For this race we teamed up with Mike Vaughn, our regular training partner and our teammate from our Master’s Division first place finish at the AWAR 2004.
The morning of the race thunder showers swept through the area ensuring muddy trails. By race start all the rain was gone but it was a little cooler than normal for the first of May. The race started at Baker Creek State Park near McCormick, SC and was unsupported since there was only one transition area (TA). Although parts of the race were in the park most of the course was in other “nearby” areas; if you consider a 20-mile bike ride or 7- mile paddle one way to be nearby. We had heard that this was a tough navigation race and it certainly lived up to expectation.
At the 7pm start all the teams gathered on the beach. We all knew the race would start with a swim since we could see the canoes all lined up several hundred yards from shore and we were wearing our PFDs. Since the water was about 60 degrees and we had to carry our gear with us, it was not going to be a pleasant swim. We had put our packs in our dry bags and were going to float them out with us to keep all our gear dry. We were the only team that showed up at the start with the dry bags and by the expressions on the faces of the other teams we could tell they were thinking; wish we had thought of that. The race started and the water was darn cold. As we swam out to the canoes we watched several teams capsize their canoes while trying to climb in from the water. We didn’t have that problem. As soon as we were in the boat we paddled back to shore and returned to our tent to change for the first leg of the race.
The first leg was on the 10-mile single track bike trail in the park. It was very muddy and all the little bridges were very slick from the rain as many people discovered when they went flying off. After we saw a few bikes and racers go flying we decided to walk all the bridges and we had to do that carefully. We had to complete this bike loop before we would receive the list of checkpoints (CP) and grid coordinates. We also had to complete the loop by 8:45pm or we would have to dismount our bikes and hike-a-bike back to the TA. We didn’t make it back by 8:45pm and ended up hike-a-biking about the last three miles. We picked up our CP list and plotted our coordinates on the maps. We had two options; paddle north or bike south. We decided on the bike since night navigation is easier on land than on water.
By the time we started on this leg it was almost 11pm and we had a 20-mile road bike to get to the area called Bussey Point which was in Georgia where we would be navigating to seven different CPs. We arrived at the check-in CP about 1am Sunday morning, so it was six hours from the start of the race until we punched our first CP. We spent the next five hours looking for the other six CPs. We used a combination of riding and hiking to cover the 10-miles between the CPs. Finding these markers at night is not easy and frequently we teamed up with two or three other team to find them. We found them all but one and at 6am made the 20-mile ride back to the TA.
We arrived back at the TA in about two hours, ate some food, filled the bladders in our packs and headed out to the canoe for the paddle leg. The paddle was about seven miles one-way on the Little River/Clark Hill Lake. It took us to the area near the De La Howe State School where we had to find nine CPs. We’d have to cover 5-6 miles looking for the CPs and we were running out of time so we would have to do a lot of running between these CPs. Cathy did the navigation of the river and did a good job getting us through all the twists and turns and into the right inlet. We pulled into the inlet, shot an azimuth to the first CP and walked right to it. We then found a road and headed north to the next CP. When we arrived at the CP it was at a high ropes area which is part of the school and there were lots of people milling about. We were the first team to arrive that morning so we received a lot of attention. The CP was on top of a 50-foot pole connected to the 50-foot rappel tower by a walk wire and two hand ropes. We had to get one of our team members up to the top and across the wire to punch the CP. We had three options to get to the top; a rope climb, a giant’s ladder, or the climbing wall. The catch was each of us had to get to the top a different way. Zach went first via the giant’s ladder. He made it to the top crossed the wire and punched the CP so we got credit for that. Then Mike tried the rope climb and made it about half way.
The rope climb was extremely difficult as only three people made it to the top. Lastly, Cathy tried the wall but didn’t get very far. She usually has no problem with these walls, but she is short and the holds were set for taller people. We received an hour penalty for the two of them not making it to the top. After that the three of us were tied together and had to work our way through a 15-station obstacle course. It took about 15 minutes but we made it through the obstacle course without a hitch. After that we made it to five more CPs before we had to head back to the canoe for the return paddle to make the cutoff time. It took us an hour and 45 minutes to paddle up and 15 minutes less to paddle back. When we landed on the beach we had to go over a slippery mountain in the water before finishing. Another TrailBlazers team worked with us to get both teams over.
We crossed the finish line in 20 hours and 28
minutes in 11th place.
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