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Race: |
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Subaru Primal Quest |
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Promotor: |
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CMS Events |
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Date: |
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July 7, 2002 |
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Members: |
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Roy Malone, Dan Rathbun, Marc Scades, Heather Christensen |
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Crew: |
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Shannon Egbert, David Egbert, Trisha Malone, Brandon Nelson |
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Comments: |
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Tough navigation, high altitude makes for challenging course |
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"After racing 68,500 feet of elevation gain over the past 99.5 hours (yea! we finished in less than 100!), I am sitting on a couch trying to act like a potato." |
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Sunday 3:00 PM - 62 four-person teams toed the start line Sunday afternoon in Mountain Village, Colorado (elevation 9900 feet). Standing amongst 240 of the most accomplished adventure racers in the world, I was a bit lost in the grandeur of it all. As Dan, Marc, and Heather twitched nervously next to me while we sang the national anthem, the pre-race butterflies were having a party, and I was the host. The race started with a 3000 foot uphill trek (or sprint for some) and we had decided to try to keep in the top third of the group to start and then work our way up through the pack the rest of the race. As is becoming more prevalent in these races, teams took off like it was a 10K, instead of a 4-9 day adventure race. At about 11,000 feet we passed the bloodied phlegm and vomit, which was evidence of those teams that went out just a little too fast.
The first leg consisted of a 24-mile trek up and over several of Telluride's 13,000’ beautiful peaks. We had received the maps and directions for this stage of the race the Saturday before the start and Dan had plotted our course perfectly. The race director had predicted that the first trek would take approximately 10 hours for the lead teams and up to 30 hours for others. We finished it in 8.5 hours, good enough for 19th place. This was going to be a fast race.
After being properly re-fueled by our super crew in transition area (TA) #1, we were off on our mountain bikes for 103 miles. Up and down, up and down. There are no flat places around Telluride (confirmed by a local surveyor). After almost 24 hours in the saddle, there was not a healthy butt on the team and there was plenty of screaming the next time we tried to sit down. So we decided to lie down instead and took our first rest of the race by getting 2.5 hours sleep in the Ryder truck that served as our crew vehicle.
Tuesday 3:30 AM- Wake up call for a mountaineering section. We took off straight up a mountain (again) and then followed a riverbed until we reached 12,000 feet and the base of a scree covered couloir. At this time we were jockeying for position with three other teams. We quickly found out that that the couloir is not a place to make your attempt to pass. As all three teams scrambled up the scree covered terrain, every couple of minutes someone would scream "ROCK" and a hillside dance would break out as racers tried to jump out of the way of the falling debris. After climbing two more couloirs that topped out at almost 14,000 feet, we rappelled down a short rope section and continued on foot through an incredible rain and lightning storm to TA #3 where we switched back to bikes- again.
What was supposed to be a 3 hour bike ride ended up taking almost 6 hours of mostly bike pushing. On Wednesday at 1:30 AM we pulled into Silverton, a sleepy old mining town that served as our kayak put-in. After 2.5 more hours of sleep we got decked out in our finest wetsuits and took off in the 2-person inflatable boats for a 14-mile paddle on the Animus River, which was running 20% of it's normal volume due to the drought conditions in Colorado. This is where our years of whitewater guiding paid off as we passed several teams stuck on the rocks. After pulling out of the river we had a 12-mile trek with all of our gear before we would see our crew again. Since one of our dry bags did not stay dry, we were forced to walk with clothes that were wet and thus twice as heavy. Dan lived up to his nickname "Danimal" by walking the whole time in his wetsuit in 90+ degree weather while carrying a 50+ pound pack.
Once we came in from the paddle/trek, it was out again on the bikes- not a pretty sight. This time it was for a huge climb up and over a major mountain pass. When we finally arrived at the last TA before the finish, we were all ready to get rid of our bikes forever (or maybe a week anyways). Our crew of Shannon and David Egbert, Trish Malone, and Brandon Nelsen got us motivated for our final trek; one that would take most teams over 20 hours to complete. A quick note on our crew: phenomenal! They were truly our 5th teammate out there. The amount of time for preparation, organization, efficiency, and good karma that they put into this race gave us the chance to break into the top ten, with twenty of the best adventure racing teams in the world participating. Their efforts cannot be overstated.
Back to the trek. We had been racing in positions 7th-11th over the past day and a half and we knew that we would need to push hard if we wanted to finish in the top ten. We opted to not sleep and push to the finish. At about 4:00 AM on Thursday the Sleepmonster struck. (The Sleepmonster is the euphemism for the symptoms that racers with sleep depravation exhibit- think drunkenness). Marc, Heather and I were stumbling around, scaring ourselves with hallucinations of wild animals and other ugly monsters that are only seen by physiatrist patients or racers in need of some serious sleep. After negotiating 10 minutes of sleep with Dan we were refreshed enough to make our final charge. Knowing that there were about four teams that were right behind us, we kept a strong pace-until we got to the last BIG climb. It was a 3000' hike at what had to be close to a 30-degree pitch. The kind of road where you could take five steps and then stop and heave for scarce oxygen at 12,000 feet. We hit this road at noon and the day was hot. We were taking it at a decent pace, when about half way up we looked back and saw Team Shick Extreme racing up to catch us. We had come too long and too far to let that happen, so we redoubled our efforts to make it to the peak, knowing that it was a 45 minute run from the top down to the 450 foot rappel at Bridal Veil Falls.
Typically, the team that makes it to the rappel first has a big advantage because the team behind has to wait until all of the lead team members are down. This would give us a 20-30 minute lead with about a final 2-3 hour trek/dash to the finish. All was going according to plan. We hit the ropes first and Dan, Heather and I were down in a short period of time. We looked up to check on the status of Marc and saw that he was stuck about 1/3 of the way down and going nowhere. Unable to know what was going on, we waited and waited until we saw rescue guides rappelling down to help him out. In the meantime, Team Shick Extreme got on the other ropes and quickly flew down the spectacular drop. Marc was down shortly thereafter and it was disclosed that the Mylar sheath on his rope had shorn away, leaving only the inner core and the outer part had gotten stuck and had jammed his ATC (rappel device).
In what is typical of the quality of personality of those who adventure race, Shick didn't want to beat us because of a mechanical error, and we didn't want to have to file a protest and have a jury decide the outcome. After a brief meeting between the teams we decided to walk in together. We arrived at the finish line Thursday at 6:50 PM side-by-side after almost 240 miles and nearly 100 hours of non-stop racing, sharing 8th place.
Thanks for all those friends and family who gave us good vibes while we were out there. It helped us push through the tough times and motivated us to push faster when we were feeling good. We look forward to seeing you soon. The final results can be seen at www.ecoprimalquest.com
Roy
Team Subaru Adventure Racing
— Roy Malone |
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