short section of road was dotted with ice, but otherwise we enjoyed an exhilarating hour of high-speed downhill on paved road. During the day the views would have been spectacular. We pulled into Red Cliffs Lodge shortly after 7:30am. Kathy and my dad had driven out to meet us as we crossed the line in 6th place. Breakfast awaits!

Other Seattle teams that came to Nationals were Dart and Manny's. Dart managed to pop one of their riverboards on a sharp edge as they turned down to the dock, 20 yards from the start. They ran back to their room and inflated a spare one, spotting everyone 10 minutes in the process, and they still finished 2nd (only a few minutes out of 1st place). Manny's is a really fun team. We saw them on the Slickrock Trail, and they looked like they were enjoying themselves, as they always do. Kathy hung out with them at the BBQ after the race (while I was sleeping), and helped them enjoy the keg of beer (Manny's, of course) that they had driven half way across the country. If you can't win the race, win the party. They get my vote.

Trioba Sprint Adventure Race in Capitol Forest

Saturday May 5th was National Trails Day. We celebrated by going to do the Trioba Sprint Adventure Race down in Oakville, WA. Glenn Rogers and the Trioba crew have put on a couple great local Adventure Races last year and we expected more of the same.

Andrew, Roger, Heather and I planned to drive down to Oakville Friday night and camp at the rodeo fairgrounds where the Trioba HQ was situated for the weekend. Packed and ready to go, I got a call from Roger that he had acute food poisoning and couldn't make it. I relayed Roger's predicament to Andrew and Heather. Heather was having a tough week and decided to stay home as well, as fame and fortune were only truly awarded to the four person co-ed teams that participated, and we would probably not have a full team. Andrew and I shuffled some gear and headed on down as a two person team, fame and fortune be darned.

We crawled out of our tents to a bluebird morning, and found that many teams had arrived during the night. There was now a sizable crowd for the race, about eighty people on two dozen teams. We picked up our maps at 6am and got to work planning our route, which was fairly straightforward. I copied a couple of road and trail names onto our Trioba maps from the Capitol
Forest map that I had brought with me before putting it back in the car. Outside maps were not allowed once we started the race, but we could use all of our resources ahead of time to help us plan our route and assist our future navigation.

Andrew and I went to stage our kayak gear at the kayak put-in a mile down the road, and our bikes at the kayak take-out 7 miles after that. The Chehalis was flowing at several times its normal volume, but was still a reasonably mild river with only class 1 rapids and a few snags. We made it back just in time for the pre-race meeting. Glenn informed us that teams would get bonus time for picking up aluminum cans (30 seconds each) and shotgun shells (5 seconds each). I salivated at the thought of getting a BONUS for picking up cans. I have a somewhat compulsive tendency to pick up aluminum cans, so I definitely have been training for this particular skill set, and I was ready to go. I am glad I brought my larger backpack along.

At the start, we followed a horseback rider out of the rodeo grounds and ran a mile down the road to our kayaks. Andrew and I reached the kayaks near the front, and with our well-placed boat, we were second on the water. Andrew set the tone for the day by running into the water up to his knees while getting in the boat. Let's not worry about getting our shoes wet, shall we? We quickly passed the only boat - a canoe - in front of us, and we had the Chehalis to ourselves.

The water was moving at a reasonable speed, and we kept a steady pace as we tried to stay in the faster current around the occasional gravel bar and snagged tree in the water. I discovered that my kayak paddle was feathered at 100 degrees instead of the usual 60, but the wing paddle has some funny locking mechanism that was hard to get undone while we were cruising down the water, so I just decided to go with it. At one point, the current took a strong left around a large log pile in the middle of the river. We almost went right, but Andrew warned me to go left, which was the better choice. I heard that at least a couple other teams flipped while on the water, and I imagined that this log pile might have taken a bite out of some of them if they weren't paying close attention.

Andrew and I got off the water at the Porter boat landing ahead of the crowd and attempted to transition to our bikes. Andrew accidentally yanked his pants down while taking off his spray skirt, to the shock of the spectators. After a quick apology, he joined me as we yanked our bike shoes/helmet out of the bin, threw the kayak gear in, grabbed our bikes and were off.

From Porter, we followed the Porter road and C-line up, up, up to the Mima Porter trailhead. I was a little faster than Andrew on this part; however, instead of employing the traditional bike tow to help even out our pace, I rode a little bit ahead and looked for cans. When I found one, I jumped off my bike, grabbed and smashed it, hopped back on my bike as I slid the can into a side pocket on my pack. At this point I was a little behind Andrew and then raced to catch up, as our team was required to stay within 30 meters of each other. We were still in the lead, but Castelli was slowly closing in on us.

At the Mima Porter trailhead, we transitioned to singletrack. The trailhead was at a "road end" blocked by a downed log, and the singletrack initially headed the wrong direction for 50 yards or so. I was confused about which way to go for a few seconds before we headed up the singletrack. Apparently, the first four teams went the correct way, but many other teams continued on the decommissioned road, heading who-knows-where.

Along the Mima Porter trail, the CPs were fairly straightforward. I hadn't spent too much time looking at the map ahead of the race, although apparently I should have. Verve followed a short road section and got ahead of us, whereas we crossed the road on the singletrack, continued a few hundred yards, then crossed back across the road. Forest roads are much faster on bike than dirt trails. We caught up with Verve and passed them. Verve passed us again when they stayed on a road whereas I got back on the singletrack a little early. Peteris is a great map reader and knows how to squeeze out small gains by optimal route choices.

To make matters worse, the map board mounted on my bicycle loosened up. Mounted on my handlebars, the board normally stands straight up and allows me to read my map while biking. However, now it occasionally wobbled during heavy bumps and rotated sideways. I decided not to stop to deal with it, as it was still somewhat functional.

We caught up with Verve again at the Transition Area before the trekking section, and we all set out on the trek together as a "super team" of 6 people. Andrew and I stayed with Team Verve until we got out of the singletrack trails system and back on the road. Then we moved about 100 yards ahead of them so that we could pick up the occasional can that we saw. Feeling a little guilty, I pitched a couple cans back on the road for Verve to pick up, but by and large, we came out well ahead on the bonus time by being just a little bit in front here.

At the next CP, we had to double back and then bushwhack up the hill to a higher forest road. Perhaps I should have been watching the terrain more closely as we came in and paying less attention to cans. In any case, I decided to pick an animal trail up the ridge through salal early on. Team Verve continued further back to a mudslide section that was very steep at first, but fairly clear up to the higher road. Andrew and I foundered a bit and lost a couple minutes to Verve.

At the next CP, I made a navigational choice that cost more time. We went a ways down a logging road in order to bushwhack up a steep hill to the CP, whereas we could have done a smaller bushwhack up to a trail that went up the ridge. As running on the road was really no faster than running on a trail, but bushwhacking is far more difficult than running up a trail, we should have gone for the ridge trail. We also overshot the CP a little bit and had to double back. Verve was somewhere ahead of us.

When we arrived at the TA where we had left our bikes, a special task was awaiting us. We were instructed to carry a 70 lb bucket of gravel up a trail to a mud pit and dump it, then come back. I like the idea of doing trail work in the middle of an adventure race. Andrew and I shared carrying the bucket up the trail and dumped it. Team Castelli was fairly close behind us, heading up with their bucket as we were coming down, maybe a few minutes behind us.

Transitioning onto bikes again, we now had a lot of fast downhill on forest roads as we headed back out of Capitol Forest. Andrew was faster than I on downhills, as I started to get scared above 30mph on gravelly roads. At one point, Andrew asked me which way to go. Which way? I didn't know there was a route choice here. My map did not show the intersection, so I picked a road (the correct one) based on a general idea of the geography. Castelli apparently picked the other road, then got confused as to where they were, and spent an extra half hour reorienting themselves, leaving them lost in the weeds, so to speak.

At the next CP on a hilltop, I punched the CP while Andrew picked up cans. Then we did another quick search of the area and found a few more cans. Don't throw away those "can" minutes! My backpack was getting full, though. We raced down the logging road to the next CP, and saw Verve exiting as we turned onto the spur road to the CP. They were only a few minutes ahead of us - sweet! More cans. Double sweet!

I made a bad navigation choice by switching my map board to the next map before we were done with the previous one. We just head west, double back to the east, then head west again on a main road, and we're onto the next map. How hard could that be? It wasn't hard at all; however, when we got to the main road, I started to track us on the new map, not realizing that we still needed to go at least another mile before we got onto the new map. When we arrived at a campground at a curve in the road, I thought that we were at a turn off at the further curve in the road, and we spent a few minutes being confused before I figured it out. Duh. Adventure racing is not always about going fast. It's about going to the right place.

We found the correct turn off down the road, and crossed a bridge over the stream to find the second-to-last CP. A trail supposedly continued on from here, but heinous brush covered a grassy sapling-filled decommissioned road, with an occasional tank trap thrown in. We pushed our bikes up the road while I rechecked the map. It sure looked like the right way on the map, but did not feel very fun at all. We came to a mud slope with a rope up it. I crawled up the slope as I carried my bike one handed, then helped Andrew up the incline. After a quarter mile or so (which felt like far longer), we got through the fun forest and back onto a real road again.

Down to the forest boundary and the last CP we sped, then through a couple neighborhoods on paved roads and back into Oakville. We crossed the finish line back at the rodeo fairgrounds only 6 1/2 minutes behind Verve. We pulled cans out of our backpacks and shotgun shells out of our shorts as Glenn counted out our bonus time. We had collected 16 more cans than Verve did, so got an extra 8 minute bonus, pulling us ahead by half a six-pack. We win! Verve won the four person co-ed, however (the real prizes only go to 4 person co-ed teams) and did an amazing job of navigating and keeping their four person co-ed team on target. Peteris wrote up a few good notes about the navigation. Glenn and his Trioba friends did a really great job of putting on a quality race. Congrats to everyone!

Food, beer and bonfire followed. Andrew and I couldn't stay for too long, and had to leave when the party was only just starting to get going. I'll definitely be back next year, though for another excellent race and an excellent time.

Big Tahoma Rogaine

Andrew and I were going to participate in the 24 hour Big Tahoma Rogaine down near Mt Rainier, but Andrew hurt his hamstring last week and had to stay home. I'm a bit burned out on everything else I've been doing, so I looked forward to doing the 6 hour event solo (solo participants can do the 6 hour event, whereas teams may do the 6/12/24 hour events).

I got up too early on Saturday morning and drove down to Ashford and up the forest roads to the event start, which was in the same location as the Fall Beast race last year. Eric Bone showed up customarily late with the maps, but we started within 10 minutes of the posted start time with a little less time to plan our route. The skies were clouded over and the temp was about 40 degrees, but the rain was supposed to hold off until Saturday night, not affecting us 6 hour folk. I decided to treat this as I would a 50km trail run, and brought just a windshirt and tights, hat and gloves with me. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

I planned an ambitious route that would cover 45 km or so and hit two areas that had some controls with large point values, with a place or two to skip a checkpoint if I was getting behind. Right from the start, it included a long climb to High Hut to get me warmed up, and after the first 15 minutes or so, I was in my t-shirt, hiking/running up the hill feeling good.

At the very first CP, I took off a glove to punch the checkpoint and write my name in the log. I was the first one there. Other people were following me, and in my hurry, I dropped my glove somewhere, realizing only a few minutes later. I would have liked to have that glove later on.

Everything went reasonably smoothly for the first couple hours, and I did very well at navigating to the checkpoints. The climb to High Hut was straightforward, and kept me warm with all of the frost on the ground and trees around me. I was especially happy when I navigated straight to CP 65, which required following a couple overgrown rides then bushwhacking to a "subtle hilltop". I decided to skip a 50 point CP in order to give me a little more time for the second half, then I ran into problems.

Checkpoint 64 did me in. It wasn't that hard to find, but required bushwhacking 300 vertical feet down a ridge across slippery logs. I fell three times in a row and my body was a bit unhappy. Going back up, I had to go 600 vertical feet back up the ridge to get to another path. The faintest trail was marked on the map, but I could not find anything and ended up heading through bushes that were completely laden with water from dew or the previous night's rain. In any case, I was soaked within minutes, and I spent what felt like a half hour thrashing around in the bushes, cold and soaked to the bone. My fingers stopped working; I was miserable.

I headed back to do the second loop in bad shape. The day was still cloudy, so I was not warming up much. My shoe got untied and I couldn't retie it. The strap on my thumb compass came off, and I could not rethread that either. Then I dropped my compass while trying to get some food, and only noticed it a short time later. I spent the next five to ten minutes hiking back and forth like a drowned rat packing, looking for my compass, shivering with my shoe untied. I was deciding at this point whether to fake a debilitating injury and call it quits when I spotted my compass on the ground. Not too much time lost. Maybe I would keep going, but no more bushwhacking.

I tried to find CP 43 which was off the road down a reentrant, but after a short effort, I turned around, as there was too much brush. Then I headed up for a long climb up and over a ridge. At one point, I turned around, deciding to call it quits again, but after hiking back down only 30 feet or so, I psyched myself up again and decided to continue on. Being alone brings out the difficult psychological battles in me, apparently. It would have been nice to have a partner to work with to keep me going strong.

After getting another couple easy checkpoints along the road, I got to an intersection where I could head up to some of the higher scoring ones, but I decided I did not have the time or determination to do so, and I followed another trail that would loop back to the start. I completely went past CP 23, which I thought might be easily visible from the road, but it wasn't. No turning back, though. At another intersection, I had a chance to go for a couple more CPs that were on side roads, but my will was gone and it had started to flurry, so I kept following the course back to the start/finish. I picked up a couple more CPs along the way back, then grabbed a couple easy ones near the start/finish before checking out in 5 hours 30 minutes. As I had run to the last couple CPs along the road, I had actually started to warm up by the time I got back, but otherwise I had been miserable for the last two and a half hours. I wrung the water out of my hat and called it a day.

It turns out that my 725 points was enough to finish in 2nd place of all the 6 hour folks (including the people who were on bike half the time), and Matt Hart was only 30 points ahead of me. I could easily have picked up another 30 or 50 points in the half hour I had left, and won. I guess that goes to show that one should never give up. Next time, though, I'm bringing my gortex jacket.

Trioba 24 Hour Adventure Race

Now that I've recovered some, I can think back positively on the recent Triboa race out in Plain, WA. I raced with Andrew Feucht, Roger Michel and Beth Brewster. Beth was completely new to adventure racing, but she had just done an Ultraman (a double Ironman done over a 3 day period), so she was certainly in shape to run around with us for the weekend. Andrew was our logistics man, as Roger was flying up from the Bay Area, and I was coming back from Colorado (Imogene Pass / Hardrock hike) on Thursday night. Kathy picked up both Roger and me from the airport at the same time, in fact. I had Friday morning to do my laundry and re-pack for our adventure race.

Map handout was at 8pm on Friday evening, with the race starting at midnight. The course would take us kayaking across Lake Wenatchee and back, then hiking and biking along many of the trails on or near the Plain 100 mile trail run course.

At midnight, we headed off on our mountain bikes after a Le Mans start. Our first crucial decision came after we crossed the Wenatchee river - many people followed the main roads towards the checkpoint, but we headed south to take a shorter logging road, which did not exist (or so I claimed). Glenn (the RD) gave us a curious extra map that seemed useless, but it came into play as we headed south after missing our turn, finding another logging road that actually went through. After a long climb, we arrived at the location of the checkpoint and bushwhacked to the saddle. Beth thought we were kidding when we got off our bikes and told her we were hiking through the brush. She had never been off trail before. She was in for a new adventure this weekend for sure.

Next we headed back down the logging roads and to Lake Wenatchee to do our kayaking leg. We had borrowed Eric's triple (actually a converted double) and planned to tow a single kayak behind it. The major benefit of this setup was cost, as we did not need to rent any kayaks. However, the triple was far too small for three people to paddle together, and Beth, who was in the center of the triple, got so soaked that she almost went hypothermic before we stopped to let her change her clothes and put on a raincoat with a hood. I navigated while paddling the single, and I was also the designated gopher that hopped out to get the checkpoints. I wore my drysuit so that I could jump out in knee-deep water without having to worry about getting wet.

I enjoyed the kayaking leg. Several of the CPs on the far side of the lake were situated in marshes and sloughs that allowed for some navigation decisions as well as taking us to nice spots. My favorite spot was sliding through swamp grass to enter a lagoon on the southwest corner of the lake. Coming back out, we beached our kayaks in foul-smelling mud, which was not so fun.

After the kayak, we stripped off some wet clothes and headed out on our mountain bikes for a long climb up to the Mad River trailhead, then up more steep singletrack to a horse camp/transition area to the trek. By this time it was after 10am.

We trekked mostly along trails, with several forays bushwhacking up or along mountains in order to tag a checkpoint. At about noon, Beth sprained her ankle. Ouch! Andrew got her going again, saying it is best not to stop, and she kept going, albeit a little more slowly. At this point, we had three other teams ahead of us, and we realized that we probably would not be catching them, so we focused on finishing the race as well as we could.

The trek was long, and we finished at 7pm, just as the sun was going down. The day had been cool and cloudy, but a chill set in as night came on. The last section was on mountain bikes, with a long section of singletrack at the end described as "sweet" by the race director, although we used different adjectives such as "frustrating" and "insane".

We were staying up for the second night in a row, and we started to get silly. A smattering of light rain had moistened some of the dust, and I was absolutely sure that the ground was covered in a dusting of snow, even calling Andrew "such a liar" when he didn't see the snow. Beth was bonking at this point without realizing it, falling off her bike left and right as Roger stayed walking behind her trying to catch her. He eventually got her to eat some gels and she came around again.

Glenn had put a dozen CPs along the singletrack at the end to make sure that we rode it, and told us that the CPs would be easy to see from the trail. Apparently, the reflecting material did not reflect very well, because we had a very difficult time seeing the CPs, especially as we had been going for 24 hours already and were exhausted. Also, the singletrack twisted and turned all over, whereas the trail on the map went straight from one point to another, so we had a lot of trouble keeping track of where we were. As we did not want to have to backtrack, we went very slow in order to make sure that we didn't miss checkpoints. By the time we got near the end, I was already (figuratively) crying like a baby. I just wanted to go back to he lodge.

All the teams had trouble with the last several checkpoints, and only one team found them all. In retrospect, they didn't seem so hard. They were near well-recognized features by the trail as long as we were paying attention. The CP that we missed (CP28), however, was 20 meters off the trail where there was a "trail/snag". I assumed that this meant a dead fallen tree across the trail or something like that. Wikipedia defines a snag as a "standing dead tree" with perhaps a few large branches on it, so we were not even looking for the right indicator.

After we could not find CP 28, we decided not to look too hard for the next one. CP 29 was in a shallow reentrant off the trail. We passed one shallow reentrant and looked up it with flashlights (we had mostly dimmer flashlights because our batteries had run out on our HID lights), but could not see anything and moved on. We found another shallow reentrant later, but we also did not see anything up it. As we were already getting beyond where we had expected it based on the bike odometer, I decided to give it a small effort and hiked 5 meters up the reentrant to look. I still did not see anything, and turned around to tell the others. At that point, Andrew asked "what about that tape next to you?". I looked and saw I was standing next to Montrail tape. That's odd, why would they put tape and no CP? Then I found the CP slightly behind a tree trunk 3 feet away from me. I had been standing right next to it. That is how hard they were to find in our condition. Doing a double all-nighter is tough.

The last CP in hand, we enjoyed our bike back to the lodge and the finish line as we watched the sky lighten into dawn. We arrived at about 6:15am, a little over 30 hours after we started. Beth told us she was having fun. She'll definitely be back for more. Andrew did really well in spotting several of the difficult checkpoints for us, and Roger kept us together going forward well beyond when I wanted to quit. A week and a half later, I am starting to look back at the race with fond memories rather than profanities. Same time next year?

Crux and Crucible Adventure Race

Crux and Crucible was a new race put on up in Farragut State Park, northern Idaho. Peteris Ledins, Christi Masi, Andrew Feucht and I headed up to represent team Verve. Crux and Crucible was set up as two 12-14 hour races, one each day. The Crux and Crucible were fairly different feeling races. The Crux contained a lot of bushwhacking and harder navigation, whereas the Crucible was fairly fast and straightforward.

I'll start with my final impressions: while we got a lot of good stories out of this race and had a memorable time, we have decided that the RD's adventure races leave something to be desired on the organizational front. The RD tried to talk up some of the parts of the races and create adventure through vagueness, which didn't seem to work out. The Crux had a swim segment, which some of the team could opt not to do and do some other unknown task instead. After many questions, the RD finally told the racers that our kayaks would be on a barge at the TA and that we would have to swim out to it in order to get our kayaks, and if only some of the team swam out, then they would have to bring the kayaks back to the others on the beach. There were some issues with staging the gear that were made clearer when he finally told us what we were going to be doing. However, on Saturday morning, he announced that the swim was cancelled because the barge was too small to hold all the kayaks without putting them on top of one another, and gear had to be restaged.

He also told us that we had to plot the CPs ourselves, and when asked, said that the scale of the map was 1:24000. When we showed up on Saturday with appropriate UTM grids, we discovered that he had magnified the original map 40-50% in order for us to see the terrain better; however the scale was 1:16000 or so and did not fit our UTM grids. I brought a divider that I could use to do accurate UTM plotting, but I could hardly believe his oversight and misinformation on such a key part of the race. He also said that he had an answer key that showed where the CPs were plotted that we could look at (so why do we need to plot our own points in the first place??).

One of the CPs was wrong in any case. Apparently the RD used a GPS to generated the UTM points without really checking them on the map, and the GPS was not reading very well. The point was 200 meters off on the wrong side of the hill, so noone found it. Nike called the RD to tell him about it. They used their cellphone the next day too to call the RD when 3 of our teams had searched for 15 minutes for another CP. I've never seen another race where you are allowed to call the RD for additional clues. And here I thought that the mandatory team cellphone was for emergencies or something. Silly me (for the record, we all benefitted from the additional help).

In another case, the RD said that we could get the CPs in any order, but there was a CP at the end that was only a block from the CP at the beginning. It was in the town of Bayview at a store. We stopped by on the way out and got a signature from the owner; however, we were told by volunteers at the kayak TA that we were supposed to stop by on the way back during the kayak, so we did. Some other people did not stop by on the way back and got away with it (the volunteers said what?? I didn't hear that.. .)

Speaking of getting away with it, there was another team that was leaving their woman at their bikes when they went off to hike to search for the checkpoint. We saw her alone when everyone was looking for the misplaced CP, and when we finally gave up we saw her again at the bikes all alone. Her team had abandoned her for a half an hour. At the next CP, they left her again to trek several hundred meters up the ridge to get a CP. Christi/Peteris mentioned it to the RD and he gave the other team a lecture, but the RD gave some lame excuse about wanting to attract good teams to the race (is that why he didn't penalized them?). In any case, he just lost the patronage of one good team -- us.

At the end of the second day, there was an orienteering course that was supposed to be done in order, but my teammates said they overheard another top team saying that they did it out of order. I guess when only the volunteer says something, you can ignore it if it is in your interest.

More cases: when we finished the kayak on Saturday, there was a CP in the middle of a campground. However, the RD did not tell us where to beach our kayaks. There was one particular spot that he wanted us to go where there were volunteers who then told us to carry our kayaks up to the campground. However, we had tried to land at another beach before that until someone related to the race came over to tell us to go "somewhere else". Why didn't the RD just make the CP at the beach instead of the campground? There was no indication that we couldn't just drop our kayaks off anywhere and bushwhack up to the CP. I hate it when RDs want you to do something specific but will not tell you what it is. That makes the race more of a crapshoot than a race.

Speaking of crapshoots, Ian,Roger and Jared were leading by an hour on Sunday and had only one CP left. They were supposed to go to the CP and get instructions for an orienteering course that they had to do before the finish. However, the RD did not explain this. He had on the passport however that they had to go to that CP and get a punch (typically marked by an orienteering flag), although it was actually a manned checkpoint that did not require a puch. So, as they were about to arrive at the last CP, they saw an orienteering marker by the side of the road with a punch on it. They punched it and then headed to the finish, expecting to get the orienteering course info there. Unfortunately, the punch they had seen was part of the O course itself, and when they arrived at the finish, three miles away, they discovered they had to go back. Someone gave them a ride back(!) and they finished the O course, then rode back to the finish line and still won, but it was certainly an anxious moment.

The funniest thing that happened on the course, however, was earlier in the race on Sunday. Ian's team was ahead and had apparently gotten a CP that was very difficult to find. After we wandered around at the location of a CP with Nike and True Grit for a while, Nike called up the RD to ask for more directions as to where the CP was (he had indicated it slightly misplaced with bad description, and it was hidden). After getting some feedback from the RD (hello? What other race have you been to where you call the RD if you are having trouble) Nike found the point and headed off, and True Grit found it shortly thereafter. We found the point a few minutes later and played catch up. About an hour later, we picked up another CP on an overgrown spur road and headed on, only to find Ian's team wandering around on a ridge below the road looking for the CP in the wrong place. We couldn't believe that they had blown such a lead, and Peteris decided to help them out by yelling down and telling them how to get to the CP. Later on, we discovered that it was actually Nike that he was helping. We were beating Nike, a famously solid team, and Peteris decides to stop and give them directions. Doh!

So, I guess I should actually describe the races. The Crux -- we started out with a short run to spread people out, then we hopped on our mountain bikes. My team, Verve, was first on the bikes. Then we did a long biking segment with lots of gratuitous bushwhacking. The crux CP which was not the one called "The Crux", ironcially) was actually a pair of CPs, one on a mountaintop and one 500 vertical feet down the other side. Route choice in this case was significant, and a crucial road to the lower CP was not on the map. The RD did say before the race, however, that all the CPs were near a road, so we knew that there was some sort of road to the lower one, we just did not know where it came from. The teams that guessed (or knew) where that lower road was picked up a fair amount of time than the teams (like mine) that did extra bushwhacking between the two points, although the latter choice seemed reasonable without extra information. The point that was labelled the "Crux" was at the end of the mountain biking segment. There was a cutoff off 4pm for the last CP before the kayaks, and my team arrived at 2:45. However, at that point we were given the information about the "Crux" checkpoint and how to get to it, and we were told at that point that we had to do the Crux and get back by 4pm. We started up a long climb to the top of the mountain near where the Crux was located, but we turned back because we did not have enough time, and we did not pick up the huge amount of bonus points for this CP (it was worth 4 times the average point value of the other CPs). If we had known we had to do the Crux before the cutoff, we could have skipped one of the other CPs and had enough extra time. We learned later, however, that Nike took 2 hours to find the point because there was a typo in the directions (another oversight on the RD's part), and we also learned that at 4pm, after we had started kayaking, they decided to move the cutoff from 4pm to 5pm as so many of the teams had not arrived yet.

We kayaked in a triple towing Christi in a single, which worked OK. Thunder and lightning started off in the distance, but we managed to outrun it. After the kayak section was an orienteering section in the park. The clouds opened up and a completely drenching rain poured down on us. Luckily we had only an hour left, and we finished the O course looking like drowned rats. We kept running into Ian,Roger,Jared on the course during the second half of the race, and we all finished together.

The Crucible was much nicer and straightforward. We ran down to where our kayaks were and did a short swim across the bay (which was not as bad as I thought it would be). Then we kayaked 8 miles or so to where our mountain bikes were stationed, then did a long mountain bike section on fire roads with fairly easy to find CPs with a couple exceptions. Half way through the mountain bike we stopped and ran up and down a mountain, at which point my team had pulled ahead of both Nike and True Grit. We were still leading when we hit the sweet singletrack down Bernard Mountain, at which point Nike blew by us. We passed them again at the bottom, but on the last CP before the park, we choked. Everyone had a problem with the CP, which appeared to be right on the trail; however the trail we were on was not the trail marked on the map, and we should have picked up on some terrain clues (and my inability to accurately located us on the trail along the map) and reoriented ourselves more quickly. Nike and True Grit passed us here, and if we had gone on, we would have found another trail that lead back to the CP. We got onto the orienteering course at the end 10 minutes behind the other teams; however, we could not catch up and finished as the third place co-ed team. It was a close and hard fought battle, though, and that made it really fun.

We raced two somewhat different feeling races during the weekend, and finished each one in a little over 11 hours each, so it was like a 24 hour race with a nice dinner and rest halfway through. I liked that part. Overall, I had a fun time, but the sloppiness of the race really got to me. This race is worth doing once, but probably not a second time.

Peteris' post here: http://www.teamverve.org/2009/06/why-i-love-trioba.html

Another Trioba writeup

Here is Team Verve's writeup from the Trioba race:
http://www.teamverve.org/2009/06/trioba-at-index-wa.html

Trioba "Wild Sky" Sprint Adventure Race

Andrew Feucht, Matt Hayes, Julie Heidt and I headed up to Index to participate in the "Wild Sky" Trioba Sprint AR. Peteris Ledins, Murray Maitland, and Christi Masi (with whom I raced at Desert Winds last month) were racing with Ian Hoag as Team Verve, and were definitely going to push us hard. We were all looking forward to a good race, and especially to the whitewater rafting trip down the Skykomish at the end.

We camped on Friday out along Reiter Road just outside of Index (an hour and a half from Seattle) where we could find some free camping, and we soaked in the spectacular views of the mountains and river that the area had to offer before heading to sleep. We all met at the River House in Index at 6am for the pre-race meeting (it starts getting light at 5am around here) and received our maps so that we could familiarize ourselves with them. The course worked as follows: bike leg up to a remote TA. Remote trek loop. Bike back through town to another remote TA. Another remote trek loop. Bike to start of rafting. Raft down river to finish. We were allowed one bin at the start line that we could access as we passed through town, and another at the start of the rafting trip where we could leave all of our biking/trekking gear and pick up our rafting gear.

At the start, Verve quickly pulled ahead and disappeared, while Matt got Julie on tow so that we could keep ahead of the masses. We turned onto a fire road that went uphill quickly. and everyone spread out a bit. At the first CP, a rough trail broke off from the road to the second CP. We elected to take the road, and several others headed down the trail. We arrive at CP 2 first, ahead of Verve as well as all the other teams, so we felt good about taking the safe, easy (albeit longer) route. CP 3 took us to the top of Index Town Walls and its beautiful views looking down on Index and across the valley. We did not tarry any more than we had to, however.

The mountain biking took us through some serious water and mud. Water was spread out like a lake across some parts of the road and trail, up to about 20 inches deep. It is a weird sensation riding through such deep, muddy water hoping that there are no holes in front of you. We did not have fenders so we got a healthy spray of mud and water all over.

The trek section took us through some serious bushwhacking. We occasionally followed old abandoned roads, but sometimes went cross-country through heavy brush, slide alder and devils club. Verve caught up with us at this point and we travelled side-by-side for a few CPs. At one point we both overshot a CP and went separate ways looking for it, and they pulled ahead.

A couple CPs later, we found ourselves up above snow level. We decided to take a short-cut down to the main road instead of following a vague snow covered road the longer way around; however, we got cliffed out and had to bushwhack our way down and around some cliffs and lost several minutes.

Back on the bikes, we got to ride some fast downhills past a few more CPs and down into town. We quickly stopped at our bin to refill on water. Verve left just as we arrived, and we saw them again as we pulled into the TA for the second trek loop at Heybrook Ridge. The second trek followed a logging road up to the top of Heybrook Ridge, looped around and came back down again. It was much mellower than the first loop; it had very little bushwhacking and few navigation problems, although it had a big hill. Verve was faster up the hill than we were, and pulled ahead of us by four to five minutes by the time we made it back to the bikes again.

The last biking section followed the road to rafting put-in. One CP along the way was on a spur road that was hidden by a concrete barrier that required us to keep an eye on the cycle computer and pay attention, which we did. We arrived at the rafting put in after 6.5 hours of racing.

Once at the rafting put-in, we were off the clock so that we could get appropriate safety gear, meet our guide and get the raft ready. Then we checked back in, raced to the raft and jumped in. I think our guide, Bucky, enjoyed having a crew that wanted to paddle the whole time and wanted to take the fastest route. Although we certainly still felt like we were racing, the rafting trip was fun and enjoyable and a perfect way to cross the finish line. Steak dinners waited for us at the end at the River House. Verve held on to beat us, but we finished a strong 2nd place. Glenn, RVG and Aaron put on a good race.

Rogaining National Championships - Mogollon Rim

Andrew and I planned months in advance to head down to Arizona for the Mogollon Rim Rogaine on May 16-17, as it was the only 24 hour event in the Western US this season. It turned out conveniently to be the "national championships" as well. For those not in the know, a "rogaine" is a 24 hour score-O event (score-O means orienteering in which you can visit checkpoints in any order, checkpoints have different point values, and whomever collects the most points and gets back to start within time allowed wins).

We arrived on Friday afternoon to the start location. Elevation was 7000 feet, temperatures were mid 80s during the day, 50 at night, with fairly clear skies. The terrain was mostly open forest with many washes, draws and gullies. We organized all of our food and gear by Friday evening. I weighed out Andrew's food with a postal scale so that he wouldn't bring too much food like last time. We also decided to come back to the Hash House (the start/end point - they also served food during the race here) just before dark if we could so that we could leave half of our food as well as our heavyish night gear, which included Andrews 500 lumen mountain bike light. We planned to light the place up at night.

They handed out maps at 9am, two hours before race start, and we sat down to plan our route. We decided to visit the northwest section of the map first, which had fewer terrain features, and I planned out a 6-8 hour loop. At night, we planned to head west and follow a series of draws to visit several of the checkpoints in that direction. Ideally, these would be reasonably easy to follow at night.

We were a bit rusty at the start, but picked up momentum as we went. We briefly stopped at a smallish gully looking for the first CP, but it was further on in a larger reentrant. We took a little while to match what we saw in the terrain with the size of things on the map. We also used thumb compasses for the first time, and although they took some getting used to, we really enjoyed navigating with thumb compasses rather than our sighting compasses.

We really tripped up at CP 91. At the previous CP, I suggested heading down the reentrant that we were in to the draw at the bottom then navigating from there. I didn't realize that there was an intersection before that, so we started navigating from the wrong point, and didn't really recover. We wasted 45 minutes and ended up bailing on CP 91 in order to find ourselves on the map again. 90 points was a lot to leave on the table, but we were anxious to put it behind us. From then on, our navigation was spot on, and we cruised into the Hash House at 6:40pm to grab a sandwich and our night lights. I decided to forgo long pants, although I did bring a windshirt/hat/gloves for the night in case we got cold and lost somewhere.

We headed west for a counterclockwise loop of the points out there. Everything was working for us navigationally, but we got slower and slower as we tired. During the 3-5am timeframe, we got really sloppy and stupid. Because we were tired, we followed an unmarked road for a while instead of a ridgeline, and then could not accurately place ourselves on the map for about half an hour while we looked for the CP. Then the on the next CP we thought we had overshot it before we arrived to the CP, and then I started reading my compass wrong, as I was looking for a NW gully instead of a NE gully. Andrew set me straight and we regrouped to come back and nail it, just as the sun was coming up. We started shortening our route a bit here in order to finish on time, and we finished our shortened route with 40 minutes to spare.

We finished with 2420 points. The winners had 2760,2750 and 2740, so we were 350 point off the winning score. While this was not completely out of our reach, we would have had to hit the 90 point CP that we skipped and then move a fair bit faster than we did so that we could have made up about two hours or so. We were 5th overall, which was respectable.

Summary: We did fairly well as far as bearings and pace counting except for the hours just before dawn. Our route choice seemed very good and we could have executed it if we were a little faster. My Salomon shoes withstood the beating - Andrew had a lot of foot pain in his Cascadias after 24 hours. Andrew stopped eating around midnight and suffered for it a few hours later. I brought just the right amount of food (after augmenting with a sandwich at the hash house), although the trail bar I had at the end was hard to eat and I would have rather had cookies. We ran out of water in the morning and suffered a little bit at the end. We could have easily stopped at a water stop that was on our original plan and probably gained 40 points on our current score, at the expense of an extra half an hour of time, putting us in much closer to the 24 hour cutoff. We started a little slow, but as we get more rogaine experience, I think that we will be able to correlate the size of the features we expect to see with the map immediately rather than after one or two trial-and-error checkpoints. I also need a little more practice with my thumb compass as I was getting confused several times in the wee hours of the morning.

Hot Times at Desert Winds Adventure Race

I headed down to Desert Winds with Peteris, Christi and Murray (Team Verve) for a weekend of navigation and technical challenges at the Desert Winds 24+ Hour Adventure Race. I had done the Desert Winds race last year and enjoy the beautiful and challenging terrain around Lake Meade, and I was hoping for more of the same. Robert Finlay, the RD, came through again with an excellent race course.

Verve showed up Friday at the start location, a day early, and we got a chance to try out our bikes on the sandy roads around Bonneli's Landing. We also trekked up some nearby hills and took a swim in a sheltered cove. We found the water cool and refreshing after being in the hot desert air. We went to bed early, ready for the next morning's start.

The race was composed of three main legs and several extra optional loops:

Leg 1: Trekking and Swimming: 30 km: Expected Time: 8 - 12 hours
Leg 2: Mountain Biking: 62 km: Expected Time: 6 - 8 hours
Leg 3: Trekking: 15 km: Expected Time: 3 - 6 hours
Optional Loop 1: Trek : 3 - 4 hours
Optional Loop 2: Bike/Trek: 2 - 3 hours
Optional Loop 3: Bike: 2 - 3 hours
Optional Loop 4: Bike: 2 - 3 hours

So, if we did everything on the fast side, we could finish the whole thing with an hour to spare. Additionally, there was a transition area (TA) between each of the main legs. A support crew would take our bags to the various TAs, and transport our bags, bikes and vehicles to the finish line, which was at some unknown location.

After a brief talk, Robert started the race at 9:40am and we were off. Our maps and passports were located at a checkpoint, CP 0, 900 meters away at a bearing of 140 degrees. My team crested a small knoll to find maps in a pile there, and we were the first to grab our map and view Leg 1 of the course. Leg 1 would take us across a few bays and inlets and ended in Temple Bar. Sweet! I had with me a copy of last year's map which overlapped with the last few CPs of our trek; I also had printed out some topo maps of the Bonelli's Landing area with the waterline already pre-marked (the waterline is 100 feet lower now than when USGS maps were made 30 years ago, so we have to redraw the coastline in the areas where we are navigating), and those topo maps covered the first few CPs. Peteris and I could both co-navigate most of this leg.

CP1 was along the near shoreline of Bonneli Bay. We dropped into a wash that led us down to the CP, with several other teams in tow. CP2 lay on the opposite side of the bay. We chose to run around the bay, as swimming across would entail putting on wetsuits/fins and inflating our boogie boards. The wind was also blowing against us. Most of the other teams also chose to run around the bay, although some people swam across. Running seemed faster, especially since the mud along the shoreline was sufficiently hardened to allow us to cross reasonably close to the water. We had to navigate around and across some side washes, but Peteris kept us sufficiently on track. We arrived at CP2 in the lead at the same time as Nuun/Feed The Machine (aka DART).

CP3 and CP4 were along another inlet, and we headed overland, trailing DART. We dropped into some washes and hit the main arm of the inlet, which was only 100 feet across, with CP3 on the other side. We dove in and swam to the other side without donning any of our special swim gear, then approach CP3 by land. DART headed south of us, and I postulated that they might be getting CP4 first, and that we consider that option. The RD had not discussed whether we were allowed to get CPs out of order. The others pointed out that CP4 was on the way to CP5, so it would not save us time in any case. "Just thinking out of the box", I said.

We headed along the ridge and dropped into a side inlet to pick up CP3. We turned around and headed back along the ridge to the south side of the inlet for CP4, which was fairly straightforward. Along the way, we passed a couple other teams that were coming the other way, having either overshot their mark or having tried to hike all the way around the narrow inlet instead of taking the 100 foot swim. We headed overland to CP5, a several km trek away. Noone was behind us.

CP5 was on a saddle between two hills among many others. We kept a reasonable walk/jogging pace going and arrived at the range of hills, a little short and north of our mark. We quickly readjusted, only costing us a little extra elevation loss/gain as we traversed a valley to the correct set of hills. We hit the saddle to pick up CP5. The temperature was rising to about 90 degrees now and Murray just ran out of water. We shared our limited ration of remaining water as we dropped down the other side of the range into a wash that would take us to CP6.

CP6 was at the base of a dry 15 foot waterfall in the wash, around which we bypassed to the left. I hiked quickly back up to the PVC pipe staked into the ground and tied with streamers to read the words on the side: Ice Water. That was exactly what we needed right now. We headed down the wash again, which would take us back to Lake Meade and some refreshing water.

I recognized CP7 from last year as being along the base of a set of cliffs, so I knew that we had to swim there. First, however, we arrived at the cove at the base of the wash, dropped our packs, and dove in. Refreshed, we hiked overland around a couple bays in order to get as close as possible to CP7 before donning our swim gear. We put on wetsuits/fins, inflated our boogie boards, and filled up with enough water to get us to the TA. Swimming was a nice break from the hot desert sun. After CP7, we swam across a bay on the other side and landed on the far side of Monkey Cove, somewhere fairly close to Temple Bar marina. We bushwhacked up to the road (on which I had traveled last year), and that led us straight into Temple Bar and the TA. Our final time for the first leg was under six hours.

We spent a half hour eating, marking the first two optional loops on our new maps, and transitioning to the bike leg. The only other team to show up was Robert and Druce Finlay - the RD and his son were doing the course unofficially to prepare for Primal Quest, and were impressed that there was a team ahead of them, as they had all the local knowledge of the area and had also actually placed the CPs. They said we "scorched the course", and apparently we did, as no other teams had arrived by the time we left on the biking leg.

We traveled only about 8km to Bike CP1, a manned CP and the start of the first optional loop. I briefly felt really weak and tired on the long uphill climb, a product of lots of sun and hard work, and I looked forward to getting off my bike and back on my feet for some more technical navigation.

Optional loop 1 was about 5 miles long and had four CPs (A,B,C,D). We dispatched A and B in a straightforward fashion. We dropped down into a wash and followed it up towards C. A bobcat! We saw it bounding up the side of the wash. We took a right turn at a large side wash, expecting to find C, but it turned into several smaller washes, and we started to worry. We consulted the map and run up a small ridge between two washes for a better view, locating the CP only 20 yards away. On to D. Peteris discovers a six foot long, black and yellow reptile. A king snake! Although it is non-poisonous, we gave it a wide berth.

We need to cross several ridges to get to D, and at one point, we are cliffed out above twenty foot drops to the wash below. We traverse sideways until we can bypass it, then cross more ridges. There were at least a couple times where we thought we might be at the correct ridge, only to find that there was another one after it, and as Peteris accurately pointed out that D was at the base of the last ridge before a large flat area, we continued on, eventually hitting D without too much meandering. From D back to the CP where we left our bikes was fairly flat and straightforward, and we popped out onto the road only 10 meters from where our bikes were. The sun was close to setting. Other teams behind us were going to have a lot more trouble with the last couple CPs if they had to do them after dark, and only three other teams had shown up at Bike CP 1 in the 2+ hours that we were on the optional loop course.

We hopped back on the bikes for another 16 km of uphill slogfest to Bike CPs 2 and 3. Sandy spots drove us crazy, and Christi struggled to unclip from her pedals as she got mired in the sand, falling several times, but persevering. Night descended, and biking became more bearable without the radiating heat of the sun. We arrived at Bike CP3 (manned) after two hours, at 10pm or so. They only had two gallons of water at the CP. We used all of it to refill our bladders and bottles, as we were thirsty and somewhat dehydrated from the 12 hours of racing we had already put in, mostly in the hot sun. Robert and Druce, who had been fairly close to us during the whole biking segment, arrived soon after us and volunteered to take care of the water situation by going to get more. Meanwhile, Team Verve (that's us) headed out to do the optional CP on top of Senator Mountain.

Option loop 2 (CP E) had only one CP, and only teams that wanted to clear the whole course would attempt this one. We rode up an unmarked road to get up onto the flank of Senator Mountain, then we left our bikes and scrambled another 700 vertical feet to the top. We briefly caught some exposure while traversing a short narrow ridge to the summit. CP in hand (look in summit logbook and find out what town a particular person was from), we dropped back down a scree field to the road and bikes. Biking back down, we caught the glint from the eyes of nighthawks sitting in the roadway. We also saw a fox prowling in the night along the roadside.

We arrived back to Bike CP 3 to find that no other teams had shown up in the two hours we were gone. We now had a 2+ hour lead on the whole field as the clock struck midnight. They had gotten more water, so we refilled again and headed off to Bike CPs 4 and 5.

Bike CP 4 was tricky. The CP was described at being at an intersection where we were to make a right turn. However, the road to the right was overgrown, and the CP was 20 feet off the main road. We all almost went by it, but I luckily spotted it and stopped the others before they had disappeared out of earshot. We were given very accurate directions to the bike CPs that indicated exactly how many kilometers we were to go between turns or CPs, so our having two bike computers helped greatly. Teams that didn't have a bike computer suffered much more than the rest of us on the bike leg. Bike CP 5 came easily.

At Bike CP 5, the main loop required a bike portage that looked difficult. By doing an optional bike loop (optional loop 3: CPs F,G,H), we avoided the portage. The navigation was reasonably easy, and except for being confused for a couple minutes about where an unmarked road was, we sailed through the loop.

A fourth optional loop required us to follow a lot of unmarked roads, and so produced in us a wee bit of anxiety. An unmarked road lead away from waypoint 3 on the map. Did it go to checkpoint I? Yes, it did. We portaged our bikes down a hillside, then followed a 4WD road to a reentrant at which we were supposed to pick up another unmarked road. It was just a sandy wash that was a challenge to ride down (so much for the easy downhills). At the bottom, we exited on another unmarked road where we found checkpoint J. I find it very comforting to find a CP while following roads not on the map, as it lets us know we're not lost yet.

Our directions let us know that there are "a lot of unmarked roads between J and K". We follow one of them to another road, then make a few more turns before we discover that we really are lost this time. I'm not too worried, as dawn will come in half an hour, giving us a better view of the terrain. After a short discussion, we deduce where we might be and after a few more twists and turns, end up at the next CP. Whew!

Dawn arrives shortly thereafter to easier biking up another unmarked road to its endpoint, where we find the last optional CP of the loop. We are required to portage our bikes down another hill to pick up the road to Bike CP 7 and TA2.

It is light again and all the tricky navigation is over. What could go wrong now? Peteris stops to fold the map, and the rest of us stop 100 yards ahead to wait. Peteris does not show up, and when we go back to look for him, he is gone. Apparently, he went down a wash that paralleled the road and got ahead of us. I head after him for five minutes while Murray and Christi wait, but I do not see Peteris. Returning, I suggest that we follow him to the next CP. We all travel down the wash, yelling his name. The wash reconnects with the road and we continue on to the next CP where we expect to find him. He is not there. Oh-oh.

At this point, we are probably two hours ahead of our nearest competitor. The only way we cannot win this race is if we somehow cannot finish, or if we lose one of our teammates. And we just lost one of our teammates. Not good.

My worst fear is that Peteris went on to the TA, following the bike tracks of another team (other teams skipped all the optional loops and got ahead of us). And if we waited for him, and he waited for us, the clock would tick away... I made a brash decision in retrospect. Thinking that Peteris was just crazy enough to continue on, I told my teammates that we should go on to the TA. Bad, bad bad.

After 7.5 km of biking, we arrived at the TA. As you might have guessed, Peteris was not there. Crestfallen and embarassed at showing up at the TA without our teammate, we fled the TA back up the road to the previous CP. One of the support crew stopped us on the road and asked us where we were going. I responded that we went forward, he went back, and that he must be waiting for us at the last CP. The truth was slightly more egregious. We should not have gone on past the CP. I just didn't see that Peteris could have come up the road while we were going down the wash, and that we passed each other at the spot where the road and wash separated, and that our yells and calls for him went unheard.

I rode back to the CP to find Peteris riding into the CP again as well, after he had done a few loops between the CP and our previous position. I was elated. Our team, together again, rode on to the TA and the end of leg 2. It was 8am and we had 5 hours left in order to complete the final trek to the finish, which the RD had estimated would take teams 3-6 hours. As we were a fast team, we expected to complete the final leg in closer to 3 hours than 5, but anything can happen. I drank a doubleshot espresso drink. Ah... morning coffee.

Our team fell into a funk for the next half hour as we ruminated over the fiasco of almost losing a teammember, but we eventually fell back into the groove and held together well over the last few hills and ridges that the course threw at us. The last three CPs were out on a completely flat area sparsely populated with joshua trees and acacia bushes that required some fairly exact navigating using bearings and pace counts. Without too much difficulty though, we managed to walk in straight lines for a mile at a time in order to nail the last 3 CPs dead-on.

Turning ourselves to the finish line, we settled into an easy walk and congratulated ourselves on a job well done. We crossed the line in 26 hours, well ahead of the 27 hour cutoff, and we were the only team that completed the full course. Good job, Verve!.

Quincy Lakes Geo-caching

Peteris, Christi and I headed up to Quincy Lakes (out by Vantage) to get in some desert training in preparation for Desert Winds 30 hour Adventure Race in a couple weeks. Peteris made up a nice map that marked several geocaches, and we spent the day wandering around trying to find them, while mountain biking across some rugged desert terrain. Peteris had a GPS watch, which we used several times in order to track down some of the caches, as well as to discover that we had used the wrong datum on the map and that the flags were all slightly off. Once we had worked out the kinks, however, we managed to discover several of the caches just by using the map.

The most ironic geocache was one located amongst a pile of rusty cans. Peteris found a gopher snake sleeping in an old rusty can that he had picked up while looking for the cache, causing him a bit of a startle. When we found the cache, it contained a small plastic snake, a warning perhaps, albeit a few minutes late.

The day was gorgeous the views fantastic. We rode a large bike loop that took us up and down some fairly steep trails, and across a long stretch of scree. We brought our Desert Winds swimming gear along, and we tried it out in Dusty Lake, learning what worked and what didn't. Christi's $1.99 Nemo air mattresses buy from ToysRUs fell solidly in the latter category, as it fizzled out its air and sank. Luckily, we still have some time to find her something workable for the 9km of swimming/kickboarding/coastal orienteering that we will have to do along the shores of Lake Meade on May 2-3.

Gorge Winds II - Adventure Training

I planned to race the Chuckanut 50km Trail Run on March 21st, but my friend (and former Primal Quest captain) Dave set up an Adventure Training weekend down in Hood River as well. When he called me up and personally invited me, I changed my mind, packed my kayak, bike and gear, and headed on down. My friend Andrew was also going, and I thought it would be a good chance for him to get some practice at what a 24 hour race might feel like.

We decided to go for extra punishment and got a mountaineering start, leaving Seattle at 4:30am to drive down to Dodson, Oregon, about 20 miles shortof Hood River. The other out-of-towners stayed at the campground there on Friday night. The campground was also a TA (Transition Area) and official Finish. There we met three other teams who were also doing the training: DART (Glenn, Matt Hayes, Aaron Rinn, RVG/JVG), Verve (Murray,Peteris,Christi) and a couple of Dave's friends whom I don't know off the top of my head.

After dropping off the kayaks at the appropriate spot and watchingit rain all morning, we all finally got going at 10am. The first leg was a trekking leg up to a nice waterfall (I don't know all the names - I'll have to come back and fillthem in later), then a short double-back to another trail that paralleled the highway for a while.

The next CP was at the top of a mountain; we discovered a steep unmaintained trail that lead all they way up the ridge to the top. The sky had cleared a bit, presenting us with beautiful views of the Columbia stretching below us. Mist rose off the wet mountainside as the day began to heat up (above forty degrees). DART reached the mountain top first (there was no real CP, just take a photo) and headed alonga faint trail along the ridge. We followed later, to find the trail eventually petering out as it headed south along the ridge top. As we needed to go east to the next CP at thebase of a waterfall, we decided to drop down the side of the mountain into the woods.

We were having a good go of it, but as we dropped lower and lower, valleys and ridges became sharper and steeper, and we found it very slow going. We hit a couple small cliff areas that required a little sketchy sidehilling to get around, but we continued on and down until we could finally see the waterfall. The good news was that we were right on course and the waterfall was only a quarter mile away. The bad news was that we were on top of a 200 foot tall cliff band and could not get there without wings. Hmmm. I didn't see this cliff on the map, but the contours are in awfully small print. At this point, the only thing to do was head back up. We hiked up 300 feet or so and then contoured over several ribs, heading north back towards the highway. We tried a couple more times to find a way down, but ended up cliffed out again. We only found a way down when we were within sight of the highway on the north side of the mountain, and we finally made it down to the trail and road. There was a wide trail at the bottom of the canyon that went straight to the falls, so the two mile round trip out and back was very quick and mundane in comparison with what we had just survived.

Next, we crossed the highway and headed to the kayak put-in, passing a cute CP that took us by a viewing area to see Herman the 12 foot sturgeon. Arriving at the kayak CP, we discovered that DART was even more lost than we were. I heard later that they also got cliffed out somewhere along the way, and they found some rope and belayed/rappeled their way down some (short) steep cliff sections. They were crazy.

The kayaking was really beautiful, and took us along a stretch of the Columbia right below Bonneville Dam. Several CPs had us getting out of our boats, running around for a bit, then getting back in for another kayaking section. In one case, Dave added a mystery CP that we were required to find by using back bearings to a couple other points. We found out immediately when we got there that the back bearings were incorrect and did not intersect inside the perimeter that he had defined for the mystery CP, but we spent 25 minutes anyways hiking around and giving it our best effort. No luck. Another CP was at the top of Beacon Rock, which was a beautiful climb up a very well maintained trail (complete with railings) to a prominent spire looking out over the Columbia.

My favorite CP (and everyone else's least favorite) was another waterfall checkpoint, but in order toget to it, we had to land on the beach, hike through a creek-filled tunnel under the road, then follow the creek for several hundred meters through a slot canyon to the falls. Dave instructed us to wear wetsuits and booties, adding that we would be in cold water up to our thighs for an hour. We saw Team Verve, who was ahead of us, coming back down the creek looking bedraggled and upset. They apparently hadn't gotten the memo, and had tried hiking up the creek in biking tights. The water was well above waist level in spots. Wading through ice melt is not the smartest idea when only wearing biking tights on a cool day. Enough said. Andrew and I were better prepared, however. I wore my drysuit bib, which is basically gortex waders that cover you up to your armpits. I laughed and danced, except for the very last section where the water was actually deep enough to come up to my armpits. Then I laughed nervously. Andrew had a wetsuit on and no booties. His feet turned to ice, but he made it through ok. Team DART saw Verve coming out of the creek, and as they had no wetsuits either, they skipped the creek CP entirely. A surprisingly smart decision for a team that had
decided to rappel down an unknown cliff with discarded rope earlier in the day.

After wading through the creek, we kayaked back to the campsite/TA just before dark for a change of clothes and some food. It was difficult getting out of camp for the biking loops, and we spent at least an hour and a half there. Andrew and I picked up JVG as a third teammate for next part. She and RVG have a vacation home in Hood River; RVG took their daughter and went to bed, but JVG was itching for more, so she hooked up with us. I suggested a five hour effort, as that would put as back at the campground at 2am, and then we could get at least some sleep for the night. It was misting rain a bit, but eventually Andrew and Jen and I headed out.

The bike route headed along the old highway and was punctuated by trekking loops up to waterfalls. We did a couple of these trekking loops, each about 4-5 miles long and quite steep climbs. Dave had a third trekking loop in his course; however, we skipped that in order to bike up to Crown Point, which was a monument on a Columbia river overlook. The lights of Portland lit up the western sky. We would have liked to go further, but time was already running out.

Coming back down from Crown Point was quick and cold. I was a little worried about traffic, as we encountered a couple joy riders in the parking lot at Crown Point and all the drunks come out at 2am, but the old highway was very quiet. The only vehicle we saw while coming back was Dave coming out to check on people's progress. We told him that we had had our fill. There was another orienteering loop higher up on the mountain (if we had finished the last of the biking) that we skipped entirely, but sleep was looking pretty good right now. We got back to the campsite and packed up, then drove Jen back to their house in Hood River, where we all crashed for the night.

The next morning, we had lattes and omelettes at one of the nice breakfast spots in townbefore our drive home. Sweet!

Total time out on the course: 15.5 hours

Total distance: Not a clue

Total accumulated elevation gain: 8500 feet