There were a number of changes for us before this race started. We lost one team member to injury and another to illness. We also lost two support teams as well. Fortunately, the race was changed to unsupported. We tried to find a third member but couldn’t, so we received approval from the Race Director to race as a two-person team. We were the only two-person team in the race and were at a definite disadvantage in some aspects.
The race started early Saturday morning. The maps were supposed to be handed out at 530am with the race scheduled to start at 6am. Before handing out the maps, the Race Director sent all of the team navigators for a stroll while the other two teammates were left to plot points. This meant that Cathy was plotting our map by herself. Cathy doesn’t plot points. Fortunately, she was able to get the Race Director to help her so that by the time Zach was allowed to return there were only three points left to plot. When Zach returned there were only a few minutes left before the start. We had to hurry to get everything ready.
The first thing we had to do was to portage our boat to the lake. Since there was just the two of us we dragged it as Cathy was not able to carry the canoe the entire way. When we reached the lake Zach had to swim across while Cathy had to paddle the boat across. Once we reached the other side, Cathy had to run two miles to the next checkpoint while Zach paddled the canoe to meet up with her at the CP. Once there, we paddled back to the start of the paddle and then ran back up to the TA to start the bike leg.
We were the last team to start the paddle and the last team to start the bike. Apparently the other teams took a different route than we did. We headed south on a paved road and then east on a jeep trail. We arrived at the place where CP3 was supposed to be. As we were looking for the CP about a half dozen other teams arrived. They had all gone the wrong way. With their help we found the CP on a faint trail and then found an established trail that took us to CP4. CP4 to CP5 required a lot of bike whacking. We were able to ride most of the way to CPs 6 & 7 and then we had to reverse our route and ride back to CP5 to reach CP8. From there we followed a trail to CPs 9 & 10 which was the end of the bike leg. After six hours of continuous mountain biking we were ready for a change.
Since this was an unsupported race we had to carry all our gear and food for the whole race, so our packs were much heavier than usual. We had to be in the gorge by 4pm to continue the race. We had about two hours to get there but with the heavy packs there was no way we were running, so we walked fast. It took an hour and a half to reach the bottom of the gorge and start the bouldering section. The bouldering section was only about three and a half miles long but was very slow going. There was very little water in the gorge and the boulders were fairly dry so we made good progress and were able to finish that section in a little more than three hours.
Then we had to climb out of the gorge on the very steep cable trail. From there it was a short walk to the rappel back down into the gorge. It was a free rappel of about 200 feet into a pool at the bottom. The pool was very refreshing after 12 hours of racing. From there it was back up the cable trail to the finish line. We finished in 12 hours and 14 minutes, 7th overall. Not bad for a couple of grandparents.
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