Beast of the East Adventure Race 2003

The Beast took place in the Brevard, NC area. It was projected to be 275 miles of trekking, mountain biking, paddling, navigating, and climbing and was by far the most difficult of the 36 races put on by Odyssey Adventure Racing and perhaps one of the most difficult races ever anywhere.

I did the race as a solo. Of the 50 teams in the race only five people were going solo. Cathy and Carlos did support. The race started at 7pm on Thursday evening so we arrived in early afternoon. Had I known that I would receive my maps at, check-in we would have arrived earlier in the day. It took from check-in to right before race start to plot the maps, well over three hours. Then it was scramble to get the gear ready by start time.


The first leg was a 10-mile up-hill ride with a bike drop, followed by a 40-mile trek. Since the support team would not be at the bike drop, I had to carry my trekking gear, as well as my rappelling gear for the 500 ft rappel.


The race went down a paved road for a short distance and then turned onto a forest service road for the 10-mile ascent. Normally a 10-mile ascent is pretty challenging, but with trekking and climbing gear added to the weight of the pack it became much more difficult. My pack was so heavy I couldn’t stand up on my bike.


It took about two hours to make it to the bike drop and CP1. It was time to change from my biking gear, leave it with the bike, and put on my trekking gear. I wore long sleeves and pants to avail poison ivy, adjusted my trekking poles, and turned on my headlamp. But, wait a minute, it wouldn’t come on, there was no light. After several minutes of trying to get it to work (it was working fine at gear check), I came to the realization that I would be trekking through the night without a light and would need to follow another team all night to have light. I hooked up with a team from Florida called DynCorp and they very graciously let me tag along. Even so, the terrain was difficult and I stumbled many times throughout the night.


Immediately we started trekking uphill. It was very steep in many places. After 10 miles of continuous uphill we reached the top. Then it was a constant up and down until a mile before CP2 where it went into an extreme ascent. CP2 was right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Across the road was the orienteering section. Three punch points, no trails, and lots of cliffs and steep drops. We though we would try a flanking movement by walking down the Parkway, pick up a trail and follow that to the second punch point, thereby skipping PP1 and taking a five hour penalty. It didn’t work. When we got to the bottom of the trail there were so many trails going in so many directions, we couldn’t figure out which one to take. We took the long way around, blew off PP2 (taking another five hour penalty), and shot for PP3 which we found at the top of a steep hill.


By then it was daylight and I parted company with DynCorp. At the bottom of the hill I ran into our sometimes teammate, Vernon Winter and we finished that trek together. Unfortunately, the last 15 miles of the trek was on forest service roads and I started to have some blistering on my feet. In the middle of this trek was the 500 foot rappel. We had to walk around the mountain and up a trail to the top before rappelling. It was a fun rappel with a great view all the way down. At the bottom there was still another 8 miles back to the next checkpoint. On the way to the checkpoint Cathy and Carlos passed us in the car. Shortly after that the rain came (a daily event). Fortunately, the rain stopped by the time we reached ACP 3. At the ACP I ate my ham and eggs “breakfast” while Cathy and Carlos re-supplied my pack. Since I missed the paddling cutoff, Cathy and Carlos transported me to ACP 4 to start the next biking leg.

By now it was late afternoon, but before I could bike I had one of the medics fix my feet. They were already in bad shape. The medic said they were the worst he’d seen so far in the race. Once ready, I took off on the 35 mile ride. During the ride I never saw another team or other person until five miles from the finish when I ran into three police officers. I spent 15 minutes telling them about adventure racing and then finished the bike section. At ACP4 I ate some pizza and drank my fill while Cathy and Carlos restocked my pack. They also got my headlamp working again. I had the medics check my feet again and was about to set off on the next 40 mile trek when Vernon arrived on his bike. I waited for him to have someone to trek with through the night.

Unbelievably this trek was more difficult than the first one. After a five mile up-hill climb on FS roads we were looking for a gate and not having much success finding it. At one time there were seven other teams with us looking for the gate. It took almost two hours to figure out we’d come too far up the hill and walked down about half mile and there was the gate, right where we walked by it two hours earlier. It might have been better not to have found the gate because after that it was extreme trekking. About that time we met up with my former teammates Jon and Kristin and the rest of their team. We were on a trail called the South Hospital Trail, which was appropriately named since one false step would have put anyone of us in the hospital. The trail was the steepest, most treacherous trail I had ever seen. We dropped 3000 feet of elevation in two miles.

At the bottom Vernon and I let the others go on. We stopped to fill our bladders, eat, and I checked my feet which took a beating on the downhill. Since we were at a stream the 3000 feet we went down was now 3000 feet up. There were steep climbs but not as severe as the decent. At one point we lay down and took a 10 minute nap since we hadn’t slept in two days. I thought the last seven miles to CP8 would take about three hours. It took six. By the time we arrived my feet were pretty torn up. I had lots of blisters but it was the one on the ball of my right foot that did me in. At some point it tore open and my pace slowed appreciably due to the pain.

When I arrived at CP8 it was slow going. My feet were a mess and I was looking at another 18 miles of extreme trekking. There was no way I could finish that section. I got a ride to the next ACP and was going to continue on from there. My first stop was with the medics. After they patched my feet up, I tried to walk and couldn’t. I knew I was finished. I made it two days with only 10 minutes of sleep. I was still feeling strong and was coherent. I wanted to finish but my feet would not let me. Ironically, in four years and 20 adventure races I never had a blister and blisters were the last thing that I thought I would have a problem with in this race. In adventure racing you never know what may happen.