ARWC 2017 Cowboy tough 23rd

ARWC 2017 Cowboy tough- 23rd

They say one of the hardest things to do in adventure racing is to get 4 people to the start line of a race. This race would prove that statement true. After months of searching, finally securing a 3^rd team mate, almost securing a 4^th team mate, losing the 3^rd team mate, finding a replacement 3^rd team mate (Chad Spence), and sending out countless emails to almost all of the Canadian and international racers we know (and many we don’t know personally), Nathalie and I (James) found ourselves literally hours away from cancelling our trip to the Adventure Racing World Championships two weeks before the race. But with a little luck, we were finally able to secure a 4^thteam mate – Ben Brewer - a newcomer to expedition racing, but an experienced navigator and strong racer at shorter distances.

This was not only a new team configuration, each of us was walking into the race with our own challenges and unknowns: Ben was racing his first race beyond 36 hours, Chad was facing his longest expedition race to date and the challenge of navigating at a World Championship, Nathalie was in the best shape of her life and ready to challenge herself to be a leader in pushing the team forward on the course, and I was dealing with a knee injury sustained in a mountain bike crash 5 weeks before the race. So we knew going in that the race ahead of us would really be a test for each of us as individuals, and as a team.

Our race preparations went relatively smoothly, despite the usual difficulties of gear bin logistics and the opening ceremony went well with lots of little fun challenges.

 

 

 

        

 

 But we got everything organized relatively quickly and had the evening before the race start to relax, unwind, and get to know each other a little better. We got the maps as we stepped onto our busses at 5:30am on August 10^th for a 5 hour bus ride to start of the race in Jackson Hole, WY. Once arrived, it wasn’t long until the race was underway.

We started with an orienteering course prologue on the side of the ski hill, followed by a 12km run (Leg 1) on a paved trail. As usual, our team agreed that we would not start out too fast and burn ourselves out in the first legs of the race… and as usual we completely ignored this agreement and ran like idiots trying to keep up with all the other teams in the mid-day heat! 

We arrived at the transition to pack rafts about mid-pack, ready to start Leg 3 of the race. This was a nice, rather uneventful paddle down a moving river as we prepared ourselves for the major hiking and biking that lay ahead.

Leg 4 was our first step into the long, challenging middle portion of the race course. This 62km hiking leg featured over 10,000ft of climbing, with no checkpoints. While this leg was mainly on trails, one concern was the lack of access to water on the trail and the possible need to come down off the ridge early to gain access to water sources below. While we were not as quick as we would have liked to be, we managed to maintain a steady pace and manage our water supply enough to avoid having to come down early from the ridge. The trek offered many stunning views as we trekked on into the first night.  

Leg 5 featured our first bike section – a 133km ride mainly on roads. The challenge here was to move as quickly as possible on the good road surfaces and keep a hard, steady pace moving forward. Early in this section we tried to work with a few teams to move more quickly together, but had to eventually slow our pace down to avoid burning anyone out.

Leg 6 of the race was an even longer trek than the previous one with about two thirds of the elevation. This trek generally followed the continental divide – an imaginary line through the mountains that separates East and West flowing rivers. For the most part there was an actual trail along the continental divide, but at points it disappeared and made for some challenging navigation. One of the most difficult off-trail navigation sections was on this leg as well and consisted of a hilly area littered with fallen trees, which made travel very slow and difficult. Most teams struggled here, including us, losing about 5 hours looking for CP9.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that our sleep strategy was fairly poorly executed in this race. We opted to not sleep on the first night and only sleep 45 minutes on the second night. The sleep details after day 2 are pretty blurry to all of us, with many random stops for a short rest and too much wandering along while mostly asleep. This is an area where we certainly needed to be more proactive, as the lack of sleep really caught up to us late in the race.

After completing the two major treks in the race, it was time to turn our focus to the massive bike leg(s) ahead – a 58km ride followed by a mind-boggling 264km more of biking, with a short trek and ropes/caving section in between the two. Leg 7 had a bunch of gravel road and paved roads, but ended with a spectacular cliff-edge trail that we rode in the middle of the night, followed be an excellent single track section to get us down the mountain. We quickly got transitioned and off to the caving section and then up to the ropes. There was about an hour backup at the ropes so we were able to get a little bit of rest here. After the rappel in the dark, we headed back to the TA and opted for a little bit of sleep before heading off on the big bike ride. 

The 264km bike leg was all about covering terrain to get ourselves all the way back to the Casper area and near the finish line. As we were progressing on the mammoth bike leg a pretty big storm was brewing just behind us which kept us motivated to move forward.

We did most of the ride in the daytime and then had another quick sleep the following night before heading into a sandy section of trail (“The Dunes”). We had heard a few teams pass us while we slept so when we woke up, we pushed to catch back up to them.  We traveled with them for a while until they appeared to head in a direction we weren’t sure we wanted to go to get to the next checkpoint. We spend the next couple hours trying to figure out where we were at on the confusing network of trails, only to discover that earlier we had passed right by the checkpoint we were looking for. So we had to backtrack quite a ways to find the CP. We then tried unsuccessfully a few times to find a way out of the area that was less sandy, which cost us even more time.

We finally got ourselves to the back-to-back packraft legs of the race. The first of these (Leg 10) was a flat water paddle on a reservoir after a 10km hike from the TA. This was a rather uneventful paddle, until we set out to cross the dam to begin the whitewater portion of the paddling. Just as we were crossing the dam, a storm blew in very quickly. We were lucky enough to be able to use the buildings at the dam to shelter ourselves from the strong winds and pounding rain. We waited out the storm for about 20 minutes and then headed down to the bottom of the dam as soon as we felt it was safe. We put our packrafts in the water and paddled another 15 minutes before a second, even larger storm blew in. This time we didn’t have the luxury of any buildings nearby to protect ourselves, so we pulled over to the shore and created a lean-to shelter with our 2 rafts to protect ourselves from the storm. We all huddled under our makeshift shelter while observing the massive thunder, lightning, high winds, and heavy rain all around us. The tension was relieved by the sound of Chad frequently trying to slurp up the rainwater that was leaking overhead directly into the hood of his zipped up rain jacket and right past his mouth.

Once the storm passed, we finally got back onto the river and into the canyon portion of the rapids. This would be the most challenging whitewater section of the race. We were greeted at the biggest rapid by a rescue person (Brad – a fellow Canadian volunteering at the race) who informed us of our options: River right was less of a drop but required a tight turn mid-way through, while river left had a steep drop and water pushing up against a rock wall at the bottom of the rapid. We all agreed that river right would be the best/safest way to go. Chad and Nat took the lead and headed down the rapid, just out of sight from where Ben and I waited. Once we got the signal from Brad that they were through, I steered our packraft toward the rapid but could not see the river right option that Brad had described… So down the steep left side we went, luckily without incident.  The remainder of the rapids seemed much more tame and we thought we were relatively home free for the whitewater section. However as Chad and Nat passed through what seemed like an innocuous rapid, their boat was punctured and sank very quickly. We could hear Nat screaming something (which we found out soon after was that her paddle was floating away) as she and Chad tried to gather themselves and their gear in the rapids. We got pulled into the flow as well and as we approached, Chad warned us about a sharp rock in the rapid that had popped their boat. I identified what looked like the sharp rock and proceeded to work around it (and them) to head off to retrieve Nat’s paddle. I quickly found out that the rock I identified was not the right one! So there we were, 4 people, 2 punctured boats, gear floating away everywhere, and everyone scrambling to minimize the carnage. (Sidenote – we discovered later that this sharp rock had been identified by the organizers in our race notes, but because of the heavy rains from the storms just before we got there, this rock was now underwater when we got there and appeared to just be another smooth boulder in the rapid). We managed to get everyone to shore and gather our wits as we figured out what to do. Just then we spotted a photographer just below the next rapid on the shoreline and what appeared to be a reasonable climb out of the canyon. So we each grabbed a handful of gear and swam the next rapid then quickly got to the shore and worked our way up the steep canyon wall and out to the road above. This took a considerable amount of time and during the climb Chad slipped while trying to move some of the heavier gear up the canyon wall and fell quite painfully on his hip and knee.

Once we got to the road, we were soon met by a medic and a race referee (they must have been tracking us!). This was very fortunate for us because with the race referee present, we were able to get minimal help from the medic without breaking any rules about assistance, and the referee was able to inform us of our options for moving forward in order to stay ranked in the race. We were able to work out 2 possible options: borrow packrafts from a team who had finished the paddling section but were still in the race, or take a time penalty for taking roads instead of paddling a particular section that was ahead (where the rules stated that we needed to stay in the riverbed). The referee offered to help facilitate trying to get other packrafts for us, for which we were very grateful. As such, we were able to trek (as planned) along the road and a set of rafts were lent (thank you Journey Racing!!!!) and delivered to us before the next paddling section. This allowed us to continue the race (with a 4-hour penalty) and get to the finish line. We set off in our new boats and paddled into the late night. Everyone was getting very sleepy and cold, so when we got to another dam, we decided to sleep in a washroom at the campground just below the dam. We all huddled in there and tried our best to keep warm and get some rest. When we got up in the morning, we discovered that the lone dry bag (mainly full of wet clothes) we had left outside while we slept was gone. We looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it. It was never recovered but we figure it was either stolen by someone at the campground, or taken by an animal who could smell the remnants of food on/in the bag.

The morning was cold an windy and we were struggling to stay warm after a cold night and no dry clothes. Luckily the sun was shining bright and helped to warm us up somewhat. Nat still struggled to get warm as we worked our way through the remaining 20km of paddling. At one point she was getting dangerously cold in her wet clothes. I was able to dry my clothes just from the inside from the warmth I was creating while paddling, while Chad and Ben were just barely keeping warm enough. But none of us had any extra clothes to offer Nat. Since I was feeling warm enough at that point (and the day was beginning to warm up), I had us pull over onto the shore and proceeded to swap upper body clothes with Nat. I gave her my dry fleece and dry rain jacket and put on her wet fleece. It was a bit of a tight fit for me in her little tiny fleece, but we made it work and it got us to the end of the paddling section.

The final bike section was basically a very long climb to the top of Casper Mountain. At this point I think we all felt that we would be able to make it to the finish line even though it would be a struggle to do all the remaining climbing. The views were incredible and we were very lucky to have the clay roads dry enough for us to bike without all the clay sticking to our tires (which was not the case for many teams ahead and behind us). The final reward was a 10km paved road descent down Casper Mountain and into the finish. But of course we had one last hurdle to clear before getting there – a fitting conclusion to our race. We got to within about 500m of the finish line when another massive storm hit, forcing us to take shelter for 15 minutes under a bridge while we waited out the heavy rain and winds and took shelter from the lightning. After sitting there frozen, waiting for the storm to pass, we finally were able to get ourselves to the finish line – cold, wet, but happy that we were able to overcome all of the hurdles we faced as a team

Looking back at all of the challenges we faced coming into the race, as well as the unforeseen mishaps we faced during the race, I would say that we managed pretty well. Ben faced a major challenge in racing more than 3 times longer than he’d ever raced before. While he certainly struggled at times, he also persevered and kept a positive attitude, accepted help from his team mates, and every time he felt strong was ready to help out where he could, including helping Chad with the navigation. Chad did a great job of leading the navigation in his first ARWC. At times he felt like he was making too many mistakes, but looking back at our track, it’s clear that many other teams (including top teams) struggled in many of the same places. Nat pushed her limits by putting herself at the front of the paceline whenever she was feeling strong, and even doing some towing during the race. I went into the race unsure if my knee injury would slow me down. I had a few scares during the race, but overall I felt like my body (and mind) adequately met the challenges as they surfaced. And overall, considering that Nat and I had only ever raced against Chad and none of us had ever even met Ben before the race, I would say that we all worked well together and managed to have a good time as well. It appears we finished 23^rd after incurring the 4 hour penalty, which we feel is a quite respectable placing. It was a pleasure to see Cowboy Tough host the AR World Championships and they pulled it off flawlessly. And as always, it was great to see so many familiar faces and a bunch of new ones as well at the race. Now on to making plans for 2018!

RIF 2017 8th place

It has been a while but as everybody else sometimes we get caught up with life and we prioritize what to do. Writing the RIF race report unfortunately didn't make it to the top of the list until..well, Now.
As we are boarding our flight in direction to worlds in Wyoming!!!

So here is a flashback to our race back in June in the beautiful region of Ardeche, France.
We were very fortunate to have Dave Schloss from Australia joining us as our main navigator. We also had Wouter joining us a little bit at the last moment before the race.
Although it isn't ideal to race with two people we didn't know we were well decided to give the race a good shot.
Dave met James and I (Nat) in the south of France a few days prior to the race and we drove up to lac Devesset, HQ of the race where we met Wouter
The gear list was rather exhaustive, more specifically the first aid. It took us a while to gather everything. I think we could have been wounded for weeks without medical help and we would have been fine. We had enough to open a little mobile hospital.
 
I was a little disappointed to not have a copy of the road book in French. Being a French race I knew the translation in the English book would be missing a few nuances that would be very helpful during the race. The navigators being anglophone there was no way we would take the French version and we couldn't have both.
The gear check went pretty smooth and before we knew it the start of the race was there. 

The race started at midnight with a swim run. I must admit I thought I was going to drown about a thousand times but we made it alive, got our maps at the end, looked at them semi quickly and shot off on our bikes. We started at a decent pace...we were finally racing. Unfortunately that was short lived. About 30km in the race Wouter's derailleur failed. He replaced the derailleur hanger, jumped back on the bike but another part failed resulting in many stops and Wouter having to walk all the up hills during this first leg. With not much hope to fix the derailleur and having lost a few hours our chances to make the dark zone with the lead teams later in the race became a no go.
The next leg involved a nice trek with rock hopping in the river bed followed by a paddle. We had some fun paddling. We then saw the bikes again. After some James Magic Wouter's bike was working although he had still to push occasionally uphill or to put the chain back on. We spent most of that leg in the dark with a few teams around. On one of the steep descent in the dark I managed to face plant in the gravel dislocating (again) my wrist and damaging my knee a bit. After a good scrub we finished that leg.
We ended that leg at the start of the big paddle where we slept for a couple hours. A medic tried to put the wrist in place and off we went. That was a lot of fun with some slides, Rapids (with the two other guys shouting yyyeeewwww every time they went down a rapid before hitting a rock). Lots of laugher there. My favourite part was the second part when we had to go up river for a few hours and we kept on passing teams after teams.t
The next leg was a big trek with a caving section soon after the start of it. That leg was very nice, mostly in gorges. The caving was pretty quick and not as challenging as last year in Australia :). We knew as we progressed in the trek that we would miss the dark zone and would have to stop for a while so the urgency was gone. We got 5h sleep at a CP where the dark zone was and started hiking to the rappel as soon as it was lifted. The rappel was amazing. Two length hanging from the rope that was going away from the cliff making us spin and forced us to look at the gorges from an angle you would never otherwise. It got a little too much for me and I had to close my eyes to do part of the descent as I wasn't feeling great.
The rest of the trek went well with a few river crossings.
Followed was a bike that went pretty uneventfully except for Dave going over the bars and breaking his shifters and a couple flats (not our race for biking I'm telling you)
At the end of the bike was our last short paddle. James by then had kind of managed to fix Wouter's bike but we managed to get a new derailleur then that we ended up not using.
The last paddle went well and we finished it in the dark.
The next trek went well although mostly in the dark. I was sleeping for part of it. We ended up trekking up to the end of that trek with the all male French team. For the last few legs we kept on passing each other.
The bike that followed was a lot of climbing which I kind of liked a lot. We ended up riding along the guys team the entire way. Half way was a little via ferrata that was pretty cool.
The last trek was pretty long. We took it fairly easy even indulging for ice cream in the small village.
The last bike was supposed to be a couple hours but for some reason the night demons played with Dave's mind and he thought we weren't where we were supposed to be. That little bike ended up being an 8h+ bike ride with lots of back and forth on the same road but hey at least we got our money worth.

The last leg was sailing across lake Devesset which I ended up being pretty good at :D

All up we didn't get very lucky with the bikes but we were still happy to make it to the end with lots of laughters along the way. That's ended up being more an expedition than a race for us but we made it.
The organization was really good and very helpful. Can't wait for Reunion island next year :)

XPD Australia ARWC 2016- 21st place

Here is Jason's race report:

AR World Champs- Shoalhaven, Australia with Nathalie Long, James Galipeau and navigator Todd Nowack. As a Canadian living in Australia he would be a perfect addition for this race.

After a week of screwing around with gear and bins I was happy to get them turning in just before the maps distribution. To limit any influence from Google maps we would get maps while locked in a conference room 3 hours before transferring to the start. We quickly outlined our route on the 2 sets of (38) A4 maps for the race.

The race would start with a Lemans start to the kayak in Jervis Bay with James and Nat in the SCR ski and Todd and I in the sit-on-top kayak. After clearing the initial mayhem we settled in around 25th place. Todd and I were not as fast as the surfski so we set up the tow which worked well as we paddled east towards the distant points. Approaching each of these points was tricky as there were waves breaking on shoals all around them.

We swapped paddling positions after each of the first 4 points trying to find a set-up with equal boat speeds between the two boats but none of them seemed to work well. We seemed to fade a little towards the end and were happy to get to the take out when we did. We were joined by a few surfacing dolphins just as we got there.

Going into this race we knew quick transitions were going to be important so additional focus would be required. It paid off early as we passed Tecnu in transition here.

This trek had a little of everything- Sandy beaches, coasteering and powerline running with awesome views as we traveled to the second paddle leg.

Somewhere along the way I managed to knock my head pretty hard on a low hanging branch as I jumped up on a ledge and momentarily saw a few early stars.

With another fast TA we were off on another relatively short leg as dusk settled in. We finally found a paddler combination which seemed to work well with James and I in the 3 person sit-on-top drafting off Nat and Todd in the surfski.

Next up would be some tough jeep trail riding with steep climbs and long, fast descents over never-ending water bars which were a lot of fun. We spent most of the night riding with Tecnu and caught a glimpse of Bones at the Pointer Gap Lookout.

The 'highlight' of the ride was the mandatory flagged hike-a-bike down from Florence Head which required multiple sketchy climbs and descents carrying our bikes. Despite the tough terrain we made solid progress and avoided the back-ups those deeper in the field would see here.

The second trek was the first real section of the race. We continued south along the coast and had our first swim of the event through a tidal pool. James, Nat and I decided to strip down and put everything in a dry bag for the crossing. Todd thought he could make it and just carried his shoes. Halfway across he realized his mistake and decided he could just throw his shoes to keep them dry. He skipped the first one across. The second one made it cleanly but the socks stuffed in it ejected part way across and I had to jump back in to save them from becoming shark food.

While we were goofing around we could see Tecnu and RADY'S chasing us down in the distance.

Just prior to heading west for the inland controls we stopped to tape some toes and then ran into Legendary Randy and a bunch of kangaroos.

CP17 was our first mistake of the race. We decided to attack it from the road instead of trying to find the jeep trail which went closer to the point. As we descended down a reentrant expecting to find a stream intersection we saw RADY'S in a reentrant heading the direction we expected the point to be in.

With the distraction we failed to keep track of our position on the map and talked ourselves into wandering around looking for it. Eventually cooler heads prevailed and we decided to re-attack from the jeep trail to the north. Once relocated we walked straight to the point. Looking at the GPS track it appears we just didn't walk up the second reentrant far enough.

We arrived at the Clyde River paddle with about 2 hours of flood tide to paddle up river with so we wasted no time getting onto the water despite that fact that we were starting to need some sleep.

We had the Czech team just in front of us and tried to chase them down but sleepmonsters were an issue and we lost focus. We hooked up the tow which helped to keep everyone awake and eventually we made it to the takeout. We changed, built the bikes and then headed off to the tents in the TA for an hour of sleep.

We knew this next leg was going to be tough given it had over 5000' of climbing according to the logistics map. We realized this very quickly as within the first 10k we had two significant bike pushes uphill. Not long after that the rain started and the temps dropped. Compounding this was a missed turn which forced a 3k backtrack. The rain wasn't bad on the long climbs but it made the long descents very cold and I was happy to have rain pants in the bag to put on.

The rain eventually stopped just before sunrise and the heat of the day started to dry out our clothing as we approached the TA. With the next trekking section heading out on the same road we were riding in on we passed Merrell and Columbia as they were heading out just minutes ahead of us.

This next trek was going to be a tough one with a lot of climbing early in the sun. In theory it was just following the trail through the Budawang Range and for the first 15k that was the case as we went up and through the pass below the Castle. There was multiple stream crossings to re-fill water which made the heat a little easier to deal with through the Monolith valley.

It was pretty amazing that I could be so cold just a few hours before in the rain and then wishing for clouds to hide the sun as we climbed up in the heat.

We spent most of the morning and afternoon changing places back and forth with the Czech team. once through the pass the trail become much tougher to follow and it took both Todd and I following along on our maps to stay on the route as we summited Mt. Tarin, Mt. Haighton and Sturgiss Mountain.

Around dusk we made our second mistake. We had just punched CP29 on a small hill. We dropped off the NE side of it by mistake instead of the NW. We hit a creek which we were expecting but there was no trail running along side of it. It took us about 90 minutes to figure out our mistake and correct it.

The remainder of the trek was in a valley and the trail and terrain improved as we went. Unfortunately our feet were starting to feel the distance and by the time we made it into the TA Nat, Todd and I were suffering with each step.

We were (over)due for some sleep when we arrived at the TA. We changed, built our bikes and then took another hour of sleep. For some reason the TA tents had not made it to the TA but it wasn't raining and my bivy sack was sufficiently warm.

We awoke just as the sun came up and set out on the next leg which would be a road bike ride to the caving. We traveled along well and made it to the next TA quicker than expected despite the headwind.

When we arrived at the Caving TA the only thing we could do was change into trekking shoes. We would have 5 hours off the clock to punch controls in 5 of 6 caves. Our hope was that we could get all 5 punched and then bank some sleep off the clock. Unfortunately we made a slight mistake going to one of the caves and the rest of the caving was slower than anticipated and we used all 5 hours to complete the stage.

The caves we went into were legit! I thought it would be a somewhat contrived event but each one had difficult and unique features to get through.

The most time-consuming cave had a feature called the Flattener which was about 15m long, 10m wide and just tall enough for one person to squeeze through on their stomach using your toes and fingertips to propel you though. Not a good place for someone with a fear of tight spaces.

Once back to the TA we packed up the bikes and loaded up the packs for the next packrafting leg.

In my mind the next three legs were going to be the toughest of the race.

We left the TA loaded down with the packrafts, paddles, pfd's and our bivy sacks knowing that we would not be able to paddle on the river given the dark zone for paddling at 8pm. Before we could paddle we had to punch CP36 on a slot canyon which led to the Shoalhaven River where the packrafting would occur. We made the decision to drop our non-mandatory gear, hike down to CP36 and punch, hike back up and then take the land route to the put-in. Our thinking was that the slot canyon could be a significant time suck if there was a lot of climbing required with our heavy packs.

When we finally hit the river we saw a few teams camped waiting for the paddle dark zone to lift and river left looked good for some trekking. We were able to cover around 8k before stopping for some sleep.

When we woke we continued along river left for a few more kms until we were cliffed out. We stripped down and swam across to the other side but then were able to continue to trek on river right until the 5am dark zone lift passing Sweco along the way as they slept.

Once we put on the rapids were pretty fun but shallow and we scrapped bottom quite a few times. Near the end Todd and I broached a rock and flipped in which was kind of comical. Sighting in the am looking straight into the rising sun was so difficult. Unfortunately we hung up on another rock and put a hole in the floor of the Gnu which we were able to fix with some Leukotape.

The flat portion of the paddle towards the end went pretty fast given the huge tailwind we were getting and we paddled into the dam TA in the morning sun.

We felt pretty good heading into the TA and just needed to grab more food and h2o.

We portaged down around the dam to the put in and set off with sunny skies. Unfortunately that didn't last too long and soon after we were in a few nasty downpours getting completely soaked. The rapids were marked on the map but it became tough to distinguish which rapids were worthy of mapping and which were not. Fortunately we did portage around the two rapids which presented some unsafe conditions.

At one point we had decided that we had made it past the mandatory portage rapid 50 and had also passed the next CP. After a paddle up river to where we thought it was we discovered (with the help of Merrell) that we were still up river of rapid 50 and needed to continue further down river.

Once past rapid 50 it was obvious that we were now out of the rapids as the water suddenly stopped flowing and our progress slowed. Temperatures continued to drop as we paddled on the river and the sun set. We made slow progress from here on as some struggled with sleep dep. and being cold. I ended up taking the map from Todd as he was very sleepy/low on calories. I was concerned that he wasn't able to pay enough attention and we might end up heading the wrong way.

As we approached the take-out in town the skies opened up again just as we were about to get off the river which made for a very cold exit. Fortunately there was a boathouse with showers at the TA and Nathalie was able to warm up along with the help of a dehydrated meal.

The original plan was to get an hour of sleep but as we were getting into dry clothes the rain stopped so we built our bikes and prepared to head out.

The last bike leg had about the same amount of climbing as the 2nd leg but over twice the distance and the hope was that it would be much more rideable and it proved to be so. Unfortunately we were all struggling with sleepiness so within the first 20k we decided to lay down for a 45 minute sleep which helped a ton and was just enough to get us to the finish.

It was a very cold night but we kept making forward progress and eventually daylight came and with it much warmer temps. There was definitely an eagerness to get to the finish driving the team.

As we approached the final TA we made a slight nav mistake which allowed 2 teams to pass us. When we arrived at the TA there was 3 teams there and Eastwind had just left.

Not exactly the finish we wanted but we certainly weren't going to waste the opportunity to pass some teams. We made our way out onto the beach and could see four teams ahead of us. We ran hard and were quick through the two swims and Todd made some great route choices. We passed all of the teams but Eastwind who despite our efforts still seemed to have a 1k lead on us.

As we approached the last CP we saw Eastwind's cameraman and he asked us if we had seen his team. We couldn't believe we had passed them along the way but didn't stick around to wonder how. 

We continued to run all the way to the finish expecting to see them come around each corner ahead of us but it wasn't to be and we finished a few minutes ahead of them in 21st place.

Race Summary:

Thursday - 12:31pm - Kayak 5:14:00 35.0 km   

Thursday - 5:45pm - Trek 2:03:00 14.0 km  

Thursday – 7:48pm - Kayak 1:44:00 13.0 km

Thursday – 9:32pm - Mtn Bike 9:09:00 95.0 km

 Friday – 6:41am - Trek 9:23:00 38.0 km  

Friday – 4:04pm - Kayak 6:24:00 37.0 km

Friday – 10:28pm – Mtn Bike 9:17:00 + 1 hour sleep  58.0 km   

Saturday – 8:45am - Trek 19:30:00 35.0 km

Sunday – 4:15am - Mtn Bike 5:48:00 + 1 hour sleep  70.0 km

Sunday – 10:02am - Trek (Caving) 5:00:00 5.0 km  

Sunday – 3:02pm - Trek & Packrafting 18:20:00 + 2 hours sleep  48.0 km

Monday – 11:22am - Kayak 11:44:00 56.0 km  

Monday – 11:06pm - Mtn Bike 11:16:00 + 45 min sleep 99.0 km  

Tuesday – 11:27pm - Trek 2:33:00  18.0 km

Tuesday - 2:00pm - Finish

Total: 121 hours 29 minutes (5 nights)
Sleep: 4 hours 45 minutes

Cowboy tough 2016- 6th place

2016 Cameco Cowboy Tough Adventure Race, Casper, WY

Team Canada AR Race Report

With James on loan to Adventure Medical Kits for this race we recruited Charles Triponez and Matt Hayes to join us for the race. Both would be solid additions to the squad with a ton of racing experience to draw from.

Race check-in began Wednesday at 11:00am with the typical forms to hand in, rappel check, mandatory gear check, map handout and racer weigh in.

 

 

Jason was not happy to find out he was the heavyweight on the team for this race. We spent the remainder of the afternoon going over the maps with optional points to plot and routes to find and then a final pack of the gear bins just before handing them in at 8:30pm.

 

 

1:50:00, 49 km.

The race would start as a group ride along a bike path out of town following an ATV with a rolling road closure at the intersections. 

 

Once we hit the road the pace amped up a little but it wasn’t too bad until we started onto the gentle climbs where the initial team selection was made with AMK, Tecnu, Yogaslackers, Swedish Armed Forces, Team North Face and us making the cut. We hammer along and put about 5 minutes into the remaining peleton before reaching the first transition area. This was exactly what we hoped would happen as we had a small cushion for the transition topaddling, avoiding a massive hurricane for the most part.

2:20:00, 28 km.

We put on the North Platte River for what would be over 100 miles of paddling with a few stops mixed in. We were just ahead of Team North Face but they took a better line through the first small ripples and passed us. We ended up following them all the way to the Water Challenge at anabandoned fort, passing Journey Racing along the way.

0:10:00, 1.0 km.

The Water Challenge involved a take-out at a small landing where each team needed to haul 4 buckets of water up to a cistern in the old fort in teams of two being careful not to lose too much water out of the bucket or you’d have to make a second trip.

 

 

 

AMK and Tecnu were both one bucket trip ahead of us at this point.

1:45:00 21.0 km.

Once the challenge was complete it was back into the boats for an uneventful paddle to the town of Douglas.

0:45:00 7.0 km.

In Douglas there was a canoe drop for a short urban o-course with points at a WWII Internment Camp, a stop at the College Inn for a shot of whiskey and in a train car museum. 

 

 

We took the opportunity to fill up our bladders for the next long paddle leg just before putting back in.

3:00:00 36 km.

Back on the river the current was still flowing well and we continued to make solid progress in the Mad River 16’ bananas through the afternoon. This section seemed long however as we did not see another team the entire way.

2:00:00 8.0 km.

Midway through this leg there were 5 optional points to pick up just prior to the

reservoir. The 5 points were up on a plateau and split by a large reentrant in the middle. Charles saw his first bald eagle just before the take-out. There were multiple strategies used by teams to get the points with a majority landing at the reentrant and doing two out-and- backs to get them all including us.

5:40:00 35.0 km.

The 5 optional points provided a nice break from paddling but it there was still more to go so we got back into the boats for the remaining portion of leg 3 paddle. 

 

Unfortunately it was in the Glendo Reservoir and the current was no longer providing help. In addition, a solid wind had picked

up straight across the water right into our teeth as night fell. We never had water over the bow but I am sure it was very close a few times. A number of teams behind us took shelter as the winds continued to build through the night. We paddled the entire reservoir with the two-person team of Nordic Adventure

hot on our sterns. I’m sure they were happy to have another team near-by in case they had an issue.

Later in the race we heard of another 2-person team that spent over an hour waiting for a rescue after their boat sank.

6:00:00 49.0 km.

At the take-out we portaged the canoes to the TA and transitioned to biking. There were a number of optional bike points to pick up in the challenging Glendo Bike Trail system. There was an impressive amount of work done to make these trails, cut straight into the canyon walls and along the tops of the nearby hills with giant slabs of rock as the trail bed. Most of the trails were rideable but there was still a fair amount of bike pushing required, mostly anytime we went up-hill. Somewhere along the way I dinged my derailleur and it would act up for the remainder of the race. It’s surprisingmore people didn’t knock them off on rocks completely here.

5:20:00 39.0 km.

We made it back to the TA in time to score 11 minutes of time credit since the paddle 4 dark zone didn’t lift until 5:30am. We filled up bladders and then portaged down to the river on the other side of the reservoir dam. 

It wasn’t easy starting back up paddling given the distance we had paddled in the 20 hours before but that quickly changed when we say the first set of rapids coming up.

We made it through with a solid line without scouting but a number of the earlier teams had at least one boat capsize here. There was a number of smaller rapids along this last leg which made this paddle go by relatively quickly.

Just prior to entering the Wendover Canyon there was another set of rapids to negotiate which everyone was keen to clear without swimming. They were set up in an S turn so that there was not one clear side to stay on and required traversing from river right to left in the middle of the S. Fortunatelyboth of our boats negotiated them without an issue.

Once clear of the remaining river obstacles we set our sights on catching Journey Racing who were again ahead of us. We caught them just prior to entering the Guernsey Reservoir with a number of pick-ups originally intended to wake up a few of the sleepy paddlers on the team. For some reason there was a new take-out location and we wasting a little time heading to the mapped version before figuring it out.

I guess the lady jumping up and down and pointing should have been a clue we picked up on sooner.

We packed up our paddle gear and wished it a fond farewell, hoping to never see it again then transitioned to biking.

4:40:00 73.0 km.

The bike leg consisted of a few early controls to reward those not taking the bike Fast Forward option prior to Paddle 4. We rode to those with Journey Racing but they put some tome on us when we stopped at a well for water. The next portion of the leg was on a busy road but we had a great tailwind and it made for some fast traveling. In the distance we could see the mountains we were riding to and as we slowly got closer to them the climbing increased. The last 10k was mostly all uphill granny gear climbing.

6:05:00 21.0 km.

We rolled into the TA looking forward to the first real trekking and it didn’t disappoint.

 

There were no controls mid-route to keep you on track, just solid navigation. Fortunately we had the aid of daylight and a tone of scenery to use for handrails and we could see Laramie Peak in the distance.

 

 

Matt did a great job of locating the South Branch and we made a good call to exit the canyon towards the end before getting boxed in. We cleared the saddle just as the sun set and then descended down to the next TA and our gear bins.

AMK arrived from the Laramie Peak climb as we were transitioning and had taken the lead from Tecnu on the climb up. We finished our TA then tried to get an hour of sleep prior to the KOM climb.

Unfortunately the TA was too noisy and only Matt and Nathalie got any sleep.

4:50:00 20.0 km.

We set off for the climb with a gravel road run to the trailhead. There must have been 150 switchbacks on the climb to the top. Once there we glanced around at the view quickly, punched and then set off on the descent. I think I tripped over every rock in my sleep-deprived state on the way down.

6:35:00 57.0 km.

Back at the TA we transitioned to biking and then attempted another hour of sleep.

With the aid of some earplugs we were all successful in finally sleeping and I felt significantly better once awaking.

The next bike leg had some great downhills with 5-8 km stretches of coasting at 35 kph and we made solid time while heading towards the next o-course.

4:00:00 13.0 km.

The next o-course contained an ascent and a rappel which we went to first, then on to the remaining points.
 

photo credit Chris Radcliff

 

It was a cool area for orienteering with some big features to locate controls on (lots of climbing). Around this time we started looking at our schedule and we were about 4 hours

behind. There was still some slack time before the race finish but the urgency needed to stay high to ensure we clear the course.

6:20:00 71.0 km.

Much to our disappointment the Wyoming Winds picked up and we had a tough

sidewind to contend with on the next biking leg along with some considerable granny gear climbing.

 

photo credit Chris Radcliff

 

Halfway through the leg we turned straight into to it which slowed our pace to a crawl (12-15 kph).

Eventually as the sun went down the wind did as well making the last few km to the TA much easier.

1:40:00 10.0 km.

The next o-course was basically a small valley in the middle of a cattle farm. We

picked up 5 easy points here and I’m not really sure what the purpose of this stop was other than a prescribed chance to get off your bike in the middle of a 150 km ride which was appreciated.

6:54:00 70.0 km.

As we left on to Bike 6 we had a great view of an approaching thunderstorm. Our route took us straight into the heart of it but we made it through without incident most-likely due to Nathalie keeping her head ducked down lower than everyone else’s on the team as we rode past.

While under the storm the air was completely still. Once we made it past we were instantly greeted with a cold front and the temps dropped to the mid-40’s. Just after punching the only control on the ride we decided to get 30 minutes of sleep.

Once barely awake again we set out on the long 2000 ft climb up to the Muddy Mtn TA. It was a granny gear climb all the way to the top.

3:00:00 17.0 km.

As we were transitioning to for the last o-course we noticed that Team North Face was still there and sleeping. They heard us arrive and set out just ahead of us. 

Unfortunately we struggled with the first point on the ridge and lost and chance of passing them for 5 th place. The remaining controls went smoothly and we headed back to our last TA of the race.

3:16:00 25.0 km.

There were a number of teams in the TA. By this time they were mostly the teams on the bike tour option, those who were skipping all of the o-course controls to stay on schedule to reach the finish before it closed. It was a nice ride down Muddy Mtn to the base of Casper Mtn despite our difficulties in sitting on our bike seats. The road turned to pavement making the climb to the top easier.

Once at the top it was a 3000 ft. descent to the bottom and the finish in Casper where we arrived in 6th place, the last team to clear the course.