NGAR 2003

No one knew that this would be the coldest weekend in Georgia in years, that there would be three inches of snow on the ground, and that both the paved and dirt roads would be very icy. Team 50-Somethings, the oldest adventure racing team in the world, with Cathy and Zach Doppel, and Vernon Winter; supported by son-in-law, Jeremy, his friend Brian, and Ryan Castleberry were ready to face the elements. At the 5 am start of the race on Saturday the temperature was just above zero and we knew we could count on wind chills of -20 to -30 while mountain biking. We had no preliminary information about the course other than it was around 100 miles long.

 At the start we were given our maps, our coordinates, and were told the first leg would be about 50 miles of mountain biking. It took us a little over an hour to plot the 17 grid coordinates on the map and figure out our route for the first leg of the race. By the time we got on our bikes our feet were already cold. Shortly after we took off Zach realized his bike gears was frozen, so he rode for the first two miles in one gear until his bike warmed up. At the same time his gears were warming up the tubes to our drinking bladders froze along with the food we were carrying. We stopped several times during the first few miles to warm-up our hands and feet. After a steady climb of several miles we had to take a steep, icy, and winding road to Checkpoint 1. We were rewarded with a fire at the check point and took the opportunity to warm-up our hands and feet and thaw out our drinking tubes. Then we had to ride back up the steep, icy, and winding road to the main Forest Service road.


We continued uphill for several more miles and our drinking tubes again froze rather quickly. Soon we came to an intersection that had more roads than were marked on the map. After a few minutes we picked the right road to travel and were rewarded with a down hill ride after all the uphill riding. The only problem was the road was very icy, so it was slow going. After several miles the road became paved and fairly flat. We were enjoying the change and missed a turn to the left and went about a half mile before we realized we had gone too far. We went back to the turn and had to ride uphill of course, but this road was now in the sun and had slushy snow, so we had to push our bikes uphill for almost a mile because we couldn’t get any traction in the slush. We got back on our bikes and traveled mostly uphill for another five or six miles until the road ended. We then had to bikewhack on a trail for well over a mile and cross over a stream without getting wet to get to the next road. From there it was only a couple more miles to Checkpoint 2. We reached the checkpoint around noon and there were still 15 more checkpoints to the finish of the race.

We thought we had done some pretty tough riding until we started up the 10+ mile ride to the top of Springer Mountain and Checkpoint 3. The sun had warmed things a little and our drinking tubes were thawed out so we were able to drink. Several hours later, after a relentless climb on the bikes we reached Checkpoint 3. From there it was a short hike to the checkpoint. Back down at the road there were numerous teams that were dropping out of the race because they ran out of food and drink. They had not expected to take so long to get to that checkpoint (who did). We were about 30-35 miles into the race. Vernon was sweating a lot on the ride up the mountain and changed into dry clothes at the checkpoint, but he was still sweating and still pretty wet.


We left Checkpoint 3 around 3 pm and we were still riding uphill. After another hour or so, the sun started going down and the Forest Service road started to ice over. We started down the mountain, and Cathy crashed on some ice. She got back on the bike and a short time later crashed again on some more ice. She went slower to no avail, and crashed a third time and decided to walk the bike for a while.


By the time we got down the mountain and hit a paved road all of Vernon’s sweat had basically frozen in the down hill ride and he was very cold. At the time we didn’t know he was hypothermic. Fortunately for us, there was a rescue vehicle at the bottom of the hill. We asked the rescue vehicle for assistance and a short time later a nice warm ambulance came to pick him up. That pretty much ended the race for us. We had traveled about 45 miles and still had another 15-20 miles to go (that adds up to more than 50 miles) to get to the first Transition Point. Vernon’s body temperature was 90 degrees. On the way to the fire house we picked up another team that was having problems. At the firehouse the paramedics hooked an IV up to Vernon and warmed him. After several hours he was feeling much better.


We missed a turn north to Checkpoint 4 and ended up by the rescue vehicle. This was one time that missing a turn in a race was a good thing.


Only eight out of 80 teams were able to finish the race and this was with the 20 mile paddle cancelled due to ice on the water.