Christi Masi
Miles Ohlrich
Tom Thomas
The race began with a “prologue”. The prologue didn’t go as planned. We were zooming down a jeep track right into the notebooks of 3 law enforcement rangers. They wanted our names, addresses and phone numbers. We were not actually doing anything illegal, but in their opinion, our race director was. My understanding is that the conflict will be resolved in court sometime in the future.
With the prologue interrupted, the race organizers decided to make some changes. One was that the race would go “underground” and our spots would not be able to be tracked by our friends and family back home as this made for too much risk of the race being interrupted again later.
The start was staggered with each team leaving the hotel in 5 minute increments. Our time was 8:15pm; we were the 4th team to depart. We were to arrive at the race HQ 5 minutes earlier and then we would count down to our start time. This was the oddest race start ever – but it certainly set the tone for what was yet to come.
We ran out the back door of the hotel at precisely 8:15pm into the night. We crossed the highway and headed up into the hills. We were on roads, and we thought this would be fairly simple. But of course, navigating at night is never easy. We made our way, not super smoothly, but eventually we were passing CP#1 down our first rappel of many, into a canyon with hot spring pools and hanging moss on the walls. This led us down the the Colorado River for our first pack raft. Next, up another canyon, then a fun rock scramble where Druce led the way with ribbons. The next hour or so, was looking for our trekking point and the top of “adventure canyon” which was one of the best adventure race adventure's I have had to date.
The highlight of Adventure Canyon for me was the 30 foot rappel into the Colorado. The slopes below were steep, so we couldn’t stand on the edge of the river and blow up our rafts. I came up with the idea of blowing up the raft, then slinging it on my back, over my backpack. I thought I could lower myself down and then as I got close the water; just pull my feel up and lay down into the raft. Sure enough, it worked beautifully. Of course, there was a waterfall at the bottom, so getting off the rope quickly was imperative. Miles followed my lead and also had great success with the plan. Tom didn’t think through what he would do at the bottom, and because he was so buckled into his pack, he had a “turtle” moment at the bottom. Miles helped get Tom free while I pulled the rope (with much effort).
Soon enough, we were off to our next canyon and climb up and into the “survival trek” section of the race. This part of the race went very well. The sun was coming up and we were cruising. Soon enough, we were at the water station and CP2 at Robert’s truck. We filled up our bladders, knowing we would need every drop to make it through the trek before we ran out of water.
The survival trek was in shadeless desert; rising and dropping between peaks, occasionally on rocky ridges, and in the daytime, a warm 100 degrees. It was easy navigation and we were moving along well. Soon after leaving the water station, Tom’s attitude started to take a turn to the worried. He seemed fine physically, but mentally concerned. As we moved from T7 to T8, Tom’s pace slowed and we were taking breaks more often. When we arrived at the bathtub at T9, Tom wanted to call for a helicopter rescue. We still had about 30 oz of water, and plenty of food, so the level of alarm seemed to be out of proportion to the situation. We sat in the shade and considered our options. Eventually, Tom was ready to go on. We had about 5 miles to go until we reached the river and water. Along the way down a canyon, we took the long way around a difficult down-climb. This was a bit hard, and seemed to take Tom to a place he was not sure he could recover from. At that point Miles ran to the river (1.5k) for water and I stayed with Tom trying to keep him cool and calm until Miles returned. At one point, Tom was threatening he might die and I told him to take a "chill pill". He told me that was the most hilarious thing he had heard and that I was callous enough to tell someone with a broken arm it wasn't an emergency either. I agreed, a broken arm is not an emergency and also does not need a helicopter rescue. Tom insisted we call for help on our Spot. I agreed to this, but was pretty sure it wouldn't work in the canyon. It didn't.
I assured Tom that Miles would be back with water long before a helicopter team or race personnell could get to us, so he should just rest and wait for water. I fanned Tom with paddles, took out our pack rafts which had a few droplets of water for cooling, and tried to keep him comfortable. He fell asleep. Miles soon returned with water.
The water did the trick, and Tom was able to walk out of the canyon to the river and then pack raft to CP3 where we turned him over to his wife who was a volunteer in the race. We have not heard from Tom since this time, but I did hear that he was volunteering at the race for awhile before he returned home.
Miles and I were now a team of 2 and we needed some sleep. We were 26 and one half hours into the race, and our mental state was worn. We slept for two hours on the beach near CP3 in our pack rafts before finishing our 94K trek.
The next leg of the trek was up a wash with some scrambling then just navigating the hills of the desert. We arrived at CP4 in an exact line, filled up our water bladders and headed onward to Rosies Den. Miles and I were fantasizing about the milkshakes we were going to have at Rosies, but when we got there and realized they didn't have ice cream, we were happy to settle for a huge iced Pepsi (Miles had rootbeer). Per race procedure, we had to stay at Rosies for ½ hour, then would be driven to Roberts house where we had an additional 2 hour stop-over. We received 5 more maps and had to put our bikes together, so the time went by extremely fast. Miles did the maps, I made sandwiches, we both took a shower and I proved my lack of mechanical ability by trying to put Miles’ map holder on his bike…..debacle.
We headed out in the afternoon on our bikes looking forward to our 100 mile (163K) wheeled adventure. The first section was familiar and reminded me of our 2009 Desert Winds race. In fact, we did visit one cp that we had visited in 2009. The riding was fairly easy, and we were moving pretty well. In the late afternoon I felt tired, so we found some shade and laid down for an hour nap. It was one of the best naps of the race.
Some of the highlights of the bike leg was the tarantula we saw on the road; the coolest part was the way it scrunched up when we shined our light on it. We got off course at one point and climbed up a big ridge now known as "wrong way ridge". We got back on track easily by going cross country and playing keep away from the barrel cactus.
Another section that was particularly fun was when we were trying to keep track of the power poles (we were riding below them) by making up rhymes to help us remember which one we had just passed. “Pole number one; fun in the sun, pole number two, I like my shoe". It kept us laughing as we rode through the night.
Later, we had 3 flat tires in a row…which was annoying. I got two, then Miles got one. We started patching the old one's so we wouldn't run out of tubes before our luck changed.
The flats stopped as we were rode out of the hills and into the dry lake bed called “Red Lake”. I am sure this would have been an amazing sight in the daylight. Our check point was in the middle of the lake. Miles set a bearing which we followed by choosing a corresponding star constellation. He put away the compass and we rode toward the star. In no time, we were at our point and another water stop.
One of the most difficult sections of the race came next. We rode out from the Lake on a sand road that threw me off my bike on several occasions. Of course, in the desert, you don't land on sand, you land on thorns. Ouch! Next, we rode on the shoulder of a hwy for 13 miles with a 15-25 mile head wind. We rotated lead every mile, but after awhile, this started to beat me down. When we turned off the highway after 13 miles,I thought the head wind would stop, but it didn’t . The next few Kms were not only into the wind, but now also in sand. My resolve was getting weaker.
Druce told us the bike would take us about 6-8 hours from Red Lake and that the ride was 90% ridable. I think he must have been high when he made this assessment. The ride up and over the mountain was at most 10% ridable – and went up for 3000 feet. He also told us the ride was 100% down hill from the top. The last 5 miles were a sustained climb to the TA. When we arrived there, I was beat.
We slept for a couple more hours, took our bikes apart and put them back in their boxes, and headed out for our final trek. The trek was broken into the “approach” and the “descent”. The approach was through “towns” with lots of barking dogs and finally to a large well where there was water stashed (more like hidden) for us. We took a couple more hours of sleep waiting for the sun to rise so we could easily see our way down our descent.
A Brilliant strategy. Our descent was flawless. We cruised. One huge, fat rattlesnake scared the crap out of us. It looked like it’s neck was expanded like a cobra. A heart racing moment. We saw burrows and prong horn sheep along this way as we headed to the “single hilltop” next to the shoreline. Soon enough, we were in our pack rafts looking for a mis-placed checkpoint. Miles is so accurate in his navigation, that he realized when we had gone too far and instead of going another 10 minutes farther, we turned back thinking we must have missed the flag. Nope. The flag was misplaced. An extra 40 minutes of paddling for nothing... oh well, we got the point and it was a nice day in lake mojave.
When we reached the canoe TA, we were sure we were in the wrong place, as it looked like there was a party going on, not a race. The party was our team of dedicated volunteers and race directors taking a minute out to have some fun. Good for them! We rolled in, found our bags (which were different than when we started because Tom had made some switches); and started getting ready for the canoe and final trek.
Soon enough a police boat showed up. We thought we were going to have to stop the race so we quickly moved our stuff to one side and eventually snuck out the “back way” and into the water. We then acted like we were tourist paddlers, hoping the police would leave us alone.
Sure enough, the police left us alone and we were on our way to my favorite part of the race. The paddling was calm and easy. We originally thought that we would skip the cp’s and just paddle the 35 miles straight. Of course, this would have cut out a lot of adventure, and we quickly realized that we couldn’t resist any of the adventure of this race. It had just been too good so far! We headed to canoe op1, which was up a slot canyon with 40 foot walls. On our way up I found an owl feather on the ground. I put it in my headlamp band. The canyon led us to 3 pitches of technical scrambling which I was happy to do. What fun! I got the point, then down climbed back to where Miles was waiting. We then saw an owl on the edge of the canyon wall. The owl was talking (in a high pitched “cheeeeepppp”. We sat down and watched the owl. It was repeating it’s call to another owl, which we saw when we descended down and out of the canyon. I wondered what they were chatting about. Probably the beautiful evening, the full moon and the warm and comfortable weather.
We ate a bit, then pushed off for canoe op 3 and 4 (we skipped 2 due to more technical climbing, which we didn’t fancy doing in the dark). Op 3 and 4 were a little tricky in the dark, but were just a hike up a wash. I forgot the pen, so the biggest challenge of these two points was remembering the 4 words (total) that were written on the posts. Miles was teasing me the whole way back to the canoe because remembering these words was harder than you might think and seemed impossible for me at the time.
We made a plan for sleeping later. We wanted to hit a beach that had a wash we could hike up in order to reach warmer air. This meant about a 3 hour paddle from midnight to 3am. About 2am my mind started playing sleep-deprived games and the hallucinations were amazing. Faces, dragons, hands, moving objects whew! Some cool stuff that usually only come with drug inducement. About 3:30am we were at our cove and slept to sunrise.
Upon sunrise, we headed out to canoe op5 and 6. These would be our last two checkpoints. We didn’t feel like paddling the extra 15 miles for number 7 and 8, so we knew we were almost finished with our race. Our pace slowed a bit. The thought of the race ending was, quite honestly, a bit sad. The adventure had been so, so much fun. Miles had been the perfect team mate and we had spent hours laughing and having fun. I hated to see it end.
We found 5 and paddled around to where we would find 6. Six was a bit hidden and it took us a little time to find it behind a rock. Once we found it, our next target was a place to jump off rocks into the river for refreshment. We found a great place and both jumped in a couple of times. We cleaned up the boat, got things organized, and headed for the finish line.
When we arrived at the finish line, there were volunteers to greet us and give us a ride back to the hotel. We knew we had the 3rd most points of all the teams; a super successful race in our opinion.
Our odyssey had ended. It was an amazing adventure that I will remember for a very long time. My feeling as I write this is a huge thank you first to Miles for racing with me and being the best team mate ever. Next my thanks go to Robert and Druce for creating a challenge of a lifetime!
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