This hike/kloof/hike was a tough one for our team for a number of reasons... some nav challenges, cutt-off scares, miserable weather, tides, cold and slow kloofing etc, but one that we were very happy to get through as a team.
The leg started with a tough nav call to get up the mountain to the first CP. Piers was feeling pretty buggered and handed the nav over to me, i decided to follow plett AR, as i knew they knew exactly where to go, and Stijn from Charnas agreed with this plan. Plett AR knew this and started with some diversion tactics (intentional or not) their initial rumbling through the bushes frustrated Stijn and I, so we tried our own thing. I was not keen on any bundu bashing after our incident in the fynbos the day before, so was determine to find a path, this didn't happen and we were starting to waste time. Eventually Stijn and I decided to take a B line for the top, motivated our teams and got going, we took ~2hrs to get to the put and loads of good team work to get there. Costly maneuver in the end. We were tired and decided to sleep at the top.
Waking up in the morning, the guys were faffing and moving slow, i was getting pretty frustrated and I was sure we were going to miss the cuttoff for the next day... We started off again and managed to pick up some good momentum and motivation, making it to the top of the kloof at 11am, good timing for us.
The kloof section was very cold, but a real adventure, luckily we all had decent wet suits and were able to keep warm while in the kloof. We enjoyed the abseils a lot, with everyone keeping a good sense of humour along the way). We hiked out of the kloof top section and had to wait around 30min to start the via ferrata, it was starting to get really cold as the sun was setting and the wind was picking up, as we were not moving while sitting at the top of the abseil, but it wasn't that bad and were enjoyed the view. the 50m abseil was awesome, one of the best i have done (maybe still second to the table mountain abseil though).
We then started the toughest section of the race, ~7km of kloofing at night with many swims required, it was really slow going and energy sapping. We had the company of a few teams, two just ahead of us and two catching from behind (Rustproof and A2A), we knew that team starting any later than us were probably not going to make the full course and we knew we had to keep pushing to get the T in time.
We made it out the kloof feeling pretty broken and cold, we then hiked 2-3km's out, still in out wetsuits, then changed and slept for ~2hrs, i had a good sleep, like usual :), we starting making progress towards the coastline, searching for water along the way, we did not drink the kloof water as the abseil marshal at the top said that it was not a good idea, so we were all pretty thirsty...But we just kept moving on.
At this point we suddenly noticed many other teams sleeping out in the bushes along the path, we couldn’t work out how we were catching so many teams ahead of us, we just put it down to the fact that all the teams had also taken strain in the kloof and needed a lot of sleep… Later we found out that many teams were given the option of missing the bottom section of the kloof in order to make the cutoff, penalty or not, they were not on the full course anymore, so we weren’t too phased about racing them, and stuck to our own race.
We reached the coastline, and again our pace was slowed, lots of rocky outcrops and we were forced to walk quite high up the beach and in the soft sand due to the high tide. We reached a river crossings, and this caused us some trouble as we all got our dry cloths wet, just after the river crossing was a very steep headland and we tried to skirt around it, but the waves were crashing on the rocks and we were getting smashed, we stopped and checked the tide chart, it was spot on high tide, so made a call to wait an hour for it to drop, then we sucked it up (a little more htfu), and made it through the waves.
The rain started and the wind was blowing, we pushed on, eventually realising we were going to miss the 6am cutoff, martin’s wife found us about 4km from the T (illegally so I guess, but she was not to know) and she told us that the cuttoff had been extended since 2 of the final legs of the race had been cancelled for all teams, Stephan was able to relax the cuttoff time. We started pushing it to make the now 7.30am cuttoff, we made it, the adrenaline was pumping after the swim across the lagoon :)
The challenging leg of a challenging race and we got to the finish with the team still motivated and in good spirits (something I really enjoyed about racing with this team… good humour all the time)
Post swim pic, running into the T