Thursday Jun 29 |
 | MTB (technical) race 37:44:00 [3] ** 65.7 mi (34:28 / mi) | |
| spiked:5/5c |
| Biked from the TA east to Gemini Bridges, where we did a cool nighttime rappel. Mark and Rebecca went off one side of the arch and Dan and I were on the other, so once we got to free hang below the arch we were facing each other. This one was a three stage rappel, each one about 100 feet. The ropes crew brought our bikes down on a zip line and we rode east towards the Moab MTB trails.
Spent most of the 30th riding the VERY difficult Gold Bar trail, Golden Spike jeep trail (along the a canyon rim) and the Poison Spider trail on P.S. Mesa west of Moab. Very hot day, plus the exposed slickrock pumped the ground temperature up to 115 degrees. We ran out of water on the last CP despite carrying >6 liters each. The CP crew kindly gave us some of their water to get to the stop at the base of Poison Spider Mesa. The only problem was that we lost the (sketchy) road down. I had to do some scouting and tricky navigation to get us out of a maze of sandstone formations and find the road down again. It took us twice as long to get down as planned, and we were all dehydrated at the bottom. This was perhaps the most dangerous part of the race for us.
We found out later that many other teams had the same problems and a couple had to drop due to heat exhaustion.
The next leg was paved raod along the Colorado river through Moab. We stopped at Denny's and had a good dinner, then proceeded to Pritchett Canyon after dark. It had been closed until 6 PM that day due to >115 degree temps inside. It was pleasant at night, though, and we slept a couple of hours. When we woke up, we joined up with a pack of 10-15 teams that were passing by at the time.
When we reached the end of the canyon, everybody got confused on how to get out. It turns out there was a tricky switchback trail that led behind a hill, and it was nearly impossible to see at night. We were the 3rd team to discover it, so we snuck out while other teams were sleeping and waiting for dawn. We continued to the head of the canyon and got a good head start through the Behind-the-Rocks area. Here we met up with some of the other strong teams, and I helped IrishAR with some navigation so as to earn the team a round of Guinness.
After a long but no-so-hot ride through BTR, we crossed the main Hwy 191 and started up into the foothills of the La Sal range. A day and a half after we started, we pulled into the TA at Pack Creek. The mountain weather was wonderful, and we had made the cutoff time by 2 hours. |
Wednesday Jun 28 |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 1:22:00 [1] | |
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| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 7:50:00 [1] | |
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| Eat/sleep at kayak TA |
| Paddling (kayak) race 9:09:00 [2] * 45.0 mi (12:12 / mi) | |
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| Paddled downstream from Ruby Ranch through Labyrinth Canyon to the Mineral Point takeout. |
| Hiking race 1:35:00 [3] * 2.0 mi (47:30 / mi) +660m 14:34 / km | |
| shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Hiked all our swim gear to the TA at the rim of the canyon 2000 feet above the kayak takeout. |
| Miscellaneous race 3:56:00 [1] | |
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Tuesday Jun 27 |
| Swimming race (whitewater) 2:58:00 [2] 8.3 mi (21:27 / mi) | |
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| Whitewater swim in the Green River from Nefertiti Rapids to Swazey's Landing, just north of the town of Green River. Ranged from class I-III, high enough water that there was no real risk of rocks or nasty hydraulics. Once we learned how to stay on the inflatable riverboards it was a ton of fun. |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 1:08:00 [1] | |
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| Transition to kayaks at Swazey's Landing. |
| Paddling (kayak) race 8:25:00 [2] * 35.0 mi (14:25 / mi) | |
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| Paddled Necky Amaruks down the Green River to Ruby Ranch. Beautiful day, hot but we were in the river and kept our clothes and hats soaked. |
| Hiking race (canyoneering) 12:26:00 [2] ** 27.4 mi (27:13 / mi) | |
| spiked:6/6c shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| After dropping kayaks, had to swim across the Green River, drop swim gear, and go for a long canyoneering leg. Started with a night hike through the desert (plus a hour of sleep), then started bouldering up Turtle Mesa. Very cool bare rock scramble. At the top, followed a marked path to a rappel site overlooking an oxbow of the Green River. Rap was 100 meters with two separate overhang sections. Mark and Rebecca went tandem on two ropes, Dan and I went down afterwards.
At the bottom, we worked our way along the shore into Three Canyon - a large slot canyon from 50-200 feet wide and 200-400 foot sheer walls. Several miles up, we had to do a 90 foot ascent to get out the head of the canyon. This brought us into some of the most remote and desolate area we'd seen so far. We had to trek across it in 100+ degree temps to the head of Moonshine Wash.
Moonshine Wash was a typical winding canyon, but the central section was a wonderful slot canyon about 5-10 feet wide and 60 foot walls of pure sandstone. We descended down, solving each boulder problem as we came to it. We heard later that an other team had encountered a full grown rattler in this section and had an interesting time getting around it. After the slot section though, the canyon just seemed to go on forever. Finally we got out to the San Rafael River and jumped in to cool off. Went back to the Green River and swam back (again in the dark) to the TA. |
Monday Jun 26 |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 2:59:00 [1] | |
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| MTB (technical) race 12:38:00 [2] ** 54.1 mi (14:00 / mi) | |
| spiked:2/2c |
| Long MTB, including a 4 mile backtrack tgo pick up a dropped map. Also had a cool trail up and over a ridge that looked like a mountain pass. Stopped in Green River to get a burger for dinner, hence the slow average time. Ended up at the whitewater swim TA. |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 1:30:00 [1] | |
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| Miscellaneous race (transition/sleep) 6:24:00 [1] | |
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| We missed the 6 PM swim cutoff, so we got the shuttle up to the put-in and slept for a few hours. Got on the water at 6:20 AM. |
Sunday Jun 25 |
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| Event: Eco Primal Quest
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| Hiking race (horseback) 10:56:00 [2] ** 22.7 mi (28:53 / mi) | |
| spiked:4/4c shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Started the race with an assigned horse. Rebecca got on to ride at the race start, but between 90 horses/360 people, the helicopter, and the general chaos at start several people were thrown and hurt. Rebecca was one of them. We managed to calm down our horse and proceed to the canyon trail descent (a big bottleneck) in 2nd to last place.
After that, it was just an all day trek through the desert. Our horse got comfortable enough with us we could put packs on her, but couldn't ride. |
| Miscellaneous (transition) 30:00 [2] | |
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| Hiking race (desert trek) 13:17:00 [2] ** 22.8 mi (34:56 / mi) | |
| spiked:1/2c |
| Long desert trek, but mostly at night which kept the temperatures comfortable. Had some trouble finding #7 and decided to sleep for an hour until it got light. We woke up at predawn light and found it right away (in fact we hadn't really taken any wrong turns.) |
Saturday Jun 24 |
| Ropes 30:00 [2] | |
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| PQ skills check - had to ascend up over an overhang and pass a knot, then tandem rappel off the other side. |
| Swimming 15:00 [2] | |
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| PQ skills check - only a little pool. Spent most of our time treading water then flipping the kayaks. |
| Note | |
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| Other checkouts on medical; horses; backcountry ethics; GPS/sat phone usage; bikes; whitewater rescue.
Also see sleepmonsters.us for an interview with our team. |
Monday Jun 19 |
| MTB (technical) 1:00:00 [3] 7.5 mi (7:59 / mi) | |
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| Singletrack trail in Jefferson Co open space between Chatfield and Waterton Canyon. |
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| C • Good Luck 3 |
| Hiking 20:00 [3] | |
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| Hiking around up on and near Dan and Rebecca's property in Gilpin County. |
Sunday Jun 18 |
| Hiking 2:30:00 [3] +350m | |
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| First day in Colorado. Hiked (with packs) up the 1000' hogback behind Dennis' house with MG. When we got to the top, there was a nice 50' cliff on the other side. Good thing we brought the rope gear. |
| Ropes 2:30:00 [2] | |
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| A couple of hours rappelling and ascending, to get our equipment adjusted properly. |
Sunday Jun 11 |
| Hiking 1:30:00 [2] | |
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| On and off trail at WRSP and the Chisago loop north of Osceola. |
Saturday Jun 10 |
| Map Run race 15:00 [4] ** | |
| shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Wild Summer Sprint AR at YMCA St Croix. Started with a team challenge (1/2 feet) and ran down to the river for the paddling TA. Also includes time running back to the HQ. |
| Paddling (kayak) race 1:00:00 [3] ** 2.5 mi (24:00 / mi) | |
| spiked:1/1c shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Paddled downstream a little over a mile to answer a question-CP. Overtook Jiffy Lube and pulled out of the water in a tie for 1st. WEDALI was a little behind, but not far plus they were taking it easy after Michigan. |
| MTB (road) race 1:42:00 [3] ** 23.7 mi (4:17 / mi) | |
| spiked:3/3c |
| Transitioned to bikes and worked our way through the country roads down to Kinnickinnic SP. In the park, dropped bikes at a TA and had a surprise gear check, then went for an orienteering loop along the Kinnickinnic River (see below.)
After O-section, got one more CP from a secondary map (since it was on the dogleg return route), biked back and came off the clock at 3:52 in 3rd place. |
| Orienteering race 55:00 [3] ** 3.5 mi (15:43 / mi) | |
| spiked:3/4c |
| Get 4 CPs in a loop in the state park. Went down the wrong (unmapped) ravine on CP 3, recovered quickly and crossed the shallow river, then up a steep slope to CP 4, then around the bluff edge and down along the river bank to CP 5 and 6. Entered the section in 4th place and passed Speed Kills to come out in 3rd, about 11m behind Jiffy Lube. |
| Note | |
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| Had to finish the race with a successful bouldering wall or sustain a 2 min/person penalty. It was a kiddie wall. |
Thursday Jun 8 |
| MTB (technical) 1:10:00 [3] 11.0 mi (6:21 / mi) | |
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| Took the new bike out for 2 full loops at Lebanon Hills. |
Wednesday Jun 7 |
| Swimming 1:10:00 [2] | |
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| with Dan |
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| C • Happy to see 2 |
| Note | |
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| Picked up the new bike today. |
Tuesday Jun 6 |
| Swimming 1:00:00 [2] | |
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Monday Jun 5 |
| Swimming 45:00 [2] | |
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Sunday Jun 4 |
| Note | |
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| MNOC Ney members only |
| Hiking 30:00 [1] | |
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Saturday Jun 3 |
| Hiking 45:00 [2] | |
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