This past weekend saw Jen Silverthorn, Bill Jarvis, and myself out doing a 100 km / 18 hour adventure race in the mountains just west of Calgary. (approx. 100km if you followed the most direct route!) The usual combination of running, biking, orienteering, & paddling with the race starting at 1600 hrs to ensure we got to race through the night.

The race started with paddling on Barrier Lake. We got about 1 km out on the paddle and had a lovely Rocky Mountain thunderstorm descend upon us turning the calm lake into foot high waves in a matter of minutes. Thankfully nobody dumped their boat. Out of the boat and then run / scramble up a mountain & back down to the boat to paddle back to the starting point for the first transition. We were in about 15th place starting the scramble, and passed 5 or 6 teams & racers during the scramble, and then got passed again by two teams and one solo racer during the paddle back to Barrier Dam. At best guess we were in 5th place in teams starting the first cycling section.

From Barrier Dam the route was the Lusk Trail over the first mountain range to the next valley east of us. This trail was quite steep and sandy, so much of the up was accomplished by pushing our bikes, but the wild ride down the other side was suitable rewarding. We had a momentary bobble when we started up the Mt Baldy trail instead of the Lusk trail, but spotted that quickly and corrected our error. A couple of the racers in front of us weren't as fortunate and at least one team spent 3 or 4 hours trying to get to Checkpoint 4 via Mt Baldy... We then biked (& pushed!) to Checkpoint 5 at the top of Jumping Pound Ridge. (the first mountain ridge as you leave the Prairies and enter the mountains - what a fabulous view)

From Checkpoint 5 we took a horse trail back down (not the bike trail) which offered great technical riding. On a bike trail, many of the rocks get pushed aside and the roots get flattened out, but the equestrian trails have most of those obstacles still in place... Bill is still a fairly novice rider and had some difficulty with the descent, but we all got to the bottom ok. We took a brief stop at the bottom to purify some additional water from the stream which allowed us to chat with one of the solo racers who advised us that people were having difficulty find the stream crossing and trail on to Checkpoint 6. (One team spent nine (9) hours looking for this crossing!) We therefore took a little more care in navigating to the crossing and were rewarded by jumping into 2nd place in the teams, only seconds behind the leading team.

From Checkpoint 6 we had a downhill run to the Sibbald Creek Road and on to Forgetmenot Pond. We reached the road just at the end of twilight, and then passed the first place team on the road to Forgetmenot Pond. (although we were only moments ahead of them at T2) We then dumped off the bikes and gathered our trekking gear for the climb to the top of Powderface Ridge (which is higher than Jumping Pound) & back down to the Powderface parking lot. Both of the leading teams left T2 at the same time, but we quickly left the other team behind on the climb. We got to the top of Powderface at about midnight, and there was just a great display of Northern Lights in addition to the view back over the plains towards Calgary & the mountains etc.

After the trek we transitioned back onto the bikes for a brief ride to Station Flats the Orienteering section. Dawn was just starting as we ran the Orienteering course up & through & over some small (200 - 300 m) hills and it was mostly light by the time we finished that. Bill comes to adventure racing from Orienteering and knew the area well, so we ended up with the second fastest orienteering time in the race. After the Orienteering I fixed Bill's bike, as he had broken his rim somewhere earlier in the race and had flatted in the final kilometer of the bike into the orienteering section. There wasn't much we could do about the rim (aside from virtually disconnecting Bill's rear brake) but the flat was easily repaired.

We then had to get from Station Flats to the West Bragg Creek parking lot. The Tom Snow Trail goes there, but we figured it would be shorter and quicker if we bushwacked to Allen Bill pond and then went in from there on the Elbow Springs Trail. The bushwack was not that easy, but we saw a great sunrise over a field of dew covered grass that was just dazzling. The Elbow Springs trail tends to be muddy at the best of time, and with the thunderstorms from the previous day it was its usual muddy self. I hit a top speed of 69 kph going down that the final hill into West Bragg, with the mud flying all over the place and the bike sliding and jumping over rocks & puddles... I had a grin a mile wide when we reached the next checkpoint.

The final stage looked like it would be easy, as it almost had to be gravel & then paved roads to the Wintergreen Ski Hill, but the organiser had found a gravel road that went up the valley behind the mountain the ski hill is on, and she then made us go right over the top of the ski hill before descending to the finish. The route up the back side of the hill followed a power line up about a 30% grade ...

We finished in 17 hours 5 minutes for fifth place overall, and first place in the teams. Good navigation and good teamwork were the keys to our success, as we certainly were not the best paddlers or bikers. We also had great support from Iris and Greg (our support crew) who had everything ready for us at every transition point.

The route didn't seem that difficult in terms of navigation and it didn't seem that hard in terms of endurance, but it certainly trashed a good number of the competitors. Only two of the fifteen teams officially finished, and only about a third of the solo finishers.