Navigating the Berryman Adventure

On September 25, WEDALI headed south to the Land of the Ozarks for the Berryman Adventure Race, an annual 36-hour sufferfest in the Mark Twain National Forest of Missouri. With a tough late-season race schedule taking it's toll, Andrea stepped in for Scooter five days before the race to join Erl, Mo, and Biz for this competitive event, put on by Bonk Hard Racing. Jason made the trip as well, and was a great help in finalizing in team logistics. He also raced in the 12-hour as a last minute sub and volunteered for the Bonk Hard Racing crew.
To begin the event, racers were transported by bus from race headquarters in Big Spring Park to Round Spring, where the race was started at 11PM on Friday night. With the initial orienteering/trekking section, things were a bit crazy at the start, with teams crawling all over the woods. We took a few "interesting" route choices, and a few minutes here and there led to a confirmed 20-minute lag on the night O-section behind lead team Alpine Shop.

We made a decent transition onto the Current River and paddled from Round Spring to Powder Mill. The first hour or so was in the dark and we watched the sun burn off the fog throughout the trip. A couple small sets of rapids and a few wildlife sightings made things fun. Molly fought the sleep monsters a bit, and was entertained by a few impromptu songs by Justin.The recent rains and fast current made the paddle section go decently fast. It seemed like we lacked a bit of urgency to catch up here (or at least maintain our time loss) though, and Alpine Shop handed us another 17 minutes (total of 37 minutes) of time to make up.

After the paddle, we received a few bags of supplies that the race directors had transported to this stop. We refueled our supplies and waded across the Current River to avoid an additional one-mile run.

We then trekked from Powder Mill to Rocky Falls, again taking a few routes that in hindsight may have been iffy - lots of longer road routes around features instead of shorter/straighter bushwhacking routes. The CP at the top of Barnett Mountain had a great view of the Missouri countryside from the top, but most racers agreed that the gnats and logging slash were less than desirable. We pushed decently well on this section, but a couple of minutes searching for controls and a few minor 5-minute mistakes added up to an even larger time deficit behind Alpine Shop by the time we got to Rocky Falls.

The last 1/3 of the race was a hefty biking leg of 60+ miles. We completed a fair portion of the ride in the daytime, but definitely hit the more challenging portions (such as the single track on the Ozark Trail) at night and at the end of the race. It's a tough trail and we were forced to hike-a-bike a fair bit. A few additional navigation errors/stutters ruined our flow through the latter part of the course, but we finally came into the finish at 11:30pm, with a total race time of 24 hours and 27 minutes.

Alpine Shop had a fantastic showing and crushed the course in 22 hours and 20 minutes - awesome job by that crew to bring it home. Bushwhacker rounded out the top 3 in 32 hours, 8 minutes.

We had a decent race, but after back-to-back weekends of 24-hour+ length events, it will be key for us to rest up well (physically and mentally) before USARA National Championships in Texas next month. Thanks again to Bonk Hard Racing for another fantastic event!

Wild AR Fall 24-Hour

On September 18, WEDALI teammates Scott, Scott, Molly, and Justin prepared for the last Wild AR of the 2009 season; a 24-hour near Carlton, MN. This was also a USARA Nationals qualifier and the last race in the 2009 Minnesota Adventure Race Series, so an important race in our schedule to say the least.
We took a bus to Nemadji State Forest for the 5pm start. Wild's race directors, wanting to get things off to a good start, began the race with a 17.5-mile trek on mostly gravel roads with a bit of sand, forest, and two-track paths. This was a tough go for our team, as the Gnome Hunters pushed the pace from the very start. We kept up despite the effort, not wanting to fall behind on the first leg of the race. We stuck together as a team, traded packs to whomever was feeling up to it, and pushed/pulled each other through the section in about 2 hours and 52 minutes.
We made a quick transition to our bikes for an off-road section of trails, mostly ATV and OHV. Doing this at night added to the technical element. Biz did an endo over his handle bars at one point, for which Scooter gave him a 10. We passed the Gnome Hunters on this section, but we knew they were hot on our tails. We then popped out onto the Gandy Dancer gravel trail, which took us northeast out onto pavement at Patzau.
The road ride from Patzau to the boat launch on the west side of New Duluth was fairly uneventful, taking County Road B to County Road W to State Highway 23. We tried to push the pace on this section to create a gap, but really had no idea how much faster we were going than the other teams. We arrived at the paddle TA in decent shape, but our TA was a little slow at about 20 minutes.
We then paddled from a boat launch west of New Duluth into St. Louis Bay. Our team ran into some problems on this section with leaky boats, stomach issues, and a 20-minute navigation error. This section wasn't our highpoint, and we lost a bit of time and effort.
We transitioned back to our bikes and rode from the boat launch at Smithville onto the Munger trail heading west.
After a short ride to the TA, we tended to some foot issues and made our way on foot to Ely's Peak for a bit of ropes fun. We hike up to a railroad grade and went east to a tunnel under Ely's Peak. After Molly reached the top of the ascent, The Beautiful People showed up and started to get their gear on. After Scooter was up, the Gnome Hunters had shown up as well. Ascending takes a fair bit of time, but having both of these teams catch up to us while Erl and Biz still needed to get up the ascent made things interesting.
We knew we had lost a bit of time on the paddle, but more so we realized that we would have to keep up a strong pace to finish well. We passed Orion on our way back to our bikes, further emphasizing the competitive nature of the top teams through the race thus far.
We rode on Munger trail west to Jay Cooke State Park, including a quick 1.5 mile loop on dirt trails along the way to pick up two other CPs and prepared for the final major leg of the race; a 12-point rogaine section set by members of the Minnesota Orienteering Club.
We knew we had probably a 30-minute lead over Gnome Hunters and the Beautiful People (since neither team had shown up at the rappel while we were on our way out), but we weren't moving too fast at this point and had no idea how far behind us the other teams were.
After getting the three O-points to the north, we caught up to Beautiful People since they had just headed out on the southern O-section less than 7 minutes ahead of us. That being said, we figured our lead was slightly under an hour over the next teams, as we knew the Gnome Hunters would be right behind BP and would be likely to do the O-section faster. With their strong navigation and faster run pace, we knew nothing was a given and had limited room for error. After clearing the orienteering section in a little under 4 hours, we were relieved to find that no other teams had come back to the TA. We hopped back onto our bikes and rode west from Jay Cooke back out to Munger Trail and State Highway 210, finishing at the Black Bear Casino Resort in a total time of 17 hours and 15 minutes.This race definitely pushed our limits, and it was a team effort to come out on top. We had a bunch of issues to deal with, but stayed tough and got 'er done. We were definitely impressed with the Minnesota teams that showed up to race - truly a competitive event. Hopefully more teams from out-of-state will join the mixer in the future. Rumor has it that this race will be part of the Checkpoint Tracker series in 2010....

Top 4:
WEDALI - 17:15
Gnome Hunters - 18:05
The Beautiful People - 19:11
Orion - 21:18

WEDALI takes 5th at Primal Quest - Badlands

On August 21, 2009 WEDALI became the 5th team to complete Primal Quest - Badlands. Our epic journey is now complete, but our appreciation to everyone who has supported us over the past few months will continue. As we collect our thoughts and organize our photos over the next few weeks, we will post stories/race-reports here to share some of the details. We can't thank everyone enough for being our 5th teammate!

Odyssey One Day AR

Thanks to a gracious photographer (and race director for Wild Adventure Race) named Jason Perreira, our team was able to garner a free slot into the Odyssey One Day adventure race on July 25. We submitted Jason's photo of Ellen sleeping on a tub, which was picked as 1 of 4 winning photos for the adventure racing stimulus bill contest, put on by Odyssey Adventure Racing and Checkpoint Zero.

With two weeks to go until the race, Molly, Justin, Scott, & Scott set out to organize a weekend soiree into the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia....

After flying from Minneapolis to Washington-Dulles on Friday morning, driving 4-hours into central Virginia, putting our bikes together, eating dinner, attending the pre-race briefing, driving back to our hotel, plotting UTM coordinates, deciding routes, and finalizing gear, we finally hit the beds at 12:15am. Just in time for our 3:15am wake up call to drive back to the host venue, Wilderness Adventure at Eagle Landing (WAEL), for the 4:30am start.

The race began with a 2-mile "prologue" trail run around WAEL. We returned to our bikes after about 20 minutes, and tried to make a quick TA into our biking gear. The first bike leg started off with a 1 hour, 30 minute (2300') climb up Bald Mountain on gravel roads and forest service two track. What a view with the sun almost rising! We then rode down the other side, through Lignite and Surber to the Hoop Hole parking area for a trekking section.
CPs on the mostly-trail trek from Hoop Hole parking area were located in a swimming hole on the Hipe Branch, Rich Knob (3704'), Roaring Run Falls, and Roaring Run Furnace (ruins from an iron furnace operated in pre-civil war days).

We ran back to the Hoop Hole parking area via road, stopping at a convenience store along the way to fill up on water and buying the last three Gatorades they had.
Returning to the TA, we passed a comprehensive gear check and transitioned back to bikes for a speedy pavement ride from Hoop Hole parking area to Eagle Rock public boat ramp, about 8.5 miles east.

We then loaded our bikes into our canoes and strapped them down for an 18-mile paddle from Eagle Rock to Horseshoe Bend public boat access and on to Springwood public boat access.

Erl and Scooter rocked Aquabound kayak paddles (that we carried with us the entire race) while Mo and Biz used the provided canoe paddles. Class 1 & 2 rapids made the trip exciting as we paddled during the hottest part of the day.

After getting off the water, we felt baked - wish we would have remembered to put on sunscreen at 4:30am! We hopped onto our bikes for a 24.5-mile ride back west on a mix of paved/gravel/two-track from Springwood to the intersection of FR5020 & FR184. The climb up to CP 12 and over the pass near the SW part of Price Mountain was straight out of the Tour de France (Twisty, +800'). We arrived at the Patterson Creek TA(Elev.1133') for the last trekking section about 30 minutes behind a solo racer, Triangle AR.

After finding the first two score-o CPs in daylight, night began to fall on the Patterson Creek area. A lightning storm passed overhead just as we were coming down off the top near CP K going to CPs E and A, which quickened our pace greatly. Biz was pretty sure that he has never navigated at night in such a downpour - visibility was seriously lacking at about 20 meters. Vegetation was also thick below thigh level along most "trails," which slowed the pace. Climbs to ridge tops at CPs K (2285') and G (2250') were "highlights." Erl and Biz also picked up 12 littered glass bottles at CP B and carried them through the rest of the race for a 12-minute time credit. Our team battled some stomach issues throughout the night, but was able to keep a steady pace late in the game. Here's us not looking too pretty...

We returned to the Patterson Creek TA about 8.5 hours later to find ourselves in basically the same position as when we left - 2nd place overall with a 40-minute gap behind solo racer Triangle AR.

We biked the final leg from Patterson Creek area back to WAEL pavilion, crossing a knee deep stream along the way (maybe that's why the directions to WAEL don't tell you to go the short way?).
We finished the race in 24 hours, 21 minutes, garnering 1st in 4-person coed (and 2nd overall). Our 12 bottles brought our official time down to 24:09, with all mandatory and optional CPs. Triangle AR finished about an hour ahead of us and was the only other "team" to obtain all CPs. This was a tough race that definitely pushed us to the limits. A great east coast event put on by Odyssey AR with lots of awesome views from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.