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News >> 02.01.08 >> 09.20.07 >> 09.20.07 >> 02.16.07 |
Team Traveler's Report on Ozark Challenge 2004 Nathan Siria The Ozark Challenge was the first adventure race Team Traveler ever did, and over the years and throughout our travels it has remained, unquestionably, our favorite 24-36 hour race. This year was our our 6th time to compete in the Ozark Challenge, and we can say that it was the best course to date. Zen, Pam, Wes and many others did a great job and should be a model for how adventure races should be designed and managed. At the starting line, Traveler consisted of Greg Eason, Hap Seliga, Jenny Foster, and myself, Nate Siria. However, this combo was finalized only two weeks before the race when we found out that our regular female racer, Roberta Orr, was not going to be able to join us this year. We were a little concerned about not racing with Roberta and finding a new female, but we knew Roberta had some pretty good reasons for not racing and regretfully began to make plans to search for a replacement. We were in luck that Jenny Foster was not racing with a team this year and was willing the sign on with us in such short notice. We were able to get a couple of good paddles in on the Arkansas River before the race. Friday April, 16th 2004: Pre-Race Meeting: As adventure racing has progressed through the years, race organizers have begun distributing the course book and maps at the start of the race, or during transitions throughout the race. Our team prefers this method so that we can get a good nights sleep and not agonize over UTM's and possible routes. Adventure racing is about the adventure, challenge, and problem solving. Teams make thousands of decisions preparing for a race and even more during the race. In the back of your mind, you are always aware that each decision effects the next. After a few words on introduction and mandatory gear, we were out of the meeting in no time. We went back to the Lizard Springs Cabin to do our final gear sorting and loading the vehicle. The team was in bed by 10:30pm or 11:00pm. Saturday April 17, 2004: Race Start: We arrived at the Byrd's Campground to meet with the rest of the teams in the middle of the field near the county road and started unpacking our gear. We unloaded the bikes and our gear boxes, setup the table and map tools. It was a little cool that morning with a heavy dew and a light fog in the river valley (photos). Both the Basic and Advanced teams were lined up in the middle of the field. We were wearing our lifejackets and carrying our paddles at the start, and we still were not sure what would be the first discipline. Zen announced that the maps were hidden in a huge pile of boulders used for the rockcrawling competitions. The starting gun when off, and we ran to the rock pile. I ran approximately 300 meter to the pile, retrieved an advanced race packet, and returned to our support station in about the middle of the pack. Greg and Hap quickly plotted the checkpoints, and I worked on connecting the dots. The first leg was on the mountain bike. We got to CP-1 and somehow we were the first team to arrive. We didn't realize that the first teams leaving the start were the basic course teams riding their bikes down to the river for the canoe leg. We turned down this old forest service road for CP-2. We followed the terrain and checked our odometers to where we should be close to CP-2. It looked like the CP should be between two creeks about 75-100 meters off the old road. We jumped off the bikes and bike-wacked our way up to where we thought CP-2 should have been. We continued bike-whacking all the way up to an old service road. We dropped our bikes and began to work our way back down the hill to search more. Other teams started showing up and looking for the CP as well. It seemed like all the teams were searching the woods for CP-2 and in the same area. The north road was just scattered with bikes. Teams were searching everywhere. We thought we were there for 35-45 minutes. Then we started thinking that Zen misplaced the CP, but Zen's CP's have always been in the right locations, so we expanded our search. We ran further east down the old service road and found the real second creek. We had been searching between the wrong two creeks the whole time. We took a quick bearing to the south that took us right to the CP-2. Zen's CP was exactly where it was suppose to be. We thought that there were probably 10-15 teams in front of us at this point. This is where our team shows it's true colors. There were no negative comments. We just moved forward and tried to make up the lost time. Slowly we started passing teams, with some teams take the wrong roads, to finally passing the Muffins and regaining our lead. The following mountain bike leg was one of my favorite mountain bike legs of all the Ozark Challenges that I have done. And it was topped off with a Mulberry crossing close to the end of the leg. I love stuff like this! The water level was fairly low, and we had no difficulties, but it was neat to cross the river. We paddled down the river. We weren't sure how much of a lead we had, so we paddled hard. It was a beautiful day, it was started to warm up, but the humidity was low. The climbing and rappelling section was about half of way through the paddle section. We landed the canoes and worked our way up to the bluffs to where Zen had the ropes set-up. We were a little concerned about climbing with our bike shoes because, in the past, climbs have been moderately difficult ranging from 5.7 - 5.9. Thank goodness the climb was more of a scramble than a difficult rock climb. The ropes were set-up with shunts, self-belaying devices. This system worked great. We used them for Raid the Rock rope sections as well. We were only allowed to use one rope per team. The view was great from the top. It was a very dramatic view of the Mulberry River. We then ran back to the canoes and met the second place team (Smoked Eggs). They were 25 minutes behind us, which is close in adventure racing. We were out of water and needed to refill our bladders, we hadn't refilled since the start of the race, but we were running scared and decided to push on. We only had 3-5 miles to paddle and thought that we could do without, but a couple of miles into it, I was starting to get concerned that I was getting dehydrated. So, I started drinking water directly out of the Mulberry River. I figured that if I were to get sick that it would be in a day or two after the race and could deal with it then. This was the shortest paddle that Zen has ever done, and we weren't complaining a bit. Transition 2 (Canoe to Trek) and First Trekking Leg: We paddled into the transition and got our next set of maps and course book. We were so thankful to get some water and grub! Besides, that, it was a fairly quick transition. The team felt pretty good, so we ran out of the transition. The next CP was positioned almost due west from the transition, but we would have had to cross the river twice to get there with a direct bearing. On the other hand, there appeared to be a trail that stayed along the river bank. We decided to see how far the trail would take us. The trail ended and after measuring the thickness and steepness of the north side of the riverbank, we waded across the river and found a couple of old roads that got us close to where we needed to cross the river again. We crossed the river and found CP-11. To our advantage, we were behind most of the basic teams, which were doing the same navigation section and points. This gave us some pretty good trails to follow through the bush. We got CP-12 with a little searching and then headed straight up to CP-13 on top of the narrow rock fin ridge where Dave Diment was manning the CP. Lucky for us, he was not racing this year. (Dave's team really gave us a run for our money during the last Ozark Challenge). This CP sequence was great! We stayed on top of the narrow ridge line heading north to find CP-14. Hap or Greg made the comment that climbing up to the last two CPs were more difficult climbs than the official rock climb. These were great check points - beautiful. Hap managed to smack his head on the scramble up. Then soon after that, managed to bust his lip wide open and developed a badass-blood-running-off-my-chin-and-down-my-neck-look, that's par with adventure racing. Where's a camera when you need one? We worked our way through the navigation leg and started mixing with the basic course teams. We were glad it was daylight for this leg of the race. This was the best and most difficult navigation that Zen has set-up to date. The basic teams were doing well and seemed to be in good spirits. We were seeing a few snakes here and there, but we didn't see the bear that one of the teams encountered while using the bathroom in a cave. That would have been a sight from both points of view. We trekked up Nix Hollow. There were several basic teams in and around the area searching for CP-16, which was on top of a 40-foot knoll just west of the creek channel. If we had not carefully plotted this point and kept up with our paces, it would have been very difficult to find this point. This was a great creek trek with a very steep climb out of the hollow in a little break in the cliffs to get to CP-17. We drifted a little too far to the east (to take advantage of the flat cleared underbrush), ended up at road intersection, had to back track a little to the west down the road to find CP-18. CP-19 was on a prominent point but it was difficult to trust your bearing and terrain features to get to it. Two basic teams began to follow our route, but started to second-guess us and stopped and headed in another direction. It's not a good practice to follow other teams, because they could be going in the wrong direction. But if you choose to do so, be sure to keep up with where you are on the maps. From CP-19 to CP-20 we angled down the steep slope until we hit an un-mapped old forest service road that was generally going in the direction that we wanted. We decided to follow it for awhile, which paid off because it took us right to CP-20 in the middle of a creek bed. CP-21/Transition Area was on a ridge. We trekked on a pretty good forest service road for a while and then took a bearing through the woods up the CP. We came out on the road with all the support vehicles lined up. We checked in and got our new instructions for the next leg of the race. We felt pressured to move out quickly because we thought that there were teams about 30 minutes behind us. The new CP markers were uniform and easily identified, this was another good improvement. I think Zen is going to leave the CPs in-place for teams to practice their navigation. Transition 3 (Trek to Bike) and Second Biking Leg: We checked in the transition around 6:50pm, which was about an hour or two before dark. So, we hurried with the plotting and routes. I couldn't believe that Zen was taking us all the way up the White River on bikes and then a trekking us all the way back to Byrd's. Without having all the maps laid out edge to edge, I was thinking that it was a monstrous hike and that it would take us 12 hours to just do the trek. I told this to Greg but didn't tell the rest of the team. I didn't want to knock our speed back by the mental aspect of another 18 hours of racing. We got to CP-22 as it was staring to get dark. We were on good national forest roads until we needed to turn onto a 4-wheeler trail that cut through to another dirt road. This was a nice short trail. We didn't have any problems finding CP-23. However, CP-24 and CP-25 were the tricky ones (or we thought that they would be). As we started getting near CP-24, there were all these people camping with 4-wheelers. We weren't familiar with the area, we were stopped and looking at the maps and a couple of guys drove up on their 4-wheelers and they told us that this area was a 4-wheeler park and that there was a bulletin board with a map up the road. We didn't have to use the bulletin board, because based on our odometer readings and terrain we turned off the road and onto the 4-wheeler trail the we thought would take us to the CP. We got CP-24 and close by was a little map on a post. We quickly made some mental notes on which trials we thought would get us closest to CP-25. This method worked well, we found the CP and biked on. We took one trail that led us off course, but we backtracked and eventually hit another dirt road. CP-26 was at the entrance of a pipeline right-of-way. It was important to keep up with the distance and contours, because we needed to turn off the pipeline at one point. We hit the road with a sweet descent down to the White River TA. We had actually plotted CP-28 to be on the North side of the river, but lucky as we were pace lining down the highway, we could see the transition on the south side of the river. We asked our support crew what they were doing on this side of the river, and they just gave us that look like you have been racing too long. I agreed. We made it through the biking legs without a flat, we felt lucky. Transition 4 (Bike to Trek) and Last Trekking Leg: We arrived at CP-28 around 10:47pm. First, we checked the rest of our points and made some additional corrections. I felt that my energy level was about 60% from usual. So, I asked the team to trek at a moderate pace until I properly refueled and hydrated. The biking legs are the hardest legs for me, and I needed a few minutes to fuel backup. They accommodated me and soon we were back to race pace (slower to slow). The support crew had told us that a team was 30 minutes behind us. The pressure was still on. This trekking leg was brilliant. All during the trek, I couldn't believe that there weren't any road or paths on the ridge line. It was this perfect ridge top corridor that took us all the way to Hair Mountain. We crawled through tornado damaged areas and walked on knife blade ridges. I would like to go back and do this trek during the day to see the views. We had a 20-minute problem finding CP-31. It was just off the ridge line and in a hollow. We passed it and then had to back track. And at one point, Hap thought he saw a team's headlights behind us. We were running scared. Once we got to Hair Mountain and the Ozark Highlands Trail, we ran most of the way to the finish. At that point, we started to kid Greg about he and Steve Kirk's record speed hike of the entire Highland's trail (164 miles) about one month earlier. He thought he had not fully recovered from that hike yet, but we couldn't tell. We did waste some time finding CP-34 as well. We hit the creek bed too
early but systematically found the point further down the creek at a Tim
Ernst ASSS@ location. Zen and Pam out did themselves this year. |
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