With IMCdA on the books for next year, one of my racing goals for this year was to do a 36 hr Adventure Race. At the time our "regular" gang was getting organized for the Full Moon in June race I had a schedule conflict with race timing for the Calgary Roadrunners, and so despite my comment that I would resolve that conflict I was unceremoniously punted from the team less than 30 minutes after I had sent that e-mail out.

Mike was already hooked up with Rick and Chris for Raid the North, and Jen with the Edmonton gang, but after some efforts to build my own team (in which Mike, Chris, & Rick promptly recruited Jenna and Jen grabbed Andrew Royle) I ended up getting hooked up with a co-worker from here at CNRL and the Crape Geomatics team. Darren, Sabrina, and Scott had all done the Death Race solo at the beginning of August, and Darren and Scott had also both finished solo runs on Race the Rockies, so I figured if anything I was the weak link from a fitness perspective.

We headed out on Thursday, and had a fairly uneventful drive out. We grabbed some race food in Vernon; some junk food for quick energy snacks, but real food for "meals". (as best as one can plan for those) We reviewed area topo maps and a backcountry guide and seculated on routes for a while, but crashed relatively early.

On Friday morning we prepared our gear and headed out at 0900 hours for the usual pre-race inspections and briefings. Nothing of vast interest there, except that the rappel was evidently going to be epic, as we needed back up safety gear and would evidently be descending some 400+ metres including 70 of those down a waterfall. Back for some more study of the maps, and then time to crash until the official maps were handed out at 1600 hours.

We walked down to the pre-race briefing with Mike and Co, and with the usual nervous pre-race banter & jibes going back and forth. After some talking, the maps were finally handed out and described, and we headed back to our condo to really prepare.

The race started right at the top of the chairlift at Silver Star Ski Hill, headed north past Armstrong, descending to Enderby. We then climbed back up the mountain on the north side of the Shuswap River and bushwacked, rappelled, and biked along the south end of that Enderby massif. At Check Point 6 you could choose to do the regular course (bike down to Check Point 7 and start the canoe) or do the advanced course (another set of bushwacking and a much much longer canoe before joining the regular course at Check Point 7) From Check Point 7 it was 18 km of paddling, then 20+ km of riding (on a gravel road) before hiking your way all the way back up to the Silver Star resort complex.

The race map was a bit of a kludge; on average it was 20 years old, bits were printed in both metric and imperial scales, and most of the cut lines, logging roads, and local trails were left out, especially the trail from the immediate resort area north for the first 5 or 6 km. We updated and annotated our map as best we could from the local backcountry guidebook and whatever Resort Maps we could get, and after much debate concluded that the trail we needed to get to probably ran off the Silver Star Resort trail to a spot called "Alder Point".

We finished our last minute preparations, crashed for a bit longer, and headed out to the chair lift at about 2315 hrs. Riding up the chair we got hit with a few light sprinkles of rain, but the clouds were rolling by quite fast, and it seemed likely we were looking at generally hot conditions for the race. Upon reaching the top, the race organizers stopped us in the chair about 50 feet from the unloading point and teased us for being the last team up, but given the choice of sitting in a comfy chair in a warm dry room or huddling on rocks and roots, trying to hide from wind and rain on the top of the mountain, I would gladly be last again.

At midnight we all headed out, riding down the hill in a wild adrenaline surge. And promptly screeched to a halt when it became evident we hadn't followed the trail we had wanted to follow and were now one whole ski run down the hill from the junction we had wanted to turn on. Back up the hill and onto the trail to Alder Point…

Once we had climbed back up, we headed out towards Alder Point, and reasonably soon ran into both Mike and Jen's teams. But not the road to Enderby. We tried up the trail. We tried down the trail. Eventually Jen and company headed out buskwacking down a perceived cut line. Mike's gang tried going still further down the hill, and we tried a bushwack, but gave that up as a bad job after only 20 metres due to the dense ground cover. Eventually both Mike's and our gang headed back up towards the very start and found a trail heading west that connected to the road which went north to Enderby. And at 0322 hours we cried "hurrah" and headed off north, having reached a trail junction which was maybe 15 minutes from the top of the ski hill.

The road north was a bit muddy in places, with a couple of small uphills, but was mostly a glorious downhill run on doubletrack. We would go past Mike and Co. on the uphills and flats, and Rick and Jenna would promptly lead Mike's gang past us on the downhills, screaming past us at about 60 mph. Scott (our captain) had one good crash, but the rest of us managed to stay upright. Darren (our navigator) has his light break (which made reading the map difficult), but by the time we got near Check Point 1 it was already dawn anyway.

Check Point 1 proved to be a bit sticky, as our altimeters had drifted during the night, and the "ATV" track in the course description hadn't seen any sort of ATV travel on it in years. So we descended past it, and lost yet another few minutes climbing back up to it.

Thankfully the route to Check Point 2 (transition Point 1) was a very obvious provincial road, as we had only planned our initial food and water for a 4 hour stint, and by now we were at about 7 hours. ( I was completely out of food and drained my last water on the final hill before the transition)

The good news was that we had reaxhed the first transition. The bad news was that the leading team (Wild Rose) had already cleared Check Point 6, some 25 km ahead of us. I quickly scarfed down a breakfast of hot oatmeal and fruit, we reloaded our packs, and we headed up the mountain to Check Point 3.

400 metres up the road from the Transition Area, Scott started throwing up. And he kept throwing up all the way up the mountain, while the rest of the team tried to get fluid and food into him or help him via towing and taking equipment from his pack. Scott worked it really hard, but he wasn't getting any nutrition in, and our pace had slowed considerably by the time we had finished the climb up the hill and prepared to start the bushwack into Check Point 3. We caught up with Team 6 at the top of the climb, who advised us that by that time they had spent almost 6 hours looking for Check Point 3,

We had planned to just blast into the check point from any reasonable point on the road, but with Team 6's information, instead planned a route which gave us a known starting point about 400 metres from the control. Check Point 3 was described as being in a clearing in a saddle on a fairly predominant 100 ft high by 500 metre long ridge. By starting only 400 metres away, how tough could it be?

Three hours later we still hadn't found it. We couldn't even recognize the 400 metre long ridge. Scott was just about done in, and we parked him and Sabrina on an easily findable knoll, and Darren and I headed out on scouting runs.

Two hours later still we still hadn't found it. Scott had got in some rest, but he was still throwing up and wasn't getting any fluid or food to stay down. Worse, his pace when we were all moving was probably only 1 km per hour in the dense bush. After another hour we pulled the pin and started walking out. We still hadn't found the control, the barometric pressure was changing and hence our altimeter was way off (the knoll Sub & Scott were on rose some 90 ft in less than an hour during our search runs) we couldn't see anything to confirm where we were, and were once again out of water and food.

We got back out to the road at about 1530 hours, and called in our withdrawl to race headquarters. Sabrina, Darren, and I really wanted to get to Check Point 3, and even more to do the rappel at Check Point 4, but we could see we wouldn't have enough time left after taking Scott back down to the Check Point 2 Transition area. As it was, it took about 2 hours to walk back down the road, and meet our support crew. Stepping into the support truck, we closed the doors, and the heavens opened up with a very solid rain. We headed back to the condo at Silver Star and crashed.

On Sunday we packed up and headed home, but not after finding a detailed map of the Silver Star Resort area. (which very clearly showed how to get onto that road to Enderby - and it was probably no coincidence that Team Wild Rose had parked themselves right below that point during their pre-race planning…) On that map the bushwack that Jen's team had taken looked to be a bushwack from hell, but there was a reasonably easy way to climb back into the resort should we have ever got that far.

We also drove back up the mountain at Enderby and made yet another attempt to find Check Point 3, and we did find a defined clearing at about the correct elevation, off to the southeast of a saddle. However based on Jen's description of the checkpoint, I don't think it was the right one even yet. I had also passed within 40 feet of that clearing on two occasions during my searching on Saturday, and while I couldn't even spot that clearing from where I had been standing, (even when I knew where it was!) I would have been clearly visible for anyone in the clearing, and I would hope that the Volunteers manning the station would have said something to me if I was that close.

In the end, only 4 teams out of 27 finished the race, and neither of the two teams that tried the advanced course managed to finish. The rain (which we missed) really got to many teams, and I think many also miscalculated on their food and water needs with the bushwacking being so much slower than we all anticipated.

And while I didn't like our result, I really enjoyed the race, and racing with Sabrina, Scott, and Darren. The team was always supportive of each other, and always positive - even after 5 hours of looking for a control. Crape Geomatics was fantastic about sponsoring the team, and I only wish we could have done better for Mike and Mark. (our support crew) The bike was an absolute blast, (Ronman Jon would still be grinning) and I would dearly have loved to have done the rappel. The river segment also sounds like it had some fun whitewater. (although the team I talked too wasn't good with whitewater, and especially didn't like doing it at night!)

The Full Moon in June 36 hr race looks bad for next year (something about a June Ironman), but I'll hopefully be back to try a 36 again sometime next year. In the meantime, I'll try to get back on track at the Half Moon in September !