I was really looking forward to the Primal Quest race this year, as I'd not had the best of luck this year in several different aspects of my life. In the beginning of February, I was asked to race with Team Vignette from Austin. They had completed the PQ last year in 29th place, but this year it looked like two of the teammates - John and Marcy Beard, would not be able to do the race again as they moved to France to make a great career move for Marcy. The two remaining teammates were Marcy's brother, Kip Fiebig and Jason Mittman. Both are incredible athletes and very experienced adventure racers. Our goal for the team was a top 20 finish out of a possible 100 entrants to the race. This was a lofty goal, but one that we felt that we could accomplish with the right team. Fortunately for us, we asked Kathy Duryea to race with us and she accepted (which we were simultaneously thrilled about but also scared - because we knew she would be the best athlete on the team and would push us all very hard). Kathy is a 5-time Texas state mountain bike champion as well as a former national champion, so we were very lucky to have her with us.

All year was spent in preparation for this race, both our individual training schedules as well as other "primer" races we each did to get ready. I had entered the Eco Challenge North American Championship and dropped out due to hypothermia, so I was really ready to redeem myself with a good finish at the PQ. But not even the best of goals and intentions nor great preparation can insure you get what you want, as I was about to learn.

Pre Race

I traveled to Tahoe from Denver on August 29 via Hwy. 80 through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. The only good thing about this drive was that it only took 16 hours versus the 24 hours it took to drive to Canada. Once I made it through Salt Lake City, I left the planet Earth and found myself driving on the surface of the moon, or perhaps one of Jupiter's lesser known moons. Rocky, salty, and barren don't do justice to the landscape. I was happy to greet the night time where at least I could pretend the scenery was better outside. Leaving very early, I made it into Tahoe around 9 pm where I shared a room with my former racing partner Siegfried Emme a.k.a. "Ziggy", and we drank some beer to celebrate our arrival in Tahoe.

Saturday I slowly awoke to head out and find some maps of the area. I later went for a bike ride along the rim trail, which heads from Tahoe (6,200 feet) into the mountains (8,000 to 9,000 feet?) surrounding the lake and makes a complete circle around the lake. I only rode on about a 20 mile section, but it was incredible. The view of the lake was amazing, rivaling anything I've seen in Colorado so far. The trail was fun and fast with mixed technical sections that would challenge even the best riders. I was sure that we would be seeing some of this trail in the race. On my way back I decided to try and come back on some logging roads. This would be my first taste of the now infamous crappy map situation that presented itself in the race. The map I had showed one main logging road back from the trail, but I found an entire network of roads that were confusing and not on the map. After consulting with a very nice guy and his dogs (he was training them for the upcoming bird season), I FINALLY found my way back to the road, almost at night and several hours past when I thought I would return. I was smart enough to bring a headlamp and a jacket should this very thing happen, but had I become really lost, I had no compass and I might have ended up quite cold before I found my way out.

Sunday I waited for Kip and Jason to arrive from their drive up from Austin. They got in some time that afternoon and we switched hotels to our final place before the race start - the Alpine Inn. It was located right next to the race headquarters and fortunately right by the eventual race start.

Monday Jason and I took a hike up to Heavenly Ski resort and up the runs to get a view of the area. My guess was that the race would start with a hike up this side of the mountain to spread the teams out, as it was very steep and the going would be slow. Only the fast teams would run out and scorch a section like this. The rest of us would spread out and scatter all over the mountain, especially if it was in the dark. The prevailing rumor was that the race would start at midnight on Friday, which was started through a local newspaper. Never believe such stories. They are almost always wrong. We also picked up Kathy that day, so our team was complete.

The next day was spent checking all of our gear and getting it approved, as well as our skills tests - climbing and paddling. We did not do well as a team on our climbing test, as Jason and Kathy were working out rope lengths for the ascent, and I couldn't figure out my ropes lengths to the point that it caused me not to be able to go down the rope when they asked me to. For 20 minutes I wrestled with the ropes until I got back down, adjusted my equipment, and then went right back up quickly. I have done lots of ascending this summer, so I knew that I could do it well. For some reason I had a really hard time on this test, though. Then we did a tandem rappel, which we were told was how we would do it during the race. That meant that two of us were literally connected together via runners and carabineers on two parallel ropes. We had to descend at the same speed, and the reason for this is if one person's rope were to break, that person would still be attached to the other person who would be safely connected to their rope. It was a redundant system for being ultra safe, probably an over-reaction from the feedback they got last year about the rope section being really dangerous. When we got back down, the main ropes guy nicely told us that we might consider taking the penalty for not doing the ascent and skip that section, as they anticipated it would take teams between 2 hours and 6 hours on the 1,000 foot ascent that they had ready for us. We were a bit embarrassed but swore that we would not take the penalty and would do well on this during the race. We even practiced on our ropes skills later on a tall tree that we found near the lake. Our paddle test was easy, but we had to swim in the lake with was COLD! We also got our first taste of the boats we would be using, the battleship-like Cobra 4 person sit-on-top kayaks. These monsters had to weigh 100 pounds if an ounce, and they had no rudders. For the stern paddler (me) who was in charge of steering the boat, this would prove to be quite challenging.

I don't really remember what the last two days prior to the race entailed, except that we bought supplies, packed our gear, repacked, then repacked again. We also spent a fair amount of time figuring out how to rig a sail to the kayaks. I bought one prior to the race, but it was not the easiest thing to mount to our boat. Eventually we figured it out but knew that we might never use it, depending upon where we paddled, the time of day, wind direction and speed, etc. Thursday our support crew of Mike Drost and Kristi Fleming arrived. We were so happy to see them and did what briefing we could do to get them ready for what hell they were about to be in store for.

Thursday night was our pre-race briefing, where there was two hours of droning on and on about rules and how to do this and what to do about that, etc. We also found out that we would start with a paddle in the morning across Lake Tahoe to our first transition. It would be a 35 miles paddle that would start at 8:30 in the morning. We ate dinner, went back to our rooms and made final preparations for our gear. Then we tried to sleep as best we could. I had a hard time falling and then staying asleep, as I had all week.

Race Start - Paddle (35 miles)

We were up by 6 am to get our gear packed in the two support vehicles, Kip's awesome 15 passenger van and my old green truck, a faithful friend through many races and many long miles. We got to the beach, where all 85 boats were lined up and ready to go. (I think 85 teams eventually started the race out of 100 that signed up). We found our boat and then learned that two of us would have to paddle the boat out a 100 yards and wait for the other two teammates to swim out and meet us as the race gun went off. This was not a happy realization, as none of us wanted to get wet when it was so cold in the morning. Kathy and Jason volunteered to swim, as they were our best swimmers. Kip and I paddled out to the area where we waited 20 minutes for the race to start. There was a lot of tension in the air, and everyone was ready to start the 450 mile adventure.

At 8:30 exactly the gun was shot and over 160 people ran across the beach to the water where they began swimming to our armada of boats. We held a pair of blue pants up on a paddle so that they could recognize us in the mess and confusion. Kathy and Jason had a GREAT swim, and we were one of the first boats to capture our teammates and get to the paddling. I was looking forward to the paddle, as this was my best discipline. But I quickly realized how hard these boats were to steer straight. I had to make a corrective stroke on every other stroke it seemed, which is not the most efficient way to paddle. Out in front of us we could see the lead teams already making a gap on the rest of us, but I figured we were probably in the top 20 at this point. The next 17 miles we paddled north extremely well. We passed about 4 boats and were only passed by a couple of teams that you could tell were all good paddlers. We were not what I would describe as a "paddling" team, although everyone paddled great and our eventual result was fantastic. By the first checkpoint we were in 13th place! Kathy's wrist had started hurting, so we switched her out of the front seat and into the 2nd seat, rotating with Jason. This quickly proved to be the wrong configuration, as you need your lightest person in the front to allow the boat to sit up more in the water. With Jason in the front, the boat weighted down more and we went into waves deeper, slowing us down. So we switched back to the original configuration by having Jason jump into the water, Kathy scooting up a seat, and then Jason jumping back in the boat. By that time a small flotilla of 6 teams caught us. They were all drafting off each other and so were making really good time. We attempted to join their group and draft, but we were too far away. By the time we finally moved over and caught them, we had depleted our energy. And strangely enough, the boats stopped going straight and started weaving around, making drafting off them unproductive. So we watched them get further away while we made it to checkpoint 2, which is where the fun started. At that time we were with Team ECaps Florida, who we would become intimately acquainted with in the next few days. They were a good paddling team, so I was excited we were with them at that time. From CP 2 to CP 3 was roughly 14 miles heading back to the southwest. Like we had been told, about noon the wind started on the lake from the southwest, and we were heading right into it. It went from a mild wind to a rough wind, and there were soon whitecaps and waves maybe 3 feet tall. This was not fun and very slow going. I had a terrible time making the boat go straight, and we were all totally wasted from the pace we had set before. Our speed went way down, and by the time we finished, another 3-4 teams passed us. But I thought we were still probably in the top 30. It took us 8 hours to do that section.

On a side note, both Jason and I got very cold and even mildly hypothermic by the time we left the water. I started off the paddle hot and ended freezing. Jason also had done something to his shoulder such that he was in terrible pain when we finished, and Kathy's wrist was really bothering her as well. One leg completed, and we were already the walking wounded. Jason also had been rubbed raw on his back from the seat backs, and this would prove to be a fun experience for him as time went on.

Later we learned that 8 boats sunk or capsized on that section. Several teams had to be rescued. Apparently the boats leaked through the gear stowage hatches, and the boats filled up with water and sank. When we beached our boat, we couldn't pick it up because it was so full of water. I think I drained out 30 gallons of water from it. Once drained, we carried the boat ¼ of a mile to the transition area, where Mike was waiting for us to say that we were headed out on a 35 mile inline skating section. Yeah! On our feet finally. As we headed to our vehicles to change, we saw Team Nokia still in transition. This was a brush with greatness, as they are a top 5 team in every race. It was neat to be relatively close to such a good team after this far in the race. Another interesting note is that over ½ of all GPS tracking units failed in this section. They were not protected enough from the water and so they got wet and quit working. That is why it was impossible to track us after a certain point in the course.

Kickbike (28 miles)

We got to the transition area (TA) where we got into dry clothes. Jason had quite a time getting warm, but he finally did. We were in and out in about 45 minutes, which was way too long we thought. While most teams did this next section on roller blades or on small scooters, we had a secret weapon - the Kickbike. Technically a scooter, this machine had a road bike (29") front tire and a recumbent bike (16") back tire. Most scooters have tiny rollerblade like wheels. It also had brakes, which is an advantage on the down hill sections as compared to rollerblades. Although a team that can roller blade well is slightly faster than a kickbike, not too many teams were great at rollerblading. And the teams that used other types of scooters were nowhere near as fast as us on our kickbikes. On flat sections we averaged around 10-15 mph, while we could go up to 25 mph on the down hills. We headed about around 5 pm on this 28 mile section, and we ended up passing 4 teams. It was a fun section of gently rolling hills followed by a long downhill section. The final part was a slog up a mountain road with many switchbacks, where we ended up walking a lot. But we got into the next TA in good shape and good spirits.

Bike (110 miles)

We had a better transition, getting ready for the bike in about 35 minutes. This was listed as a 110 mile mountain bike section, although it ended up being more like 125 miles. We estimated that it would take about 20 - 24 hours to complete, and we were right on the money with 20 hours. This section was fairly boring to describe, as it consisted of a lot of paved roads and logging roads or fire roads. Nothing was incredibly technical riding, and we made good time. Kathy was our bike navigator, and she did a fantastic job. In the whole 20 hours, we might have been off-track a total of 45 minutes. That is great for a leg that long. During the first part of the night we passed a couple of teams and were passed by a couple more. By late that night, though, the three guys were really tired. We hit the second bike checkpoint early in the morning and then took a 20 minute nap. It was cold, but we had enough clothing on and the short amount of time we slept didn't really allow us to get too frigid. Kathy wasn't tired so she plotted our course out for the next section. When we woke up we'd been passed by several teams, but that was ok, because the race was just getting started. We headed out for a very long section, which was uneventful except for a screaming downhill section that froze us all. But nothing in this race was too far downhill, so back to climbing we went. Along the way we jockeyed back and forth with several teams, including ECaps Florida, Crested Butte, and Odyssey Adventure Racing. We also got passed by Team Buff, the famous Spanish team. I couldn't believe that we had been ahead of them until then. We felt like we were doing really well, and we were. Somewhere along that section we passed a store where we bought Gatorade and hotdogs for breakfast. It was the best hotdog I'd ever eaten. What a gem that place was. Jason suggested that they put a sign on the road saying "Free Water for Racers". It turns out that they did, and a lot of teams later told us they saw the sign and stopped in for some food. From there we biked on to the next checkpoint by a river, and then down an AMAZING downhill to another checkpoint close by. It was such a fun downhill with incredible views of mountains and the valley below. Certainly the highlight of the mountain bike section.

Our path then took us along a Hwy. on the "Pony Express Trail" - a crummy trail that I'm sure was never a route for the real Pony Express. It was about a 7 mile stretch of sand and pine needles that was hard to ride and not fun at all. This was to be our only single track riding of the race, and it was not fun. When we crossed the highway, we were out of water. Fortune smiled upon us in the form of an old woman who had a cabin by the river. Two teams were already on her porch drinking lemonade and filling their water bladders up. We did the same and then headed out for the final leg of our "mountain biking" journey. But after a couple of miles, the trail went straight up into the mountains on such horrible trails that riding was impossible, even for the best teams. So for 5 hours we pushed or carried our bikes up rocky trails to the top of this mountain. Fun this was not. On top, though, we began riding once again until we came to a fork in the trail. There were some dirt bikers nearby, so Kathy asked them which way to go and off we went. We went the correct way, and we learned that other teams took a long way that cost them a lot of time. On the way down we were interviewed by some CBS camera guys, and the ride was quite fun. It was then on to a highway where we went quickly to the next TA. As we pulled in, we were lead in by a camera crew that got some funny shots of us. One ended up on the web site where I was asking the driver to slow down so I could grab on to the truck to let him tow me. I then asked him for a beer. I hope that makes the TV cut in January when this airs on CBS. When we got into the checkpoint, we found out that we were in 16th place after a day and a half of racing!

A Slow TA

We had decided to sleep at this TA (Kirkwood Ski Resort), so we got our gear ready for the next leg, ate, and then went to sleep. By this time we were very tired, so eating and getting gear ready was slow going. It took an hour and a half. Then we slept for an hour and a half. All in all we were there for a little over 3 hours, and we didn't get started on the trekking section until after dark. This didn't help us. For some reason, Kathy couldn't get comfortable in our van and didn't really sleep.

Trekking (30 miles if you did it right)

Shortly after 8 pm we left. It was dark and getting chilly. Kip's original plan was to head up the ski slopes in between two peaks, then over the ridge to the valley below where a mountain lake had our next checkpoint. Let me just say that the maps we were given were horrible. They were a very large scale and didn't have any topographical information at all. Therefore, we were not quite sure where all the peaks were, ridge lines were, what elevation we should be looking for, etc. They had mentioned in the pre-race briefing that it might be helpful to buy your own maps, but we had no idea it would be this bad. The lead teams had bought topo maps on CD Roms and had their support crews plot points and print out good quality, smaller scale topo maps of the difficult areas so that they could navigate properly. In the future this will be the thing to do for a race like this.

But we headed out with our crummy map and right before we hit the ski slopes, another team's support person told us of a trail that supposedly went to our east, over the ridge line and then joined another trail that went straight for the lake. This was what "all the other teams had done". Happy to hear there was a trail rather than our original plan of scrambling up the mountain, we decided to take this route, although it wasn't 100% clear on the map how this was to be done. We spent the next several hours on trails heading generally east (I think) and around the peak that we were originally going to pass on the other side of. Kathy became very sleepy at this point, as she virtually had not slept the entire race. Before we crossed the ridge, we had to take two 20 minute naps so that we were all reasonably coherent. Eventually we did find a trail that took us up to the ridge, where we could see for miles and miles to the south and west. We saw the lights of Sacramento far off in the distance, and it was very beautiful.

At this point, we made a critical mistake. Not knowing exactly where we were (although Kip had a very good idea), we were not quite sure where to head down to meet this mountain lake that we were looking for. Down below we could see what we thought was a house with lights on. For some reason, we didn't go down to investigate these lights. I think now that this was probably the checkpoint far below with the lights of the poor camper that had to wait there for the teams. But for whatever reason, we didn't go this way. Instead, we headed down the ridge westward, towards another ridge line that we needed to cross to be in the general right place before we descended any further towards the lake. While heading this way, Kip suggested that we first head down into the valley, then make our way westward and look for the lake. But we had found a nice trail that we were making good time hiking on, and we vetoed that decision in favor of continuing west at a higher elevation until we passed the next ridge line. We should have done what Kip first suggested. About the time we hit that ridge line, I could see a lake to our southwest. In reality, it was more west than south. On the lake there were lights, and I was convinced that this was the checkpoint. What I didn't take the time to think about was this lake was really, really big. It was too big for the size lake we were looking for. I didn't realize how far away it was and therefore the scale of the lake, so I stupidly thought this was our destination. Lack of sleep and not taking the time to really think led to this bad decision.

We continued on our nice trail west for some time until we were above this lake. Sometime before we started our descent into the lake, we came upon a trail sign that we didn't pay attention to as we should. It pointed to a highway in the direction that we were going, and a peak to our north that no one seemed to realize was far too west from where we really should have been. Kathy was smart enough to say that the lake now looked way too big to be the one we were looking for, but none of us gave it any heed. Quickly after this trail intersection we started descending down to the lake. We passed a large logging camp which looked very surreal in the dark, like a scene out of Blair Witch Project. It probably didn't in reality, but this was the time that the hallucinations started occurring in our minds. As we got closer to the lake, we entered a neighborhood with streets. This was not a good sign. Then we finally made it down to the lake, where we could finally see it without the majority of it being obscured by the trees. It was huge - way too big for what we were looking for. As we looked again at the map, we realized that we had gone way too far to the west, and were at a lake that they did not want us traveling to. We thought that we would surely be disqualified, as they would be able to see our gps route from headquarters. We didn't know that our gps had stopped working, though. And we thought that the rules were vague enough that we could argue that this checkpoint wasn't really the one they wanted us to avoid the lake on. It was the next checkpoint that they specifically said to avoid this lake. Whatever the eventual consequences were, though, we were totally demoralized and now several hours from where we should have been.

We were all exhausted so we took another 30 minute nap. We awoke close to daylight and started back up the mountain, where we caught the trail and worked our way back east. As we got back to our original location, we spied another smaller body of water in the trees, way down in the valley. We went down to explore it but found that it was not the checkpoint. The next several hours we searched high and low for the lake without any luck. Two other teams caught up with us at this time, including Marshal Ulrich's (a famous racer). As we all searched for the lake, Marshal spied it from atop a plateau and showed Kathy where it was. All three teams headed quickly towards it, with ours being the first one there. We were now in 38th place. In one checkpoint we lost 20 places.

From there it was easy to head up to the ridge further south where we caught a nice jeep road that would lead us to the second and final checkpoint in that section. Along this section we were able to jog many of the flat areas, and so we made good time. Kathy's wrist was really bothering her, so Jason rigged up a sling to put her arm in that kept it elevated and reduced the swelling. My little right toe was also starting to bother me, as was a nice bit of chaffing around the area where I had sat on a bike seat for 20 hours. This caused me to walk a little funny, which I think added to my toe problem. I kept using Hydropel to reduce the chaffing pain, but it didn't do any good. I learned later from Mike that Hydropel was too water soluble, and that Vaseline would have been better for this type of problem.

Although we were unhappy that we had lost so much time (probably 7 hours), we knew that this was a correctible mistake and that in a 7 day race, 7 hours could be made up easily with efficient transitions and no more mistakes. So our spirits were good, and we made great time on the 24 mile hike from CP 10 to CP 11. At the end of the hike, we were facing a road that made a series of switchbacks down the mountain. Kathy suggested that we leave the trail and bushwhack straight down the mountain to the next road we were looking for. We did this and it apparently cut off a lot of distance and time. Mike was riding his bike on the road looking for us, and said that we passed 3 teams when we made this little shortcut.

Hobbling into CP 11, or TA 4, I went straight for the medical tent to get my two little toes taped and to see if they could do anything for my chafing. Jason also went to the tent to get his back sores looked at that were bothering him from that first paddle that we did. They had to rip off the tape and bandages from his back that were placed there before, and this was not a pleasant experience to see or hear. Poor Jason was very tough about it, though. Mike brought me food and water from our camp, and I ate while I waited in line for the doctor. There were many people there, all for foot problems. We all shared stories about being lost while looking for CP 10. When they finally got to my feet, the woman looked somewhat concerned. I had taken off the tape on my toes I put on pre-race and cleaned the area as best I could. My toe didn't look good, as there were big blisters on both sides of each. But I've had many blisters here before, and I knew if I drained them and then bandaged them that they would be ok. So she popped the blister on one (I had popped the other one along the trek) and put Second Skin on them both. This is a gel-like material that goes over blisters to protect them. Then she put another layer of some type of tape around them, and then another layer of a different tape to keep it all in place. In retrospect, this was way too much stuff to put on one toe, and it made the toe about twice the size when it was all said and done. What I should have done was simply drain the blister myself, put some Neosporin on it, and then re-wrap it in my Leuko tape. This is an amazing tape by 3M that is the best thing I've found for preventing blisters. I used it on the entire rest of my foot - toes, heel and arch, and I didn't have any other problems on the foot. Usually I would have more than just the blisters on my little toes.

After the med tent I made it back to the TA and got my gear ready for the hike. Kathy let me use her Sportslick for my chafing, which I put on to a horrible greeting of burning. She joked that she had put menthol in it, but I think I was just so raw that any new substance burned going on.

Orienteering (10-15 miles?)

Our next section was a 5-7 mile (they said) orienteering section where 8 points were placed in the forest that we were to find. Each point had a special punch on it that we had to punch a wrist band with to prove that we had been to that point. As it was getting dark, we had only about 3 hours of daylight left, so we hurried out to make the most of it. To stay ranked, you had to find at least 5 points. For every point you didn't get, there was a 2 hour penalty that you would have to serve towards the end of the race. We decided that we would only get 5 points and take the penalty later, as it might take more than 2 hours per point just to find them. How right we were.

Our first point took about 45 minutes to find point A in the daylight. Fortunately, they had given us proper topographical maps for this area. Unfortunately, they were very old and didn't show any of the numerous new logging roads in the area. The second point (B) we went for was supposedly in a river along a road that we thought was on our map. We found the road we were looking for and hiked about 30 minutes to where the point should have been. Three other teams were with us at this time. The point wasn't anywhere to be found. So we went back down and looked in the creek at what we thought was the proper elevation for it to be at. Nothing there either. The next 2 or maybe 3 hours (I can't remember), we looked for this mystery point up and down that creek. It was very slow going just getting in and out of the creek, as the banks were very steep. In the creek it was tricky moving along the rocks on the side. Finally we decided that the point wasn't there, or that someone had stolen it. We were very, very upset then, and we decided to head out to the next point on our map. Since we didn't find B, we needed to hit another point to make up for it. The logical choice appeared to be D, which was the furthest point on the map from our TA. It took about an hour to get to D, as it was pitch dark and we had to bushwhack through some tremendous undergrowth to get to it. It reminded me of the Canadian trek that I did some months ago. Kathy navigated us to this point and did a great job. Once we found it, though, we were all wiped out and had to sleep for another 20 minutes.

On a funny note, this night was my big night for hallucinating. I don't remember much of the hike to any of the points because I was literally half asleep. I could walk and respond to questions, but my mind was totally on autopilot otherwise. I saw a lot of little creatures running around, heard my teammates say weird things that I'm sure they didn't really say, and had a lot of dream-like skits in my head. It's really weird to have your mind completely go like this, but it was satisfying, too. I didn't have to think about how I felt or how long all this was taking or anything else. It was all on autopilot, and my pilot was a lunatic.

Physically, my right toe was really hurting and I had to walk on the heel and on the inside of that foot when I could. Many times I couldn't - like when we were climbing up or down slopes, which was most of the time. My chafing was also really bad, and I would get these sharp, searing pains that would make me shiver. But then they would go away and I would be fine for a while. I don't really understand what was going on there.

From D we hit C and E with ease and I think we took another nap, but I can't remember exactly. Then the next point, point F, was a real adventure. First, we left the road a bit early to head down to where we thought the point was. It was down a really steep gully, and when we found out where we were, we had to traverse across the terrain at the proper elevation until we hit the right gully. At that point we were below the area we needed to be in, so we had to climb our way up the creek along the sides. This was a crazy section, and we were bouldering, rock climbing, and jumping over the stream at various points. It was a lot of fun, but sometimes pretty dangerous. When we finally found the point, it was a good thing that we came at it from below. Surrounding the point from the sides and from above were about 20 feet of cliffs which looked impassable. It was crazy to think about getting there from above. As we punched our bands and were filling up our water bladders, a guy off another team found us from above. We told him the point was down where we were, and so he proceeded to try and get down. When he finally got stuck on a cliff about 20 feet from the ground, I had to take a 15 foot log and prop it up against the wall so he could scramble down. He had to throw his pack off first, but he made it. Then another one of his teammates found us and found another way down, although it involved rock climbing down about 15 feet over a pretty exposed area. We didn't think he'd make it without falling and killing himself, but it turned out to be a pretty good way down.

While all of us were talking about how dangerous this was, we decided to follow these two guys out to meet the rest of their team. They were headed generally out towards the TA, and it was going to be better to follow them out than to bushwhack as we originally planned. So we all rock climbed out of the pit, through poison oak and up to the road where there team waited. Along that way we passed another team, our friends ECaps Florida. It was good to see they had screwed up and lost a lot of time as well. To shorten this part of the story a bit, we eventually made it back to the TA shortly after dawn, 15 hours after we started the orienteering section and with only 5 points found. Other teams took as little as 5 hours to find 5 points, but that was during the daytime as well. Nokia found all 8 points in 7 hours at night! Amazing.

Bike to Ropes (12 miles)

After the disappointing last section, we were looking forward to getting back on the bikes for a short while. Our transition was fairly quick. During this time I applied Vaseline to my chaffing which then completely eliminated any future pain with that area. Vaseline is certainly the way to go (thanks Mike). I had a really hard time getting my foot in my bike shoe, and I had to let out the shoe laces and then get my foot in, barely tightening the laces up. I also brought my super-big shoes for the hike to the climb, as I knew my foot had really swollen. I think that I normally wear a size 11.5, but these shoes were size 13. AS we started riding, my toe was really killing me. It hurt all the time, whether peddling in the upstroke or downstroke, but it felt like it was hit with a hammer when I went over a bump or a hole in the road. Another lesson I learned is to buy a really good, comfortable bike shoe. My shoe was a typical mountain bike shoe - rigid sole which makes for a great platform when peddling. But it's hard as a rock, and so any vibration translates right into your foot - or my toe as the case was. They apparently make softer soled shoes for mountain biking that feel more like hiking shoes.

The ride was horrible, as it was down hill a lot of the ways and the road was rough. All the bumps and holes hurt like hell. But, we eventually made it to the climbing TA in about 2 hours.

Climbing

When we drove up to the climbing section, we could see the tiny specs that were climbers on the massive rock face. It was going to be a huge climb, and the location was spectacular.

We had to leave our bikes at the base of the mountain, along with any gear we didn't think we'd need. Fortunately, our friends at Odyssey racing were just coming back from the end of the rappel, and they gave us some valuable information. There was about an hour hike up from the bikes to the beginning of the ropes section. They provided a map, but again it was not very good. Odyssey said that if you headed straight up towards the ropes, as it looked like you should, that you would find yourself trapped by huge, impassible boulders. This is what happened to them and it took them many more hours to eventually make their way to the ropes. They told us to keep going right until we could see a clear path around the boulders. This we did and it saved us so much time. We were up in about an hour or less.

Our happiness in this shortcut was tempered when we learned there was a 4 hour wait to get on the ropes. This was about 12:30 pm. So we decided to lay down, eat and drink, and try to sleep while we waited. About 2:30 the climbing guys said that it looked more like 5 pm before we could start. Then they got a message for headquarters that said that any climbers without a headlamp who had not started the ascent before 5 pm (later revised to 4:30) would have to skip this section and climb up the path to the top. We debated whether or not to climb up together as a team, but we had already wasted two hours waiting and two of us had our headlamps, which meant that we would incur an additional penalty of 6 hours if we skipped the section. It was also unclear if there would be a penalty for the two without headlamps (Jason and Kathy) who had to climb up. This was a very disorganized part of the race, as they had no clear plan about how to handle this. Headlamps were not required gear, so it was irritating that they were going to make those without them hike up well before dark. As it turned out, Kathy and Jason both had injuries that would have been aggravated by doing the ascent. Once we found out there would not be a penalty for those who hiked up (and didn't have headlamps and weren't going to make the 4:30 cutoff), Jason and Kathy decided to go up and wait for me and Kip. In hindsight, Kip and I should have done this as well, and said that we didn't have our headlamps. This would have saved a lot of time and gotten us off the mountain by dark, which would later prove to be a problem for us. But Kip and I really, really wanted to do the ascent. It was the only thing on the rest of the course we were looking forward to. A lot of teams took advantage of this opportunity and said that they didn't have any headlamps and so hiked up to the top. Of course most of them did, but this saved them a lot of time, and it would have been the tactically smart thing to do.

About 5:00 they told me I could get on the rope, and so I started up. There were 6 ropes for 6 different teams. I started shortly after the last member of Team ECaps had started next to me. After you got slightly off the ground the first pitch was probably 300-400 feet of free hanging rope. There was no wall beside you to push off of or get any kind of balance from. This part was the hardest section. I would get about 5 pushes up with my top ascender, then I would have to rest. It took me a while to get my rhythm and to use my legs more than my arms, but I finally got it.

I've never liked heights, but I've never let them stop me from doing too many things, either. But after I was up about 200 feet, hanging in mid-air, I was scared to death. I looked around and saw the tiny people on the ground, looked at the great view, and was in awe. I wished that I had hiked up at that point, plus I was getting tired because I had yet to figure out how not to use my arms yet. But there was no going down, so up I went. Shortly after that I stopped using my arms and it became very easy. I was also going a lot faster than anyone else on the rope at the time, and I started to catch up with people that were halfway up the first section when I started. By the time I reached the first cross-over knot, I had passed them. It was fun to talk to people on the rope when you are hanging in mid air. We compared current physical problems, which I will not go into except to say that when you hang from a waist harness that goes around your legs, connection to your waist belt - neither of which have any padding at all, the weight of your body eventually begins to hurt certain things that are in the harness's way. It was also conveniently located on the area that was chaffed.

There were three more pitches to go, and they all went quickly. I passed a total of 5 people on the ropes, including person #3 from ECaps, their female Jessica. I talked to her for a long time, as this was the 3rd of 4th time in the race that we were in the same place together. They were a neat team and it was good to race with them, as I'd heard a lot about them before.

The views were incredible from the ropes. It was starting sunset, so the sky was red and it cast a lovely hue over the surrounding mountains. I'd liked to have had a camera, but we couldn't have anything outside our pack. If something had fallen, it would have gone down with such speed that it would have killed someone below had it hit them. My totally time on the rock was 1 hour 45 minutes, which I think was a pretty good time comparatively.

At the top Jason and Kathy were waiting with Ecaps other two members and Marshal Ulrich's team. We all got into our space blankets to stay warm and waited for Kip, who showed up shortly. From there we had to traverse over to the rappel section which took about 20-30 minutes. It was then dark. Happy were we to learn that there was an hour wait on the rappel, due to the line that had formed from all the teams that hiked up and skipped the ascent. So we waited and tried to sleep, but didn't. Jason and Kip went first, and twenty minutes later it was Kathy and I. We couldn't see anything, which was probably good. I would much rather ascend free-hanging than rappel. This rappel was no fun, though. It was 600 feet on one pitch of rope, and there was so much weight of rope below us, that the rope wouldn't flow freely through our rappel device. That meant that for about half the way down we had to pull the rope up from below and stuff it through our ATC (rappel device). This was hard work, and both Kathy and I worked up a sweat because we couldn't strip off any layers on the way down.

At the bottom it was dark and cold and we had only the 2 headlamps between us. Luckily, there was a climber's trail down to the road we needed to get to. Unluckily, we lost it in about 10 minutes. 2 lights between 4 people doesn't work very well. But we managed pretty well. Kip led followed by Jason (without light) then me with a light and finally Kathy. At some point we traded lights and Jason and Kathy had them. It was kind of fun trying to hike down in the dark with little light, but when you are not on a trail and the exposure gets a little hairy, it is not fun. Several times we found the trail again only to lose it, as it traveled over rock and was virtually impossible to find in the dark. But after 2 or 3 hours we made it down, with only a few scratches and close calls. Oh, and there was all the poison ivy I didn't see. Kathy did and maybe the others did too, but I didn't. And since I wasn't counting on the 5 hour delay at the ascent and the 1 hour delay at the rappel, I figured that we'd be done with the ropes and back into the next TA before dark. So I didn't bring any tights to wear on my legs. It only took 3 days before the poison ivy broke out on my right arm and all over my legs. It was one of the worst cases I've had.

So we made it down, more discouraged because of our loss of time on the hike down. We refilled our water bottles and then marched back to our bikes. I walked like an old cowboy gunslinger, with my legs bowed out and my feet at funny angles, trying to relieve the pressure from my toes.

Bike to the next TA

We got back on our bikes and started towards the next TA, some 25 miles away. The first 5-6 miles (?) were uphill on a logging road. Not 10 minutes into the ride, both Kathy and I bonked hard. We were both swerving all over the road, and I started hallucinating again. Kathy got really funny and was talking about all these funny things. She thought the tow system on the back of my bike was a combination GPS/fishing line, and that I was fishing while riding. And then there was the team behind us that she heard and thought was a bunch of people we passed in a hot tub that were laughing at us. I even managed a laugh or two about all the things. But I was having my own little cartoons running around in my head while I was trying to keep the bike out of the ditches. I would go from one side of the road to the other, unable to keep a straight line. I only went off the road once. Twice we had to stop and nap for 20 minutes, each time waking up freezing cold and shaking. Almost to the end of that uphill road, I couldn't ride anymore. Each pedal stroke and especially the bumps was like a hammer hitting my toe. I knew that even if I could suffer through the rest of the ride, I could never do the next 20 hour hike, orienteering section, and 15 hour mountain bike ride. I had been taking 1000 mg of ibuprofen (which I learned was not good to do), and that had stopped easing the pain.

So I said that I was done. We decided to pull out the radio and call our support crew to come get me. Kathy and I crawled up next to each other in our space blankets and tried to get warm while we waited. We spotted our friends from Steel Sports crossing the road near us. At that point, we thought they were an elite lead team on another leg of the course. We saw a car pull up to them and talk for a while, and we thought that the elite team was getting food and water from their support crew. So that's how they traveled so fast and light! Jason went to investigate only to come back and say that it was our Texas buddies at Steel Sports. Luckily, they had a lot of extra food and gave us some. We had been totally out for some time. As we lay in our space blankets with only our heads showing, Kip fed Kathy and I like baby birds in a nest. I would open my mouth and he would drop in a cracker with tuna fish on it. It was the best tuna fish I'd ever had. Funny how good things taste when you are insanely hungry.

Shortly after Mike and Kristi showed up and helped me into the van. Kathy and Kip decided to ride in as well, but Jason wanted to continue on so that he could hopefully hook up with his wife's team at the next TA and continue on with them. So we left Jason to ride and headed to the TA, where I got some medical attention to my foot and we packed up and found a hotel to crash in at Volcano, CA.

We had made it over half way through the course and some 4 solid days of racing.

Post Race

We spent the day at the coolest hotel I've ever been in Volcano. The old guy who owned it had to drive into town to open it up for us, then left us to the hotel pretty much on our own the rest of the time. It was an old 2 story hotel with a old style bar downstairs, dining room and kitchen, and 7 rooms upstairs. The rooms were awesome and huge. He left the bar open for us on the "honor" system for us to tell him how much we drank. It was the perfect setup. We showered, slept, and then the others explored the town while I slept some more. Before that I talked with the owner for about 2 hours, drinking beer and trying to forget about the race. He was a great person who had moved there from Santa Barbara with his wife and daughter, who usually ran the hotel. We had a good time talking, then he had to go run some errands.

Later that night we all played poker with peanuts for money, laughed and got a little tipsy. Another support crew friend of ours from Texas, Brenda, who crewed for SPQV, joined us and showed us a new drink she loved - Tequila, lime juice, salt and Squirt! It was awesome. So we played poker and then Trivial Pursuit until late in the morning, and then we all crashed in our two rooms. Ah, a soft bed again. It sure beats the cold side of the road that we'd been sleeping on for 3 nights.

The next day we headed back to Tahoe where we spent until Saturday hanging around, watching pirated Chinese DVD's at our hotel, gambling (only a tiny bit), and the occasional beer. We had a great time hanging out with everyone, and although the mood was somewhat depressed from my dropping out, I think everyone had a great time.

Post Race Thoughts

This section of the report will not be very interesting for those just reading the story. It's more for other racers and my team to give my feedback on what worked and what didn't.

Things that worked well:

• Pre-taping my feet with Leuko tape on all areas that usually get blisters. I didn't have any problems with anything that was taped except the toe that got crushed.
• Hydropel on all other areas of the feet.
• Setting up my gear box to have bungee straps on the inside cover so that I could strap things in them - hydropel, trekking poles, meds, etc.
• Vaseline on areas that are chaffed.
• Breaking food into bags of about ½ day each - about 1800 calories. The rest of my calories I got in transition through Spiz and real food.
• Spiz - the wonder drink. I don't like vanilla anymore, though.
• Trekking poles on all hiking sections.
• Kathy's tow system for the bike - if it could mount easier and the line stay on better when not towing, it would be perfect.
• Carrying lots of clothes for night time. I wore a long sleeve shirt and carried a fleece, weather proof GoLite jacket, and sometimes another long sleeve shirt. I also wore a Mountain Hardware windstopper fleece hat that kept my head perfectly warm. I was never cold with all that on, unless I was wet. But even when I got cold I warmed back up fine when we started moving again. Down hill on the bike was super-cold, though, so I need to figure out how to address that.
• Balancing a 4 person boat by putting the lighter people in the front. This allows the bow to ride up, helping to go over waves better. This wouldn't work exactly the same in a racing boat, but it worked well with these battleships we paddled.
• Having more than one navigator on the team. Kathy nav'd the bike and Kip did the trekking, and Jason and I helped out where we could. If one person is bonked or hurt, another can step in.
• Kickbikes.
• 2 support vehicles. It would be perfect with 2 vans like Kip's.
• Real food at transition. Thank you Kristi.

Things that didn't go well:

• UnderArmor underwear. There is a big seam at the leg and the crotch, which I attribute to causing my chaffing.
• Not putting enough lube on my butt before the bike. I would not use Hydropel for this, I would use ChammyButter, Sportslick, or Vaseline.
• Everyone not carrying a headlamp at all times. You never know when you will get delayed and need lights at night.
• Over-taping my injured toe. I think this caused it to swell more and thus have more problems.
• We should have duct taped the hatch on the boat. I think this is where water came in and filled up the boat.
• We should have had a laptop with CA topo maps on it so that we could print out our own maps for the trekking section.
• Not taking enough time at critical nav times to stop and really figure out where we were and what we were doing. Kip wanted to do this on the first nav "crossroads", but we didn't listen to him.
• Believing someone who says they think they are sure of what they are looking at (me), when the other 3 people have their doubts.
• (Note from Kip - Steve's being too hard on himself with the above two comments. I was the lead navigator on the sections where we went the wrong way, and it was entirely my fault that we travelled so very far in the wrong direction.)
• Rail Riders shirt at night. It's great for when it's hot. It's worthless when it's cold and wet.

Things we saw that were neat:

• The #1 team out of the water made some kind of fiberglass nose to the boat that stuck out about 3 feet or so. This helped them slice through the waves and make great time. I wish I had a picture of it.

Things to improve on for the next big race (assuming we were to do this same race over again knowing what we know now):

• More paddling practice. I think 3 of us got injured because we didn't train enough paddling. It's hard to do an 8 hour paddle at a hard pace without something getting hurt if you don't put enough training in before hand.
• Get better maps.
• Cut off my little toes 9 months before the race so they can heal.
• Have at least 3 on the support crew. Mike and Kristi did an awesome job, but they were working full time to get from one checkpoint to another, get everything set up, and then take it down and do it all again. It would have made their jobs so much easier if they had had help.