Mergeo/Clif in Olympic Peninsula

Pēteris Lediņš:

Short about the race: Organized by Roger Michel, Yumay Chang and Glenn Rogers, 4th DAR. 24h. Kayaking, MTBiking, rogaining at the end so that teams all come together at the finish. Hoodsport, beautiful Bri... Olympic Peninsula. To me - the first ADVENTURE race in US. I and Dave Russell formed Mergeo.com/Clif team while Matt, Julie, Ruaraidh and Kevin - Mergeo.com/MPGear - the overall winners of the race. Results - here. Pictures - here.

Pre-race.

The pre-race meeting was a funny one - the most important fact from it - when Ryan calls Glenn and his son picks the phone to ask who's calling the answer is "Ben, Ben Dover". Not the fact that a bad bushwack is a really bad bushwack and it is a really BAD BUSHWACK. See, it sounds like Bend Over. We get the maps and I have to use some magic UTM or UMT instrument to put on the points for the first time ever. Kimberly checks them and finds good. Dave arrives at like 10 pm and we have a philosophical discussion on the route choices. We have the bright idea of putting scotch tape over our passport - yes, no writing on it, but it will never be wet.

After that I go to the tent at 30 minutes to midnight while Dave is still around. Suddenly I hear someone playing with our bars and I ask who's eating them since they are for the race... Noone answers and I look to see two racoons. Dave is at his car and they run away a bit while he takes the left-over bars and states the fact of two missing. As he goes to sleep the racoons are still around the table and I try to throw a stone at them.

Race.

The race starts with 30 or so kayaks being pushed into the lake with Dave being clever and telling me to sit in front already before the start. A plastic kayak can survive a small push on rocks - nothing special, but we get out in the water the first. DART overtakes us, but we are good at sitting on their wave. The first checkpoint is taken by DART but due to Dave's perfect kayaking skills we are first right after. And so after each of them except for the very last one on the lake where we decide I have to get out of the boat to take it and my legs don't work as expected, so I fall and get dirty hands as DART tries to run away. We cannot catch them on our own, but the bike leg is soon there.

Biking is fun as till we get to the singletrack where Dave falls - OMGOMG! - he is the first rider whom I see to admit that the helmet worked - I feel so relieved when he says we can continue. Black Spot catches us and then we all catch DART who go the opposite direction as they say they did not take the checkpoint they thought it was too early and probably not our, but the 10h race one.

The biking continues with a ridiculously long hike a bike up and then down a hill with wasps and a checkpoint at the end. I get three stings - two on the hip and one on ankle. A wasp even got under by tights! We meet Vivian, who takes a photo of us at the small lake.

We meet Glenn at the trailhead and he says we are a bit slower than expected, but it will be ok and we still can get the advanced route CPs. We make a small mistake, go back to the next bushwack area and find DART right there. We start together and they soon make a mistake of deciding that the bike whack is too hard. They miss the nicest bush-a-bike and then climb-a-bike for like 2 hours and instead go to some boring and fast logging roads. What were they thinking? To make you understand the situation - the whole "trail" was a totally overgrown logging road with thick bushes. The length of the bad section was approximately 2 times a bit less than 1 kilometer. According to Dave it is like in PQ04. And then again it was the "suckers route", isn't it, he says. When we get bored with the trail we decide to climb. 300 meters of horizontal distance, 300 feet of vertical. By map, in fact - much longer. My extra heavy Trek 6500 is heavy as hell in the beginning and even heavier at the end. Hucklberries are one evil plant! Dave helps me out in some places and we manage to survive. Later it turns out that none of the teams that finished the climb actually finished the race.

After the bike climb we take a point and meat first Mergeo/MPGear and then Momar, who both move in unpredictable direction - our original plan says after the point we should go the other way! Just at the point we meet Murray and decide to take the long road around. No more bushwacking. We take a manned checkpoint and continue with some uphill grinding. It is still light and we catch the other Mergeo team. No advanced checkpoints, thus changing of route to get 13th point. It gets dark, we are together with the other Mergeo and lose some attention, then lose them and fly pass the point. We meet DART who are riding the opposite direction and then we come back. Close to CP we find our Canadian friends from MOMAR - it takes some time to find the CP and then we are good to go. Seems we have lost our competitional spirit as we are moving closer to the last kayak. Another manned checkpoint, another uphill grinding and finally we get to kayaks as number 4. No worries, just paddling home in the dark. 108 km of biking, totally sore!

At the rogaining start we are pretty exhausted and a good 1.5 h from DART and first Mergeo team, but still good to continue. Our plan is simple - just take the needed minimum points and then come home. I make a mistake with map - our map upgrades were not pointing to north and I manage to position the map wrongly, great, isn't it? We slowly advance in our route as we pick some more points than planned and finally return at 8:58 with 8 points. Done and we can start waiting.

Aftermath.

The first of the leader teams to fly in is DART. With only 10 CPs (omg!omg! - we could have done better, had we tried)! The next comes other Mergeo with really nice 14 CPs and we start waiting for MOMAR, who come some minutes late and lose 2 of their CPs getting second place with 11. The last team to do the full course is "Team which way out".

Good race, Mergeo!

Sponsorship.

Clif, thanks for sponsorship, my only food at the race was Shot Bloks and Clif Bars. To be accurate I must admit in eating a steak burrito in the TA as well. Thanks, MPGear.com. Thanks, Mergeo. Transport of bikes to TA - Kimberly, thaaanks!