OUTDOOR PURSUIT RTN CHAMPS

September 22, 2005

Talk about logistics. There had to be more than a hundred emails centered around getting our team from Calgary to Fort Coulonge QC. We were planning for the Raid the North Championships. Deb's sister, Beth, lived in Ottawa and was a tremendous help in getting ourselves organized. Eventually, we settled on renting a cube van and splitting the cost with Geoff.

Despite Wild Rose's advice to travel to the venue a day early, we had decided to roll the dice and leave Wednesday morning. If everything went perfectly, we'd be arriving at Fort Coulonge at 7:00 pm, leaving us a scant 2 hours to get our meal and get checked in before receiving the maps and course description.

For that reason, the race start for Outdoor Pursuit, really seemed like Wednesday morning. Getting through check-in with four bike boxes and four oversized bins and then getting Deb through security with her knives in her carry-on provided us with a little early morning entertainment. At least we got to hang with Chris from FAR while we waited for the plane.

Once arriving in Ottawa, we set our weeks of planning into motion. Wayne, Deb and Joey collected our baggage and assembled the bikes while I got a ride with Beth to the rental place and returned to the airport with the 2 ton van. Despite a last minute tire blowout on Joey's bike, they were ready to load up when we got back.

We all piled into the van, Joey and Deb rode in the back as we drove to Esprit Adventures. A quick stop for something to eat and we still arrived at 7:30pm. Not bad. Being the last team to arrive, we had the FAR staff to ourselves and were able to check in with enough time left over to grab a seafood dinner. Great food, by the way.

The race briefing was quite short. All the teams in attendance were repeat customers of FAR and knew about the usual rigors that lay ahead. The briefing was more for the specifics about the race course. And there were a lot. Starting with 12 maps and a booklet describing specific rapids on the rivers that we would be navigating. It took Wayne and myself 3 hours to mark all the maps. Combined with necessary packing of our gear, we didn't get to sleep until nearly 2 am.

Thursday

The next morning, we got up early and got the remainder of our stuff ready. The teams piled into the school bus and we began the long ride to the start line. It took nearly 4 hrs to get there, but we made it with 5 minutes to spare. The race directors had no mercy, "4 minutes to go!" Yikes! Thankfully we had everything sorted out before we boarded the bus.

"Go!" And just like that the small group of teams were off trotting down the road. The first part of the race was a 'LeMans' start of a 4 km run with all your paddling gear to the canoe pickup on the DeMoine river.

It was 5 minutes into the run when suddenly, Deb tripped on her own feet. She got up and limped a little. Then said, "It's ok, my ankles are really flexy!" Um, ok. I guess that's good? We got going again and hoped that that would be the worst of our bad luck. Fat chance!

We got to the canoes and launched with most of the teams. We had 42 km and 27 rapids ahead of us. Including three mandatory, unmarked portages. It was kind of neat that we were responsible for knowing when to go around the big water. Especially when they are named thins like: Canoe Eater.

Considering that Joey and I had dumped our canoe 4 times in the race just last weekend, it was nothing short of amazing that we remained upright. Even over some really big rocks that we hit pretty hard, we kept our balance and rode them out. A few teams did tip. Well, at least a lot of teams scraped over a bunch of rocks, there were colourful smears on all the rocks that we saw; every colour of canoe.

After zigzagging through the rapids and powering across the many pools, a light rain started falling. Wayne pulled up next to our boat and sarcastically said, "Gee, I wish it would rain harder." We laughed... then about 10 minutes later, Wayne got his wish. The sky opened up and started dumping buckets of water on us. By the time we were getting close to CP2, it was pouring heavily enough that I had to pause my paddling to run the bailing bucket a few times.

The first TA was at La Grand Chutes, a big series of waterfalls and rocks. We quickly chose the wrong side of the river to beach on and given our proximity to the throat of the rapids, figured we'd be better off canoe-whacking than trying to skirt across the river. We blamed our bad take-out point on the fog. Ah well, after getting to the road, we hoofed the canoes into transition and dumped them unceremoniously next to the growing pile.

Transition was a race to get warm. After being in the rain for 3 hours, we were all chilled. Thankfully, the organizers allowed the racers to change in the back of the truck to stay out of the rain. Wayne had to spend a few minutes jamming a stick in his ear to try and scrape out the remains of a bug that had been torturing him for the past hour, once he dug out most of the bits, we pulled out of the TA at dusk.

The next section was a 20 km trek with a big rappel in the middle. There were really only two options to get to the rappel, bushwhack 8 km on the east side of the DeMoine river or following a trail on the west side and then crossing the river. We opted for the latter and before long we found the trail just off the shore of the river. During this first half of the trek, the rain and clouds lifted.

The trail faded out into the bush about 5 times. Each time, we had to romp around in the woods until we found something that seemed like a bonafide trail. After a few hours and after hearing three sets of rapids on our left, we figured we were close to our desired crossing point, so we aimed off through the woods and arrived at the river bank. It was difficult to figure out exactly where we were on the river and since any part of the river could be any depth, we decided to cross right there. I stripped down, jammed my dry clothes into a dry bag and plunged into the black water. I aimed for Wayne's lights on the opposite river bank and in short order, I was neck deck, tip-toeing across. Poor Deb, she's a little shorter and she was swimming for this portion. "I'm a strong swimmer, I swear," she said as she slowly drifted with the current.

Once on shore, we bushwhacked up the slope to the peak of the hill where the rappel was going to be, but on top, all we found was five other confused teams wandering around. We joined the fray and after about 45 minutes of head scratching, we stumbled across a few glowsticks a fair ways south of the actual peak.

Friday

We were the 5th team to arrive at the ropes. Not bad. We had a few minutes to wait because there was already two teams on the ropes, but before long, we were tying in to descend the 400 ft to the river shore. We each took our turn doing the herky jerky down the stiff new rope (400 ft of rope is pretty heavy) The moon had come out and you could vaguely make out another impressive cliff face across the river.

At the bottom, Team Fudugazi had built a bonfire to warm up. Wayne, Deb and myself were toasting ourselves while we waited for Joey. Apparently, his carabiner had jammed up and they were having to change it out, mid-rappel. That extra time was all us three need to get warm, so poor Joey, as soon as he arrived, we were ready to go.

After another kilometer of bushwhacking, we came across a cart track that lead up to a road that was on the map. The time on the trail seemed about right, but that road didn't match very well with the topography around it. Maybe it was just because it was at night, but we followed anyways knowing that there hadn't been any other turn offs that were even close to the right direction. Thankfully, the turns and climbs started to make sense and at 5:00 am, we walked into the next transition.

Everyone knows that you should start a race feeling cold, but in that transition, it was too hard to do. We all bundled up, got on our bikes and 20 minutes we were all peeling layers. It was a bit of a balancing act because the climbs were never long enough to warrant taking off too many and the descents were still quite cold and always came shortly after any climb. Nothing at all like Idaho Peak.

We passed through CP5 without difficulty, but on the way to the next transition, we had a spat of bad karma. First, a wrong turn which added about an extra 15 minutes to the trip, but on the way back up, Joey and Deb bumped tires sending Joey into a slow motion fall onto some rocks. Other than a Charlie Horse on his ass, he was ok, but not 2 minutes later, his tire came off the rim and blew his tube. Two minutes and the tube was changed and we were off again. Then, for the capper, Deb stands on her pedal to climb a hill and her pedal comes off. Thankfully, it only buggered up the last thread and after about five minutes of tinkering with it, we had her up and biking again. Kudos to Joey for bringing a pedal wrench!

Although long, the bike ride wasn't too eventful. I think we were all happy to be at the next transition so early. It would give us a better shot at doing the next trek in the daylight. It was transition 3 and we were heading out onto a 40 km trek that would start with what Wayne considered to be the crux of the race. We had to navigate around the north of Lac MacGillvary to a remote checkpoint on the far east side. None of the maps had any trails, so it was going to be either 12 km of hiking the shoreline or 7 km of bushwhacking. On the bike ride in, we passed the entry forest for the bushwhacking and it seemed very spacious and pleasant.

We left transition at 4:00 pm Friday afternoon and it didn't take long for us to find the inlet on the NW of the Lake. Or did it? The topography on the map was somewhat lacking in detail. We had counted the hills we had gone over and we had a vague idea of time, so this should be the inlet. From there, we aimed off to the north. Not far in that direction was Lost Lake (oooh, foreshadowing) that had a straight-ish south shore ending at a distinctive cliff face. They were to be out prominent features that would help fix our position. The trouble was, in reality, we had aimed off too early.

We did find a lake. It was small compared to what we were expecting, but it was possible that we were looking at an inlet of the big lake. We decided to move around to the east of the lake to get another vantage point. We did that, it didn't help. Before long, we decided that we'd better strike east until we hit water. We hiked up and over several hills, across a couple swamps and all the while, the topography wasn't fitting with where we thought we were. It was nightfall when we finally encountered water. Great, which lake is this?

We started circumnavigating the shoreline around the south. When the shore took a turn to the SW (away from our intended direction) we made the shoreline fit Lac MacGillvary. That meant we just had to go north and we were there. Rule #1, you're not as far as you think you are. The north topography didn't fit either. Based on what we saw, it meant that we were allll the way over to the west. We hadn't even done half the distance yet and it was 9:00 pm. Crap.

Saturday

At least we knew where we were. The bad news was that the south shore of Lost Lake was tightly packed spruce trees. Bushwhacking that holds you at about 1-2 kph at best. I guess it was around midnight when we had almost passed Lost Lake (it's a big lake) that we decided to have a nap. We curled up on the shore, fell asleep and 5 minutes later, woke up shivering. The temperature had dropped to 0C and next to the lake, it felt quite cool.

Joey and Wayne were trying to start a fire when I woke up. Their stories differ as to who was doing what, but when I got involved, Joey had just picked up the stuff Wayne had gathered and moved it closer to me. I picked up some bark and proceeded to try and use that. Between the three of us, we managed to get it going and in a few minutes, we had a pleasant fire to beat back the cold, dark night.

Joey minded the fire while the rest of us dozed off. At some point during our stop, Wayne jumped up from a dead sleep, put his thumbs in his belt loops and said, "Let's get the fuck outta here!" And then laid back down and went to sleep. LOL! This was the running joke for the rest of the race. Poor Wayne, he was being serious. Eventually, we did get up, doused the firea and struck off into the woods again.

Navigation from here was easy, so without any new surprises, we arrived at CP7 at 4:00 am. It was going to be difficult to complete the remaining 25 km in 11 hrs including about 3 km of bushwhacking. Difficult, but not impossible as long as our navigation from this point forwards was nearly flawless.

We left CP7 and after about a 15 minute extra bushwhack (didn't you say flawless?), we were on the trail. The sun was just about to come up and the temperature was at its coldest for the race. Our pace had slowed to a 3 kph and Joey was frequently falling asleep while walking. Turns out he had asked me to mind the fire last night so he could get some sleep. My answer: roll over and fall back asleep. I didn't hear him, I swear, so he ended up not getting any sleep while the rest of us power napped.

We hunkered down on the gravel road we were on and built another fire. This one was much easier to start. Not only did Wayne remember he had a lighter, he also remembered a trick with cedar branches. In no time, we had a warm fire in the middle the road. We all curled up and slept this time because this time, there was nowhere for the fire to spread. About 45 minutes later, I woke up to the cold and stoked up the fire again. I spent the next 45 minutes roasting my socks and shoes trying to dry them out a little.

It was 8:00 am when we left this stopover and were powering along the roads. We thought we had been so smart to stop and make a fire until we found two other fire stops along the way. Seems other teams did the same thing. Our pace was a solid 6 kph, our spirits were high and the roads we were on were matching exactly with the topography. We even met up with Team Pure along the way.

We waded across another river and then headed SE for the next short bushwhack section. Despite a wrong turn after finding the trail, we made great time to the lakes where our aiming off point would be. We trekked into the bush and this time, we didn't change the plan once we got going. Our plan worked great and CP8 was obtained in no time.

We left CP8 already knowing that we weren't going to make the canoe cutoff. But we were all determined to continue on for as long as FAR would let us. The experience so far had been generally positive and even though we had royally screwed up the crux of the race, we still had the energy and drive to get to the fun stuff near the end.

From CP8, we joined a cart track that slowly got bigger and bigger until we were on bonafide roads. Unfortunately, by this point, Wayne and Joey had started to develop some blisters. 12 km on roads seems close, but in hindsight, even though it was the last trek, we still should have stopped to tend to the feet.

The numerous road intersections along our route made navigation tricky. We resigned ourselves to following signs to Lac Jim, the location of CP10 and then next TA. Team Pure had passed by us and were looking strong. A few hours later, Team 21 passed by us getting a ride from some local quad-ers, their race was over. One of their guys had blisters that were pretty bad.

We joined the main road and from here it was simple. Two km north and then onto a road that went east for 2 km to the penninsula on Lac Jim. We did that and we thought we were heading into the final stretch for the TA when the quaders that had given Team 21 a ride came out and told us that there was nobody down the road we were on and that we should be on the road that's 2 km north of where we were. Given our mistake in assuming we had been further than we were in the bushwhacking section, this seemed like a plausible mistake and since Wayne and Joey were hobbling significantly, even an extra wasted 500 m was too much to bear.

We doubled back, picked up a trail that went north and followed it to another equally substantial road that went east. We followed it almost to the shoreline, when again, the road just was not matching topography. It didn't seem right and in the distance to the south, we could hear a generator. Hmm, seems conspicuous.

We gambled and took a road that went south. Soon, we were walking through the town of Lac Jim, but was this where the TA was or was it near a settlement that showed as being south of where we intended. Wayne knocked on a door (it was 10:30pm) and asked them to point on the map where their house was. We were close to the TA, it was almost over. Joey even felt lucid enough to try and barter his Power bar for the person's steak. No dice.

A little further south and we came to the Hotel on Lac Jim. It was about 500 m away from where we had encountered those quaders. Crap. Two and a half hours and an extra 4 km and sure enough, a bunch of lights and there was Chris, telling us the plan they had for us.

It turned out that half of the teams had missed the cutoff and as a result, FAR had devised a short course where teams would be shuttled to the end of the second canoe (from TA4-TA5) where they would mount their bikes and begin the last portion of the race.

However, we were the last team to arrive (that was still 'racing') and after 31 hrs trekking, we were hungry and tired beyond our ability to keep going without some rest. Combine that with the fact that Joey's and Wayne's feet were swollen and painful and the thought of cramming their feet into bike shoes was very unpalatable, we decided to be shuttled all the way to TA6, the start of the whitewater rafting section.

We hopped into the truck and got a ride south. Along the way, apparently Bob had given the map to Joey to get him to navigate and Joey was so groggy that he couldn't get the map upright. He gave the map back and fell asleep.

Sunday

We arrived at TA6 at 1:00 am. Wayne jumped out and set up the tent in no time. He opened his sleeping bag and climbed in. Joey walks in and starts us all giggling with, "I smell dead people." Yah, we stink!

At 6:00am, one of the organizers thumps our tent and tells us we'll have to go soon. Given that we aren't even on the short course and doing the raft to bike pickup was just for fun, we asked to sleep in.

We got up at 8:00 and at 8:30 we pushed the raft into the water. Initially, it was flat water, ugh. But before long we went down a chute of solid class III. Neat! And then another. We eventually came to one that sounded pretty big. We saw the guides on the shore, but we didn't clue in that this was Dragon's Tongue and it was the mandatory guide pickup location until the guys on shore started waving us over. They hopped in and we went down this big drop. Class IV they said. Cool!

We arrived at CP14, the bike pickup and when Deb tried to get out, she managed to get her lifejacket skewered by one of the paddles. We all had a good chuckle while she tried to stop laughing long enough to get unhooked.

We got onto the bikes and the guys were delighted to find that their blisters didn't hurt while cycling. Yah, just don't hike a bike and you'll be fine. Despite a short wrong turn, we got ourselves onto some big gravel roads in no time. We formed a pace line and pushed pretty hard for the finish. It was Joey and Wayne out front pulling us in. My legs were hurting, so I couldn't contribute much. I figured, it would be enough for me to just hang on.

We rounded the corner for Esprit rafting and the finishing coup was Wayne and Joey riding up the ramp into our rental truck. LOL! Don't we need to finish w/ our mandatory gear? Wait, never mind.

The post race was uneventful. We all felt way better than we have after a 36 hours race. Probably due to the 10 hrs of sleep we had obtained over the race course. The afternoon was a blur of chatting with the other teams, regalling Wayne's moment at the fire at Lost Lake a hundred times, eating the fantastic meal and of course packing up our stuff.

Beth had driven out to meet us and she even offered up her place as somewhere to crash for the night. We drove the rental truck towards her place south of Ottawa and stopped for pizza in Hull, QC. We spent the hour eating and giggling. We finished the drive to Beth's place and then spent more time in Beth's kitchen giggling non-stop.

Monday

The next morning, we dropped off the rental ($800! Glad Geoff is splitting us on the cost) and then hooked up with Beth to tour Ottawa. Walking around Ottawa wasn't high on our list of to-dos because of our feet and because it was raining pretty hard. Yes, outside of racing, we turn into wimps. We drove by the canals and parks and we even stopped in the market area to eat.

By the way, Wayne, your fat camp didn't work. I got on the scale at home Monday night and I was 10 lbs heavier than when I started! WTF?