Our team, Three Legged Dog, placed 4th in our division (all male) and 23rd overall. Adventure racing is a competitive sport with three disciplines: biking, trekking (fast hiking), and paddling. This year’s national event took place in Southern Oregon in the wilderness and national forest areas surrounding Diamond Lake near Crater Lake.
The theme for the weekend was “wow” with so many spectacular vistas culminating with the 360 degree stunning view on an unusually clear blue sky at the top of Mt Bailey after hiking and scrambling 3000 feet to the summit at 8600 feet after first descending . From the top you could see so many mountain peaks from the glacial covered Mount Shasta in California, to Mt Bachelor and The Sisters near Bend, and another large prominent peak to the north (Mt Jefferson or Diamond Peak) as well as the immediate jaw-dropping view across the valley to sharp spire that is Mt Thielsen. We did well, especially given the challenge of slicing our packraft bottom in the rapids about 1 mile into the 14 mile paddling section. We could not repair the kayak so even though it still floated, it took on a lot of cold water making it too dangerous to try to complete the entire paddling section. With the help of professional whitewater teammate Zach, he was able to get us 4 more miles to the transition area at the first allowed spot to exit the water.
The temperature started in the 20s on Friday morning at 7AM rising only into the lower 40s throughout a perfect albeit cold, calm day. Racing through the night, Friday night, we managed to bike up a 5000 foot climb from an elevation of 1300′ to 6300′, trek, (sometimes trek with the bike), navigate our way up and over a heavily forested crater rim and then rope swing out into a crater lake on a 60′ swing, filter water out of that same lake and fight off sleepiness together as a team. By morning, the temp had dropped down into the 20s again (my beard froze both mornings) by the time we made it to the warming hut to start our 3000′ hike to the top of Mt Bailey. Even though the temp only warmed up into the 50s, we ended up hiking in nearly full sun and needing to strip off nearly all clothing to keep from overheating on the strenuous hike that involved descending into a different crater high up on the volcano for a checkpoint before scrambling our way the rest of the way to the top. This was the second time I ended up having to “de-clothe” because early in the race at the second checkpoint was a hot springs where one team member had to submerge themselves for 60 seconds to get credit for the checkpoint. Keep in mind, the temperature was still below freezing, and I drew the short straw as I was the person on the team who wasn’t absolutely frozen at that point from three hours of biking. So off came all those clothes and into the hot springs I went!
After getting dressed again, we took off again riding some amazing singletrack through huge evergreens mixed with enough hardwoods to have beautiful yellow leaves blanketing the flowy mostly downhill trail to get to the paddle where our two person packrafts awaited. After assembling our packrafts, we carried them down a tricky put-in below a dam. Most of entire 5 miles was class 2 and 3 rapids with only a little bit of flatwater in between each rapid. My teammate and lifelong friend and roommate Radu and I started out together. But when his seat suddenly deflated from us hitting something sharp in the water, we swapped it up so that Zach could get us down to the transition area. At one point, we almost tipped and Zach was completely submerged leaning backwards into the water as a last ditch effort to keep us upright. It worked and Radu and Edgar (our other teammate) were in awe. Edgar thinks he got it on his gopro video, so I’m really looking forward to seeing that and linking to it here eventually.
I was hypothermic from having been sitting in the cold mountain water for nearly an hour without a drysuit. Zach had a dry suit so he fared better, but thankfully Radu had the orange insulated emergency blanket he got at the finish line of the NYC marathon in our emergency clothing bin at the transition area after the paddle. Once I got dry and ate some food, I was fine. Especially since we started our long mountain climb and I had a tow rope attached to me to help even out the biking strengths. It’s amazing to go from hypothermic to sweating with temps in the 30s with minimal clothing. That was an extra challenge with the cold temps of the race matched up against the strenuous nature. You did spend a LOT of time stopping to either take off or put on clothes.
Our biggest challenge during the night on some of the more monotonous steady climbs was keeping everyone awake. One thing that helped with that was the rope swing. The race planners (from Bend Racing) told the story of them seeing this crater lake on the map and wanting to put a checkpoint down near the lake. As they were scouting out a good place to hide the checkpoint, they came across a tree with a rope swing on it and tree stumps at several heights up the side of the crater serving as platforms for the VERY long rope (60′). We made it there at about 2 or 3 in the morning. All FOUR of us did the swing, we were one of only two teams where all members did the swing (it was insane). Because of this, we ended up winning the “Unnecessary Adventure” award technically tied with the other team, but the organizers picked between the two teams at random and we got lucky!
By morning it was cold, we were sleepy, but as the dawn sky began to brighten, everyone on the team came more alive. We did spend about 30 minutes in the “dangerous” TA4 (because it was a warming hut with campfire and food), but we were all excited to climb Mt Bailey. The climb was chilly at the beginning when we were still in trees, but as we made it above tree line in the full sun, we all stripped clothes down to bare minimum to keep from getting everything sweaty in the 40 degree temperature (felt like 90+ degrees in the sun). Amazing to be staring at snow in the shade of the last trees while sweating in the sun right next to the snow not even melting.
The very top of the peak had some true alpine scrambling with exposure and loose rock. But everyone doing these races is skilled adventurers and knows how to mitigate the risk. All of us slipped at various points due to the sheer probability with all the loose rocks/shadows/etc… But we also were all being cautious so were able to catch ourselves. While the trek up was exhilarating with amazing views, including one keyhole view from the west side of the top ridge looking through to the east at Mt Thielsen framed perfectly, the trek down was tortuous nearly 30 hours into the race. My knees were so sore by the bottom.
The final two legs were supposed to be a 9 mile singletrack drop down to the lake for a 6 mile paddle around and across the lake to the finish at the resort, but if you were short on time (or had a giant hole in your packraft), you could bike the final leg around the lake. We still had to make it to the finish by 3pm and we made it with about 15 minutes to spare as we were the last team to finish. The order of the finish doesn’t matter, though, it’s how many points you get along the way while balancing making sure that you don’t run out of time by the end. We nailed it about perfectly given the problems we ran into. We were just a single point shy of the podium, but we all agreed that we all had fun chosing to spend time where needed to make sure we got all the “unnecessary adventure” points checked off our wishlist.
I will update this post with photos and videos once I made it back to Alabama.
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