Desert Winds 24+ Hour AR

[jrh_home]

Kayak Lake Mead’s Desert Winds Adventure Race

What can I say? This race claimed to be an expedition wrapped up into 28 hours, and it delivered. The course, set on and around the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, was both epic and beautiful. For us, it was an interesting race, to say the least. We started the process missing teammates, as our regular team was planning on doing another race on the same day, and all of our other friends had committed to other teams. Jim and I figured we’d duo it, until Robert (the race director) recommended Paul Ablett, a guy we’ve raced against but never actually met. Sure! Why not? We finally did meet him only 12 hours before the race start. Oh well – 28 hours is plenty to get to know someone. When 3 am rolled around, we arrived at Rosie’s Den for the usual pre-race intimidation, mitigated only a little by the presence of plenty of friends. Between Paul and us, we seemed to know most of the field, which was nice. 4 am brought the pre-race meeting, and maps. A mad plotting-fest then started while I tried to plot as many points as possible (there were 42 in all) before the start. We stopped with 10 minutes to spare so that everyone could get ready. Fortunately Jim had guessed the course start, so our packs were all ready to go, so no time wasted there.

We loaded the monsters on our backs (wetsuits, PFDs and extra shoes make for heavy, bulky packs) and at 5am sharp started pedaling up to the first point. Within the first 1/2km we ran into our first obstacle: Paul’s tubeless setup started leaking air, and no amount of CO2 seemed to stay in it. Out with tubes and pump, and we were back in the race, no longer in 2nd place, but not far from the pack, either. Checkpoint 0 was not a problem, but we followed a mass of people up to where CP1 was not, and wasted a bit more time. No worries – down through the sand from CP1 to 2 was going well. I felt particularly smug passing Red Energy (who we have raced with and against many times, and they are much better on the bike than I am). So smug, in fact, that my bike remembered his favorite bucking trick and threw me over the handlebars to put me back in my place. Leaking blood and with a semi-moveable knee, we proceeded with rather more caution. En route to CP3 we turned up a wash, and Jim almost instantly claimed that the valley was heading too far north. A quick look at the map and I identified the valley we were in – not the one we wanted to be in. Paul instantly suggested we go up the ‘other’ road, which Jim and I had both failed to see. We turned back to it, stopping to chat to Red Energy as they tried to make the same mistake. DART/NUUN appeared from further up the wrong valley and flew by us, slowed only by me trying to fall off my bike directly in front of them. At CP4 we were heading up the hill to find the actual CP, leaving our bikes with the volunteers, only to look back to near disaster. The volunteer’s ATV was apparently not in gear, and was rolling backwards towards my bike! Fortunately, a fleet-footed guy ran in and caught it! The rest of the bike leg was uneventful (other than sand, another flat, and me falling off at regular intervals).

Finally, the endless sand-pedal was over, and we were at the river. Just in time to see SOLEcollecting their bikes, having already completed the coasteering and swim! Off we coasteered, mixing up a bit of swimming and some hiking. We felt good on this section, enjoying the cool water and being back on our feet. We only bothered with wetsuits for the final swim. The plan was for us to be tied together: Paul to me to Jim (who doesn’t like water much). It worked just fine – Paul dragged us to start with until he got tired, then my more conservative style dragged us the rest of the way across. All was good. My chief fear – biking- was over. Jim’s chief fear – swimming – was over. As far as we could tell, Paul had no fear. All OK? Well, not quite. As we dragged ourselves out of the water just short of the TA under some cliffs, both of Jim’s quads cramped, and he couldn’t stand up. Waves battered him into the cliffs, and he couldn’t move. I saw this, but couldn’t get back to him, because I was tied to Paul, who was looking the other way. A momentary shouting match ensued, until we had everyone’s attention on Jim and dragged him away from the cliff and managed to de-cramp him. You always need a little bit of drama. Fortunately we didn’t need the EMT’s who immediately materialized.

At the TA we grabbed our boats and pack rafts and were headed back to the river, passing DART/NUUN who were already returning with their bikes. There was no one else in sight. Paddling upstream with the wind was FAST. We grabbed the bikes, secured them onto the rafts and put spare PFDs onto them in case of mishap (yes, we’re paranoid….), then went out to face the wind. There were lots of teams coasteering by then, and we exchanged greetings as we paddled passed. Paddling back against the wind took a long time with the laden pack rafts in tow – there were times when for all we paddled, the shore seemed to stay the same. A woman in a fat little boat was paddling along dragging her kids in another fat little boat, and it took all our effort to even catch her! Strangely enough, we still saw no boats in the water. Just as we got back to the TA, finally we saw a kayak leaving (Cowboy Up?), with another (Bullmoose Xtreme) close behind.

Gleefully leaving our bikes and rafts behind, we were off with the wind – literally. Jim and I were comfortable in Paul’s nice double Seda Amigo. Paul was managing remarkable well in our borrowed K1-like single, which I would have flipped several times in the waves. We moved upriver fast (for us desert types who can’t paddle, it was fast – Paul may say otherwise). We pulled into where we had CP13 plotted without incident, only to find it absent. We were sure we were in the right place, so what did Robert mean by 300ft up? Up the cliffs? We couldn’t see anything. Up the canyon? I looked and saw nothing. I returned to the boat and Jim stated, calmly (considering the circumstances). “You mis-plotted by 5km” Oh. It’s back down-river? I ask, rather hopelessly. Fortunately not, so we’re back in the boats and continuing without too much time lost. We find the canyon with the real CP13, and still fail to find it. Paul tries the vertical 300 ft trick, while I try and work out how to go up canyon. Jim finally spots some broken branches, and I crawl through to find the CP. The kayak O-course has started. Strangely enough, that was our last navigational bobble on the boat. The rest passed without incident, unless you count 5 bighorn sheep heading to CP17 as an incident (very tame). It got dark, but we continued to move well.

We finally dragged ourselves ashore about midnight and were ready to go off orienteering – usually a specialty of ours. We started towards OP1 without looking at the clue, but almost immediately realized that things weren’t right. A check of the route book clue suggested a different route, so we headed to the road with Jim looking confused. Jim, map, confused? This is not normal. What’s up? A brief discussion and we determined my second misplot of the day, and it all started to make sense. We went directly to OP1. OP2? Not so simple. We wandered around for about an hour before concluding that we didn’t really know where we were, and therefore had no chance of finding the point. Bail out to road, and a change of plan. We decided, if we weren’t trying to get them all, the best thing to do would be to get the easily navigated ones in the dark – OP10 and 11 were the peaks of major hills, so we couldn’t miss them. We might have done better to stick to that plan, rather than wasting another hour looking for OP18 and spotting it across an impassable (at least in the dark) drainage. We got OP11, then headed towards 9 and 10. We then figured we could stay on road and head uphill until it got light, and collect CPs as we went downhill in daylight, a plan that worked well. We hit OP8 at daybreak, and then effortlessly collected 9 and 10 on the way down. Two checkpoints between midnight and day break wasn’t so good, but three in the next hour was better. We then decided on a route back to 18, which worked fine other than avoiding a 39’ dryfall too small to be visible on the map. I got a chance to kick rocks at Red Energy as we passed them again (not intentional, really, Brian!) We then decided that we really had to find OP2. It had foiled us in the dark, it would submit in daylight. We decided to use the bluntest tool in our navigational toolbox. We went back to OP1, and took a bearing, and walked on that bearing over hills, through drainages etc. until we found it. It wasn’t elegant, but it got us there in the end. While we might have had time to find one more point, we decided that we’d had enough of a good thing, so we jogged off home, feeling remarkably good after 27 hours of racing!

Now I just have to admit to my aesthetically inclined friends that I scabbed up an arm within days of having to wear a wedding dress…..I promised them I wouldn’t. My bike had other plans....

Jane Larkindale
Adventure Racing Concepts

[luckyj]

Nice work, ARC. Here's how our race went:

We passed five teams during our mile swim. We were stoked! Our superior technology made our lack of swimming skill irrelevent. Of course we cancelled out our gains by swimming to the wrong cove; I'd misplotted the transition, so we trudged a mile before realizing our mistake.

http://www.teamlucky.com/Races.aspx?report=13
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