Race report
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True Grit at the Primal Quest 2008 Expedition Adventure Race in Montana:
by Martin Kunz
For those of you, who - like me until about 6 months ago - don’t know what an Expedition Adventure Race is: It is a multi-disciplinary, competitive race over a veeery long distance, this year about 500 miles. Disciplines this year involved: running/trekking (i.e. jogging downhill and flat, hiking uphill), mountain biking, kayaking, river boarding, climbing (some free, most of the 1200 ft with ascenders), and “Orienteering”. River boarding involves swimming down a river in a wet or dry suit with the help of a floating board with holding straps on it. Orienteering is set in quotes because it is different from real Orienteering in that it happened on a 1:24’000 map and the control points where challenging less in a technical way than much more in that each of them involved either a lot of climb or heavy bushwhacking or both. The mountain bike and run/trek sections both involved a moderate amount of navigation in that a prescribed course had to be first copied onto a map (1:35’000 for trek 1:100’000 for some bike, 1:250’000 for the long bike part) and then executed. Here the challenge was mainly to adjust to variable map qualities and – partly due to that - the fact that trails indicated on the maps were not always visible or were simply inexistent.
This years Primal Quest (PQ) was what insiders call “assisted”. This means that the race team (which consists of 3 men and 1 woman) was assisted by a support crew; in our case three persons. The support crew moved with a van from transition area (TA in PQ jargon) to transition area. TA’s were preset locations where disciplines changed and thus gear had to be dropped off or picked up. Obviously these were also ideal opportunities to eat something more substantial than Gu’s gummy bears, and cliff bars. Our support team was splendid in feeding us and also helping with gear set-up and maintenance.
Our race team consisted of 3 seasoned and experienced adventure racers and me. Roger Pruett, the team captain, has countless expedition races under the belt. He races since decades and knows all the ins and outs of preparing the body and the equipment for such an adventure. Andy Tubbs has, like Roger, done numerous Expedition Races, in his case in many different countries and continents. He is physically the strongest of us all, and he is the one with the most white-water experience; a quality, which proved to be important in this particular edition of PQ, as we soon learned. Stacy Moller is an accomplished long-distance mountain bike rider, living, working and racing in Golden, Colorado. I joined the team in order to support it with my map reading and navigation experience. My background is Orienteering, i.e. ~ 90 minute running races on very precise maps. My only experiences remotely similar to a PQ were a series of 2-day mountain Rogaine races in Switzerland (“Karrimor races”), which evidently were much shorter and thus physically easier, but from the navigation point of view more demanding. So I was really curious whether it is possible for me to finish a race of 500+ miles and some 50’000 ft climb. This curiosity was in fact my main motivation to register with team ‘True Grit’ for PQ 2008.
As mentioned above, the support crew was as important as the race team. These were Jay Gould, Rosannah Shepherd and Jonathan Owen. Jay is an excellent cook and expert van driver. We often fantasized always hours before TA arrival of his pancakes, pastas and stews. Rosannnah, Stacy’s mom, acted as the helping soul, hand and smile wherever one was needed. Jonathan is a Jack of all trades. He prepared the maps (an invaluable help, which can’t be appreciated highly enough) and kept bikes and water gear ready and prepared. He was also of crucial help in setting up and modifying race strategy when needed.
For Jay, Roger, Andy, Jonathan and me, the event started on June 19th at Rogers house. We boarded the previously packed van and hit the road towards Nevada and then Montana. Jay and Roger took monster-turns in driving and hauled us up in a little more than a day. The most memorable event of these first days was probably Andy’s heroic attempt to disrupt his mainly meatless diet with a hearty meatloaf in a ‘Black Bear Diner’ in Reno. Its direct consequence was a ca. 2 hour session in the bath-room for Andy on the next morning. It was dedicated to his desperate attempts to get rid of the stuffy meatloaf through the normal digestion tract
Our trip headed for a ski resort called Big Sky in South Montana. Big Sky sits at the end of a valley at the foot of a huge white, pyramid shaped mountain, called ‘Lone Mountain’. When we turned around the corner and saw this magnificent mountain for the first time, Andy –the experienced adventurer racer – stated matter of factly ‘ We will go up there’…. I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t; neither were the course setters.
In Big Sky we also met the females of our team, Stacy and Rosannah. The first two days were dedicated to acclimatization (Big Sky is at 7400 ft / ~ 2300 m) and what is called certification. The latter is a process where every team has to prove that it brought the proper equipment (most of it was precisely defined in advance) and that everyone had the basic skills to complete the course without killing themselves and each other. Skills tested were climbing, kayaking, swimming, first aid and navigation. We sailed through all this and enjoyed the second of the two days as a full rest day. I should mention that Andy, a professional sports massage therapist, actually brought his massage table and treated us all to a full-blown sports massage. After his giant hands kneaded my legs, I thought no other pain could impress me anymore. Precious little did I know….
The evening before the official start, i.e. on June 22nd we received the maps and what is called a passport, which is essentially a book describing the routes for the course. This was a first surprise and also little disappointment: While we expected the course to be essentially a big Orienteering course, where the routes between check points (CP’s) was free to choose, it turned out that there were only few CP’s between the TA’s and the route between those was also prescribed in great detail. The navigational challenge and difficulty was therefore reduced to find and maintain the prescribed trail. Admittedly there were sections in the race, where this proved to be more difficult than expected, but still…
Overview map of the race. Blue flags denote check points (CP / TA)(also referenced in the text). Brown, blue and green lines refer to foot, bike and water sections, respectively.
Day1 (Start to TA 7)
Start was at 10 am and, as we learned the day before from the course description, it lead us first on 7.4 miles from 7400 ft up to 11’200 ft to CP 2 on the top of Lone Mountain (on a marked trail due to avalanche danger, so we didn’t even take the map out of the backpack) and back. It took us about 2.5 hours to get back to the start/TA1 where we had the chance to replenish food and water before we took on the first big section, a 35 mile long run/trek South of Big Sky to the intersection of Taylor Creek and Gallatin River (point 7). The section had two significant climbs in it: a first rather steep one right at the beginning from 7400 ft to 8400 ft within ~ 1.5 miles (to point 4) and a larger but also longer one in the middle, where we trekked 6.2 mile from 6400 ft (~2000 m) up to 9400 ft (2800 m) at the ridgline between points 5 and 6 on map). This is also where we learned what would be a constant for the rest of the race, i.e. that above ~ 7500 ft, we were wading in deep snow. This first long trek also reminded us that the map is not always too accurate. We for the first time lost a trail (shortly after point 5), which simply wasn’t there anymore and we had to bushwhack (not too much fight though) off trail for a couple of miles until reality matched the map again. It was some consolation that on this little off-trail adventure, we were enjoying a loyal tail of 3 other teams. Nevertheless, I was happy we passed through this section not during the night. Sunset reached us on the descent in the Buck Creek Canyon. The trail was mostly under snow and where it wasn’t we spotted the first BIG bear tracks in the mud. We stumbled in vanishing day light through underwood, over avalanche debris along the melt-water- and fish-loaded Buck Creek… trying not to think of what the race official specialized in wildlife mentioned in the pre-race briefing: namely that Grizzlies prefer to be active during sunset, roaming around in underwood, on avalanche cones or fishing along creeks. Being the guy with the map, I was mostly a few meters ahead of the team…. I must admit, I made sure I had that bear spray ready…
The night carried us along some finer trails, which however were mostly well visible once we found them at the forks. The last CP (point 6) before an 8 km dirt-road hike out to the TA was situated right behind Taylor Creek, which was loaded with melt-water. We decided to walk upstream 200 meters for the bridge, since it seemed to us too much of a risk (and cold wet clothes) to cross straight through. As we learned later, the leading teams just hooked in and marched through… wow. We finished the first day (42 miles / 68 km and ~ 8000 ft / 2400 m climb) at 1.30 in the morning in 7th place, feeling all reasonably good, strong, hungry and tired. Most memorable moment of the day: CP 4, the first manned CP on the long trek was posted 1.4 km off the position given in the passport. Luckily it was ON the prescribed trail and BEFORE where it should have been,
The next section started with kayaking in inflatable kayaks (“duckies”) down the Gallatin River. There was a dark zone on that, i.e. teams were only allowed on the river when daylight was on, i.e. after 5 am. This gave us a good 2- 2.5 hrs of sleep before we got up and prepared for the water sections:
Day2/3 (map-point 7 to map-point 13):
This day certainly took care of the adventure part in this adventure race. It was scheduled to be the main water day with first a 23 miles kayak down the Gallatin river and then a 10 mile whitewater section (still on the Gallatin river) on river boards. We were all still half-way asleep when we boarded two inflatable kayaks and started off down the river. Andy steering with Stacy in the front. Roger steering the ducky with me in front. Within ten seconds all of us had a big splash of ~ 38 F cold water in the face and all remaining sleep has been chased out and at least in my case been replaced by serious concern on the survivability of this section. The Gallatin River had risen dramatically due to the onset of the snowmelt of the recently fallen large quantities of snow. What was supposed to be a class II to III river ended up to be a class III to IV+ stream, throwing us wildly around. I have been told that if it’s wild and scary the best thing to do is to paddle stronger in order to make steering easier. I paddled like a madman and hoped Roger in the back takes care of the steering. He did the best he could. However, in the last few miles of the section, we hit some 2 m high standing waves. Both of us were propelled about half a meter above our seat and by some miracle both landed IN the kayak as opposed to next to them (like the team just ahead of us). All four of us made it to the end of the kayak without being ejected off the boat.
However, all of us were seriously cold and shivering. Of course our support team had some hot food and hot tea ready, which allowed us to feel our limbs again in a reasonably short time and start thinking about the next section, namely the river boarding, although nobody really wanted to think about it. Especially after Jonathan revealed to us (with slightly jealous and glowing eyes, can you believe it!?) that the river we experienced so far, was NOTHING in comparison what we were going to see on the boards. Imagine more than 2 m high standing waves between rocks with nothing than a ridiculous 1.5 m long foam board underneath you. I was scared.
The beginning was already quite challenging. I was thrown off the board (which I luckily didn’t lose) twice. Climbing back up turned out to be much harder than when we practiced on the lake, because by the time one had the head over water again, the next wave crashed over the head already again and threw one in any direction. Before the craziest section (the culmination of which was declared a mandatory portage) we were stopped and tested for hypothermia and sanity. I thought the latter should be a fail merely because of the fact that we were actually participating in this act. Stacy decided that enough is enough and that she didn’t want to board what was called the crazy mile. I have to admit that I could fully feel with her and wasn’t all that unhappy that we as a team decided to walk the rest. Unfortunately we were dressed in wet suits and swimming fins, not exactly the ideal outfit to walk about 5 km on a narrow, more and more disappearing trail. After about 1 hour the trail disappeared between the roaring river and a steep un-climbable (at least with fins and river board) rock wall. To make things worse, Stacy’s and Andy’s fins had their tether broken, which made a re-entrance in the river basically impossible. I saw our PQ adventure coming to an abrupt halt. Not so Roger, he found somewhere some bungee cord and with that plus the mandatory water knife he managed to makeshift new tethers for both of them. And, in the case of Stacy, it actually held for more than 10 seconds. After several hours of stumbling in wetsuits between trees and rocks and fixing fins, we thus jumped back into the river, were thrown around like in a washing machine for 3 more miles before we happily emerged alive from this adventure. I certainly was happy that this was behind us. Later I learned that other teams did much worse, lost boards and were caught in hydraulics for quite some time until they were rescued by emergency staff.
It was noon by now and we had completed a total of 30 miles and a lot of scary minutes on the water. Obviously the river-board intermezzo cost us not only time but also a few ranks. We slipped back to about 15th place at this stage. But of course the day was not nearly over. We ate and drank and replenished our backpacks with food and mandatory equipment, which on this section included - among others - a pair of snowshoes. Then we took on the second long run/trek: a 43 mile stretch over the Gallatin Range to Highway 89. A first memorable point of this stretch was the so-called telegraph ridge (around point 11), where the trail disappeared under wind-broken trees and an increasing amount of snow. Climbing over fallen trees while sinking into 1-2 ft deep snow made the 3500 ft initial climb extra strenuous and slow. Shortly before the one and only CP of this 43 miles, we met for the first time what ended up to be a constant companion of our race, the team Hunky Dorys from Ireland: A likeable bunch of friendly Irish with whom we ended up exchanging ranks a few times over the course of the race. Of course, a 43 mile run/trek started in the afternoon led us through the night. A night with more snow wading, lost trails and…. two glowing eyes about a bear-head apart. We unlocked our bear spray, but the whatever-it-was quietly disappeared off the trail. The trek finally ended at about noon the next day at an unassisted TA (point 12) where we picked up our bikes. While on the trek, the 30 miles bike ride seemed like a relaxing prospect. This was of course a somewhat distorted view, since 30 miles biking after being awake for about 30 hrs can be quite demanding. I made the mistake of not eating enough before jumping on the bike and ended up running into a major sugar-crisis before we finally reached the 2nd TA (point 13). Our crew stuffed some hot and tasty food down our throats and off we went to sleep. It turned out to be good timing, since we slept through the one and only rainstorm that we encountered during the whole race. During the trek, we caught up and passed a few teams, so that before going to sleep we were at about 12th or 13th place.
Night 3 (map point 13 to map point 15):
After about 3.5 hrs sleep Jonathan, Jay and Rosannah woke us up at ~ midnight, stuffed more food down into our depleted stomach. Jonathan briefed me on the course and map and then they set us off for a 75 miles bike ride through the night. This was rather easy and fun. Not too much climb. Mentionable events were the passage through Livingston (point 14), where we were supposed to follow strict written street-by-street instructions, except that the street names given on the instruction sheet were wrong. Or the beautiful sunrise when we were climbing a shallow pass on a dirt road off Interstate 89 before riding down to Big Timber and towards TA 3 (point 15).
Day4 / Night 4 (map-point 15 to map-point 18):
After an extended breakfast interrupted by 2 hrs of sleep, we sat again on our bikes before noon to take on the ‘prologue’ of the infamous trek-section through the Crazy Mountains. The prologue consisted of a fairly easy and gentle 19 mile ride over rolling prairie hills into Timber Canyon to the foot of the Crazy Mountain Range (point 16). Here, we were in quite good spirits, when we took on the 29.4 mile run/trek through the ominous Crazy’s. Partly because we just dodged a rainstorm which we saw hanging on the mountains when we rode on the bikes into the foothills. Partly also since the first 10 miles up the Timber Canyon were on a nice, gently climbing trail, so we moved quite efficiently.
The crazy mountains are not all that high (the highest peaks are around 10’000 ft / 3000 m) but very rugged, steep and spectacular. The combination of lakes sitting at the foot of a half circle of steep and rugged mountain walls makes for really pretty and spectacular views. After about 7 miles, we reached one of these nice lakes (Twin Lakes) before we ascended the first steep ramp. From here on we were on and in snow and did not see the trail marked on the map anymore. The first ramp brought us up to 10000 ft, a steep ridge covered with rather loose boulder blocks. After these block fields, descending went rather easily since it happened on soft snowfields allowing for safe and quick glissades. We quickly descended below the snow line, jogging/trekking down a valley and passing the melt water loaded knee-deep creek right before it disappeared in a deep ravine. We started to feel reasonably tired and ready for a hot shower, healthy dinner and warm bed when after 13 miles and 4000 ft climb we got back to the 7200 ft contour line at about 6 pm. Of course we were well aware that this was barely half way, not to mention of another 2300 ft climb. At this point, during a rest, we were caught by team # 43, “The Druid Pack”. Four friendly Canadians, obviously competing at a similar level as we did. Motivated by this encounter, we quickly packed up our food and water and took on the trail up the Sweet Grass Valley. After all, we wanted to catch and pass teams not the other way around. Unfortunately the snow in the valley leading up to Campfire Lake was quite deep (at least 3 ft, most of the time) so climbing was rather strenuous. After a few hundred meters, we found us passing the friendly Druids again who were now resting themselves. Needless to say, that we tried to keep up as stiff a pace as we could. After about 3 km (more than an hour at our snow- and fatigue affected pace) the trail climbed up a steep ramp to Campfire Lake where we were expecting the one and only CP (point 17) of this section. To nobody’s surprise, there was no trail visible; instead we scrambled up a steep deep-snowy hillside. It was here where the Druids caught up with us again and passed us. The CP was placed at the boarder of a lake, which was lying in the plane on top of this ramp. Navigation was a little more interesting since there was no trail visible and the terrain was now flat and almost featureless. A good compass bearing was therefore important. To my delight I saw the Canadians veer off to the left, while we managed to hit the lake and CP right on. From the CP on, the course led us up a steep and treacherous hill, covered with hard icy snow. The sun was setting and a cold wind came up, so we decided to bundle up before we attacked the final ramp. Guess who passed us again, while we were putting on the wind gear: The friendly Druids. It was obvious that they wanted to get away from us, since we didn’t manage to shorten their lead (we could see them well, ahead of us in the deep snow field, despite the on-setting darkness). Interestingly they turned some loops once they reached the summit allowing us to catch up again. Right when the final daylight disappeared (i.e. around 10 pm) we reached the second summit of this section at ~9500 ft. For a brief moment we felt at home, until we realized that not only we had a good 12 miles more ahead of us, but also a rather tricky first 600 ft off the summit, amidst cornices, steep snow and rock-fields and no day light. The trail was still invisible so we had to navigate very carefully in order to not step on one of the treacherous cornices or even, by mistake, start descending the wrong valley. The following 12 miles, although easy and gentle, turned out to be some of the toughest miles of the race. Everyone was really tired by now and we soon started to get visits from what insiders call the “sleep monsters”. These are moments, when the body is still walking, but the mind goes off into a dream-like sleep state. I for my part, for example, started feeling as if I were on an old training loop, and I knew the map and course by heart. Then suddenly I startled, thinking that I had a completely wrong map in my hands and was navigating completely off course during the whole day. What we all remembered, however, was an encounter with a pack of big, loud and scary dogs, which were barking and threatening at us. Luckily the creek was at a level, which kept these strange dogs back. Needless to say that it became increasingly difficult to stay on the course in this state and I was more than relieved when at around 4 am, the TA finally showed up where I expected it according to the map. After all, at some point you don’t know anymore what is reality and what is dream. It was here, where for the first time I was suffering from strong shin splins in my right leg and three destroyed toenails. Nevertheless, I collapsed quickly into a deep but rather short sleep. Since we arrived more or less together with the Druids, we were still on the same ranking.
Day 5 (map-point 18 to map-point 20):
Given our state of exhaustion, we decided to sleep a bit longer (4 hrs), before we saddled our bikes for the longest bike day of this race (95 mi / 153 km). The Druids had already left the TA.
I found that the course setters actually managed to lead us through a nice mix of Montana landscapes. Vast prairies displaying the famous Montana sky; green, rolling hills with cattle herds and remote farms; a beautiful canyon and this all with not too much of a climb. My teammates were a bit disappointed, that the first 30 miles happened on a highway and the rest on generously broad dirt roads. No single track, no technical mountain biking therefore, but I didn’t mind at all. All I minded was that I struggled a little with getting the climb and distance estimates right on the 1:200’000 maps with no contours. But my teammates were nicely generous when an announced climb turned out to be going mostly downhill, or when the climb, which we encountered eventually was not expected and therefore not announced by me. All in all: a pleasant, sunny, not too painful bike ride, finished at a really picturesque and pretty TA at the base of the Bridger mountain range, where we crashed around 10 pm in our sleeping bags for a few hours.
Mentionable moment of the day: CP 19, situated in the town of Ringling, population 4; some of us assumed this to be some sizable gas station where food and drink could be recharged and therefore didn’t pack enough of both. Population 4, as we found out, is not enough to maintain a gas station or a Seven Eleven. Luckily, some others of us packed enough calories for all.
We were still competing around 12th/13th place.
Night 5 / Day 6 (map-point 20 to map-point 23):
We started this section, which lead us across the Bridger mountain range, at 1.30 am in the morning. The course left us two alternatives to get to Bozeman: Either along the top of the crest (between 8500 and 9500 ft) or along a trail following the ridgeline at its west side between 6000 and 7500 ft. We decided for the lower trail. On the one hand, because the crest looked rather rugged with no trail indicated on the map, and we knew there was still a lot of snow and ice at that altitude. On the other hand, the lower trail also looked more attractive, because we assumed to find more water at lower altitudes. This turned out to be a good decision and we had a great day, moving much faster than anticipated, encountering a few teams which we managed to pass (among them the Druids). It all started not all that well, though. The trail, which was supposed to lead us up to the crest (point 21), was washed out by the creek. In the darkness of the night we were pulled off trail by a logging trail and had to contour a bushwhack back into the valley onto the trail again. The time loss here was probably minimal since we didn’t veer off the general direction too much and the trail in the valley was probably at least as difficult to follow due to the wild creek. Later in the day, I however made a real navigation mistake, being irritated by an additional creek on the map (probably a temporary creek due to the snow melt). I mistook the additional creek for one on the map and let us veer off too far into a steep hillside with lots of rocks and fallen trees. Estimated time loss about 20 – 30 mins. Nevertheless we dropped the Hunky Dorys (who tried to climb up to the crest line) and passed the Druids and maybe one or two more teams, so that we arrived in quite good spirits and probably on 10th place at a cozy TA, next to a little lake, populated by partying pot-loaded teenagers and some pot-searching cops. Needless to mention that even the loud party music couldn’t really prevent us from falling fast asleep.
Night 6 / Day 7 map-point 23 to map-point 28):
The support crew woke us up before midnight. Their support for default preparations became more and more important the longer the race lasted. I can’t stress enough, how helpful, for example, Jonathan’s preparation of the maps was. He always carefully marked the course to be taken and in addition the possible wrong turns and traps. This was an invaluable help, especially at night when the vision of a tired map-reader becomes blurred. On top of this, he covered the maps with adhesive transparent foil to protect it from my sweaty hands and dunks into creeks we crossed.
Our next task was a 50 mile bike section across the Gallatin range, back to Storm Castle (the TA where we finished the river-board section). The ride out of Bozeman was again prescribed with written directions, which, again, were wrong! This time, it was a drunken ‘Bo(o)ze-man’ who helped us back onto the right street. The stretch towards the mountains was fast and memorably COLD. Especially the valleys were freezing and we were happy to reach the climb after 22 miles. This brought us up to warmer air, apart from the fact that biking uphill makes one forget the cold air quite quickly. We were still climbing when the sun appeared in the east with a spectacular sunrise. Of course we were not too surprised when at 7500 ft we found the trail again covered with foot deep old snow and we ended up pushing the bikes for the last few miles to the peak of this section (~ point 24 at 8295 ft). The other side of the hill, where we plunged down on an almost single-track trail was completely snow free, which tempted some of us to enjoy the downhill rush a bit too much. Turning around a treacherous corner, I spotted first a familiar bike and a few meters next to it an equally familiar female PQ racer on the ground. Stacy was badly bruised in her groin by not clearing the handlebar properly when taking her summersault between the rocks. Luckily it was not so bad that she couldn’t continue the race. Not much less important, her bike didn’t take any damage when colliding with rocks and Stacy’s hip and we could continue the descent into the Storm Castle Canyon and on to the TA (point 26). On the final miles downhill, we even managed to out-sprint Team 17, “Ocean Interactive”. At the almost familiar TA we were welcomed with freshly made pancakes cooked by Jay.
The new day was dedicated to the technical disciplines climbing and Orienteering. They were arranged such that we hiked to the base of a 1200 ft cliff, which we had to climb up (the first pitch free 5.6, the rest on ascenders). From the top of the climb, we had the opportunity to get as much as 14 bonus hours by finding 10 “Orienteering” CP’s. For this we had a 1:24’000 map, which essentially was a blow up from the 1:35’000 we raced on before. No additional details thus. Also: The Orienteering controls were not technical, but rather set on top of steep hills. None of the O-posts was mandatory, except the very last one, which was the start of the rappel section.
Without much rest, we put our climbing gear together, prepared the O-map and went on the way to the base of the cliff. It lead us along a trail which we had in too good memory from our river-board hick-up.
The climb was fun. I definitely was happy that before the race we took a course in anchor-passing and ascender handling with Steve Schneider. I felt very good, even the meanwhile rather badly injured feet didn’t hurt too much, and I was able to enjoy the climb all the way up.
Unfortunately, Stacy’s injured groin didn’t make this section any easier for her and she suffered considerably on the way up. We thus spent quite some hours in the hot rock wall, and slowly but surely ran out of water. At that point, I wasn’t too much concerned about this, since lack of water wasn’t really something we had to worry about at any instance during this race. The climbing section was terminated by a stretch of ~ 300 m of an exposed and treacherous rock ledge.
Once, we all arrived there, we felt painfully thirsty and de-hydrated. Based on this, we decided to deviate from our game plan, i.e. the sequence of control points we planned to get, in favor of picking up some water at the closest stream on the map. To our surprise and disappointment, we found that stream to be dry and we realized that there was no water to be found on this hill at all. Since we all were seriously dehydrated by now, we decided to head straight back down the valley to get some water. On the way down we managed to pick up two controls close to the trail. However, it was still a 2 hrs ‘hike’ (there was no word of running at this point anymore) in hot and dry air until we finally got water. At this point it was clear that we were not in the state anymore to find any significant amount of additional O-controls. We thus headed straight to the rappel station, picking up just one last bush-whacky O-post on the way to it. Even the climb up to the rappel station proved to be hard for us, although it was not a big deal. We were all suffering from the after shocks of the dehydration suffered in the morning, although we had now ample water.
The rappel itself went smoothly and quickly, although, at one instance, it almost ended – or at least delayed – our race prematurely. While tying up into the rappel rope, standing on the tiny ledge at the top of the wall, I managed to drop my belay device! Fortunately, it stopped right next to my foot and didn’t bounce down the wall…yikes… If it had done so, one of us had to go aaallll the way around the cliff down and back up again. At least 1 or two hours and more thirst and hunger.
The base of the rappel was close to the old and new TA, where we arrived rather exhausted. Due to the score-point nature of the O-section it was now difficult to judge at what place we raced. For sure we passed a few teams, but how that time gain weighed against the bonus hours of other teams was hard to estimate.
We were all looking forward to food and sleep; the end was now visible, one more foot section and one seemingly short bike section and we are done. Despite our exhaustion we were in rather good spirits.
Night 7 / Day 8 – Finish (map-point 28 to map-point 31):
With the end in sight, we decided to sleep only two hours. This also in view of the reduced amount of bonus hours we were able to acquire in the so-called Orienteering section. We did not want to give up the one advantage of skipping the O-points, namely not spending much time on it, by sleeping until teams who collected the score points arrived in the TA. In hindsight, given the state of our dehydration and exhaustion induced by sleep-deprivation, we probably would have done better by getting some more sleep.
Our support team shook us out of our dreamless sleep around 2 am, stuffed some calories down our throats and placed us on the trailhead of the last 38 miles foot section. After a little push for each of us we started the last section, some of us, for example the navigator, still half asleep. We nevertheless made good progress in the beginning. However, in contrast to the Bridger mountain section, we were not very focused, especially with respect to nutrition and breaks. We took random breaks whenever someone felt tired (which happened frequently), lost trails unnecessarily due to windfall and because of this lost quite some time. The hardest part of this last day’s foot section was the final 3000 ft descent down to Ennis Lake (point 30). Most of us had sore to seriously injured feet and going downhill was pure pain. Ironically it was precisely at the top of this descent that the strong Norwegian team “Merret Halti Multimania” caught up with us and cruised past us like a TGV passes a horse carriage. It was probably not very smart, but also not very damaging, that for about 30 minutes we tried to keep up with them. It certainly did not make us look any fresher when we finally arrived at the final TA at the border of Ennis Lake. We were now racing in 8th place, but the bonus hours were still looming.
Exhausted and worn out as we were, we wanted to take an hour rest before tackling the final 31 miles, a bike ride up the moonlight basin over to Big Sky. Luckily, however, Roger found out via a phone call with his wife Heather who tracked the race on the Internet, that our direct competitors, namely Honky Dory and Oceanic Interactive were not far behind on the way to the TA. We thus, for a final time, quickly packed our stuff together and mounted our bike to get over to Big Sky. It seemed like a short thing in our mind; as if we set out for a final small ride. It turned out to be a long and tough section though. This mainly because we all were tired, injured (my feet, Stacy’s groin) and sleep deprived. Night fell shortly after 10 miles into the ride and – being on the one and only significant trail leading to the finish line - I put the map back in the pack (it was rather cumbersome to refold the map every few miles while riding the bike anyway). Even before we approached the serious climb (from 4800 ft to 7800 ft), we were already painfully slow, barely faster than a decent runner. The climb didn’t make things easier, and all of us started to get mentally tired when the top of the climb just didn’t want to come (the map was back in my pack). Numerous times we thought to have reached it and as many times it started to climb again, and at some point we thought to be on a never-ending road to nowhere. Finally, finally we met a race official, who offered us an escort to the finish line, an offer we gladly accepted. Unfortunately, the friendly official didn’t take into an account that an exhausted team of PQ racers couldn’t quite keep up with a 20 miles/hr truck uphill, despite being on fancy nicely colored top-bikes. We nevertheless made it back to Big Sky, crossed the finish line and were happy, happy, happy to have been able to finish a race of 514 miles (~ 830 km) and ~ 50’000 ft (~ 15’000 meters) of climb and even come in in the top ten.
We crossed the finish line as 8th team. Our final classification after taking into account the bonus hours was 10th out of 58 started teams (39 classified).
