Team: Commie Bar/Summit Adventure Racing

Place: 1st 4 person male ~25th overall

My race started two days before all the teams lined up on the start/finish line. I rolled into Casper Tuesday morning and immediately headed to the nearest Sportsman’s Warehouse, I still didn’t have my mandatory gear bin and even though I knew there were several in stock I was nervous they’d get snatched up by other unprepared racers and I didn’t want to meet my team for the first time in a few hours with that kind of news. The next day and a half were filled with talk of race strategy, gear and food prep, and map plotting.

Once we finally made it to the start/finish line Thursday morning, all the nerves were gone and only the excitement of the start was left. There was nothing more to do but race so I was excited to see what my new surrogate team, Summit Adventure Racing Commie Bar, could do. After a few words from race and state officials we started the first bike, through some trails then out of town with a police escort. Once out by the city limits the race was really off; the pack slowly separated into several small chunks headed toward TA1 and a fast pace. At one point, inspired by an attack and friendly offer of a pull by team Adventure Capitalists, I’m pretty sure my bike computer showed we were pushing around 40kph for a bit.

From the bike we put on our floppy hats, mentally prepared ourselves for a 77-mile paddle, hopped in our plastic canoes and pointed them down the North Platte River. Thankfully the directors broke the paddle up a few times with out-and-back activities like carrying buckets of water from the river to a cistern which, according to what we were told, at one time supplied a fort full of soldiers who hated carrying water so much that most of them either deserted their post or committed suicide. A later trek around one of the nearby towns also had us find the staff break room at a WWII Pow/Internment camp… I suppose nobody said we’d only be visiting happy historical sites! As we approached evening and the Glendo reservoir I was already feeling lucky; more than one team had hit obstacles in the river and were either out of the race or in rough condition. As we approached the entrance to the reservoir we had our first decision to make about optional points, there were five CPs on the top of a hill and we could come to shore between them and 2, 3, all 5, or skip them all together in favor of making it across the flat water faster and to the larger group of optional points on the other side. We decided to jump out and get all five which I think was the right decision because I’m pretty sure that even if we skipped those points and went straight across the river early we would have never made the next two optional sections in time to get more than 5 points. I say that because, as we were about to discover, the winds across Glendo reservoir picked up to 30+ mph and create 3-5 foot waves that come at you in sets of two relentlessly from probably midnight until 4:00am. Getting out into the open water with the sun down but moon high and bright it didn’t seem so bad, but I remember thinking that if this slight breeze is making waves big enough to give our boats a shove then I hope we don’t see what a strong wind throws at us. …. And then we paddled on into a strong wind and those fabulous double waves. After battling the weather for over two hours and losing the moon around 2:30am we decided we couldn’t keep that effort up safely and headed toward shore through shrubs and trees submerged under the surface. At 3:00am after we’d pulled our boats onto the shore we got an alert on our tracking device saying the Sheriff didn’t think it was safe to be out paddling. A little late, but good to know we weren’t just wimps. Not sure where we’d landed, we trekked toward where we thought the TA was and tried to identify where we were on the map in the darkness based on road and campground signs. After a couple miles we decided to turn back and wait for the sun to come up and the wind to die down at the boats. After a quick 20 minute nap next to an outhouse I woke up to voices that weren’t just my teammates’. Evidentially another team had taken shelter in the ladies’ room during the storm and they were just waking up. Later at the next TA I would discover that it was team NorCal which included fellow YERT member Stephanie! With the sun up and other teams making a break for it we got back in the boats and paddled to the far end of the reservoir, took out at a boat launch, and portaged to the next TA.

Back on the bike we had another decision to make. There was an optional bike orienteering course and optional 25-mile paddle that we could do hit, but the TA was closing in an hour which would make the bike orienteering tough and the optional paddle would put us way behind getting to the Laramie Peak section. Laramie peak was less checkpoints but more enticing from an adventure perspective so we opted to skip the two optional sections and bike the 35 mile cutoff straight to the next TA. There would be far less 40kph pedals and far more pushing bikes up and up and up in the Wyoming heat. Even with the hills, we made it to the next TA at an Adventure Boy Scout camp in pretty good time.

This TA marked the first and only time I saw team Yogaslackers who were just about to leave as we arrived.  This leg would be our first big trek section of the race with 14+ miles of trekking, route finding, bush whacking, and boulder hopping up the South Roaring Fork. We made a few small navigation errors at the beginning of the trek getting on to the correct ‘trail’, but they were small and we recovered quickly, which I was glad to see. This area of Wyoming was probably my favorite. We were constantly surrounded by huge Granite rock features that left me wanting to bring back my climbing gear and start searching for new routes to add to the local guide books. As the sun was setting on the day (Friday, day 2) the trail started to thin out and disappear and we were doing a lot more route finding in the dark, but once we found the trail again it was another nice hike over a hill to the TA. At this point I had about 20 minutes of sleep on the reservoir and maybe another 10 minutes during a break to get fresh water from the South Roaring Fork and we were quickly getting into the beginnings of the 3rd day so the team decided to bivvy for about 90 minutes. I was glad I’d chosen an emergency bivvy over an emergency blanket…. Though I did feel like Chipotle burrito as I pulled the foil around me.

The next section was supposed to be the optional hike up Laramie Peak but the trek would only give us two checkpoints and cost us no less than 6 hours, maybe more with team foot problems starting to come up. I myself already had several pieces of duct tape under my socks to protect the hot spots that had formed. So, with images of a what sunrise at the high point might have looked like in our heads (well, at least my head) we took off on the bikes toward the next TA along hard packed dirt roads. The checkpoint we hit here on the 3rd day was the first checkpoints outside of TAs we’d got since the 5 we hit before running into the storm on the first evening. We rode along being passed by and then passing several trucks pulling horse trailers. Before long we were approached by a rancher on a 4wheeler who, a bit frantically, asked us if we could go back half a mile or throw our bikes over the fence and wait right here because there was a cattle drive in progress and we would not be able to make it through for at least 20 minutes. So we quickly hopped the fence and settled in to watch the spectacle as the ranchers pushed the cattle down the road past us on their way to branding. Once the obstacles had passed we hopped back over the fence onto our bikes and sped off down the road through at least a kilometer of very fresh and very wet cow manure. Our bikes, water bottles, and several spots on our bodies were covered, but there wasn’t anything to do other than carry on down the road. Most of the rest of the bike was long rolling hills but the last 10-15k were a fun downhill slide with 3 teams hanging out in a group flying around the corners.

At this TA we found out that one of our teammates had pretty bad blistering but also had some sort of salt heat rash all over the top of his foot and possibly staff infection. He was also having some problems with the heat, which was really starting to beat down on everyone. After the medic care and refills of water we took off on the trek with me in the navigator position headed toward the two checkpoints I was looking forward to: the rope ascent and rappel. 2.5k later we were getting our harnesses and ascenders on and one at a time were headed up the rocks and back down. The routes were only about 100’, but it was still a lot of fun to put some of my climbing skills to use in a race. After the rappel we walked down to the creek that was running along the trail to wet our hats and sit in a shady spot for a few minutes to chase off the heat exhaustion.  I think I was able to get in another quick couple minutes of snooze time while we recovered. Once back on our feet I took us further up the trail then up a large wash toward a checkpoint. This is where I got to make my nav mistake: the trail we found up a ridge next to the wash ducked down off the ridge into the wash itself. Afraid of losing huge amounts of elevation we’d gained I opted for bush whacking over following the trail down. This of course was much slower, but you don’t learn those lessons if you don’t make mistakes. Once at the top of the wash we found the checkpoint and re-grouped.  The next checkpoint was less than half a kilometer away but it was almost 200’ of elevation gain and we were really struggling with foot problems and heat exhaustion. As tough as it was not to get at least one more point we headed back down the wash and back to the TA; it is better to make it to the end of the race with fewer points than to not make it at all. At this point the only other four-person male team had dropped out of the race so we were only racing ourselves and as long as we finished would be 1st in our division, so we pushed smarter not harder. Back at the TA we decided that the wind would be blowing against us as we pedaled uphill for the next 6k so it was best to rest a little and hope the winds died down in the evening. Everyone geared up and got their bike supplies ready then took another 45-minute nap.

At around 5:00pm on Saturday we headed up the hill in a pace line to reduce the effect on the wind, we had over 40 miles of riding ahead of us so we so we put our heads down and pedaled. The short break we’d taken had reduced the wind during our climb out, but as we got further down the road the wind once again picked up. At first it was at our backs causing a slight downhill section to turn into a 45+ kph smile fest. But later the road turned and we had huge gusts blowing at us sideways across the road. Once things settled down though the ride was mostly just a long 9-hour push across with Wyoming with one more quick electrical storm to liven things up.

We got into the next TA sometime during the morning of the last day of the race. We evaluated how we were doing on both time and physical capabilities and once again elected to skip this night orienteering course and continue on for another 45+ mile mountain bike section. The grind of spending so much time on the bikes and was eventually too much and we had to pull over for a 30-minute safety nap along the side of the road. After the quick break we continued on and saw that we were not the only team who had needed a break; there were several other silver and orange human burritos along the road. This ride kept going and going, and things were looking up at Sunrise as we got closer to obvious civilization, but with the sun came endless hills. As the hills got worse so did the chafing and the team had to work together to push to the last TA which was also the last checkpoint on the course. Once again we elected to skip the optional trek, we had 3 hours to make it up over a large hill and back to the start/finish line. We dropped all non-mandatory non-biking gear, took a splash of water, and sped off down the road. After the push over Casper mountain we cruised into town on paved road heating up our brake rotors as we slowed for 15mph twisties. A last quick pedal through town and we crossed the finish, and we even had over an hour to spare.