Hard to believe we have been competing in this race for 12 years. We were still in our 40s for our first Blue Ridge 12 year ago. We are by far much older than any other AR team with a total of 170 years. A team only needs 120 years to be in the master’s category.
The weather was warmer than usual for this race. (During our first Blue Ridge in 2000 it snowed and we had to swim across the river twice. That was cold!) Fortunately, there were some overcast skies that kept the temperatures bearable and we spend most of the afternoon paddling which helped us stay cool. Our teammate for the 6th year in a row was Mark Bell. His wife Lorie and son Andrew were our support crew.
This was not one of our best races; a flat tire, a swamped canoe and a few missed checkpoints (CP) impacted our overall performance. Even our pictures were not as good as usual. We were using a new waterproof camera and it spent most of the time in a dry bag in the canoe.
On Friday night at the pre-race briefing the race director, Ron Zadroga told us the Lake Blue Ridge dam was under repair and water levels were the lowest in 50 years. Lake Blue Ridge is fed by the Toccoa River. At the time we didn’t know how much that was going to impact the race.
The race started at 8am at a new location, Deep Hole Recreation Area on the Toccoa River. We had to finish in 10 hours and we needed all 10 hours to finish. The way the course was setup the first part of the race was mostly on bike with some foot travel to CPs and the second part was mostly paddling with some portages and some foot travel to more CPs.
We usually do not have enough time to acquire all the CPs in a race so our strategy is to skip certain CPs to ensure we reach the finish on time. We started on our bikes and skipped the first CP and went from there to a series of eight CPs (A-H) where we had to acquire four of the eight. We planned to do B, A, C, E. We couldn’t find B so we went to D then C and A, but missed E. We kept moving forward on the course not to waste time and retrace our route. The plan from the night before doesn’t always work.
We went to CP 2 and found it easily after travelling through briars and paying the price with many scratches. When we returned to our bikes Cathy’s had a flat on front. After a quick change of tubes we had five more CPs to obtain before arriving at the transition area (TA) to the canoes. Our plan was to arrive at the TA around noon. We were running a little behind our time line so we skipped CP 3 at the top of a mountain and found a hunter’s path from CP 4 to CP’s 5, 6 and 7 and then had a short ride on paved road to the TA (CP8).
It was 1215pm when we arrived at the TA and 1225pm when we left the TA portaging our canoe to Nantoola Creek where we put in. The creek was running surprisingly fast and had more white water than we expected. After a half mile it flowed into the Toccoa River where the real fun began.
Our canoe is old and beaten up from many races and is not the most stable anymore. On the river we went through a series of class 2 rapids without much trouble and picked up CP 9. The second to last rapid was running at a class three and we took the wrong line on the left side of the river and knew we had messed up as soon as we saw the drop and turn. We “gracefully” fell out the ride side and swamped the canoe. Fortunately, we were close to shore and almost everything was secured to the canoe. The only thing that wasn’t secure was Mark’s map case with the course instructions and that went floating down the river never to be seen again. Mark had been carrying the passport, but for some unknown reason Zach put it in his map case at CP 9. When we spilled the passport stayed with the boat. If the passport had stayed in Mark’s map case our race would have been over.
After righting the boat we paddled down the river and had to deal with one more set of rapids before our take out at Sandy Bottom. The rapids were right before the take out We were on the left side of the river and we had a little problem getting to the right side. We paddled hard and barely made it to the take out on the opposite side of the river before being pushed by the current downstream.
We put the wheels on and portaged down the road to cut off three miles of the paddle. We were so consumed with drying out the map we went right by the trail into the woods to CP 10. After a mile of portaging on a dirt road we had another half mile of rough portage on a horrible trail down to the lake. What a surprise when we arrived to find no lake but only a roaring river with class three plus rapids. This is what the river looked like before it was dammed up. We just needed to go about a half mile to get to the other side for our next two CPs and the bonus CP. We saw other teams spilling in the rapids and being carried rapidly downriver. We were able to battle the rapids and get to the other side but had difficulty pulling into shore. Finally, we made it and pulled the canoe to the bank only to be mid-calf in mud. As we secured our boat we watched several more teams spill in the rapids.
We had a steep climb up the bank and had to climb using small trees and our hands to get to level ground. At the top we were unsure of our location due to the water level. Mark and Cathy went looking for CPs 12 and 11 while Zach ran up the mountain to obtain the wristband for proof of obtaining the bonus CP. We were to meet in the field but when Zach arrived Cathy and Mark were not there. Fortunately, after a few minutes of yelling we were able to locate each other. We headed back to the canoe and slid down the steep hill on our butts we had previously struggled up. Incredibly we came out right by our canoe. Good thing time was running out.
It was 4pm and we only had two hours to finish. Zach thought we could make it in an hour and a half, but the canoe had lost some of its paddle worthiness in the rapids and we encountered fierce headwinds all the way back whether we went east, north or west. After a while we realized we would be hard pressed to complete the paddle by 6pm. When we arrived at the inlet to the Blue Ridge Rec Area, the canoe take out, it was gone. We could only see land. Fortunately, a person on shore shouted to us that we’d need to portage over some land then get back in the water to finish the paddle. At this time we only had 15 minutes to finish. We paddle like crazy, landed, jumped out of the canoe, attached the wheels and ran the boat through a mess or rock and mud up a hill to finish.
We arrived at 558pm with two minutes to spare. We finished 38th overall which was two places better than last year and three places better than 2009 and we were 3rd in the Masters Division.
No comments:
Post a Comment