Aaron Rinn calls..... hey do you want to do a race...? Sure, what? Then I hear words such as expedition and patagonia and epic and team and hold on what? when?? reallly???
Anyhow the jist of it was that Team Big Bear's Heather Salzer and Ted Devito were looking for teammates to race the Desafio de los Volcanes (literally conquer the volcanoes.. though the volcanoes kind of conquer the racers...), and Aaron Rinn decided to race with them. In need of a 4th, they asked me, VERY LATE... just four weeks to race start.... at least I did not have to specifically train for it for months.. I had started my winter/spring training early and felt in good shape... well I guess we d find out... I had never done a race longer than 36h before... it was going to be epic... and in patagonia!!
So I said yes...
A couple of weeks of hectic borrowing and buying gear, learning how to ascent hundreds of feet with ascenders, and upping my kayaking, and there I was at the start line all nervous, what is it going to be like? How will I do without sleep for days? Will my body hold up?
Team Big Bear, Heather, Ted, Aaron and I
Cant wait, my first expedition AR, ready to go!
Ready, set go!!! There were 50 teams, two boats per team, 100 boats... and two capsized going into the sea.... and Aaron and I were one of the two... yikes!! Pumping out the boat and then still sitting in a gigantic pool of water in the first 70km kayak leg was not that comfortable, but we set into a good pace and worked ourselves from 49th place (there was one team that took even longer in the beginning) to about 15th place at the end of the paddle.
Heather and Ted, perfectly syncronized...
No words necessary...
Photos Courtesy of Aaron Rinn
After a quick 12h bike leg we were on the water again for another night of padding... it was scary as hell since the mountain lake was very choppy and we had fast, but tippy kayaks... pitch dark we tried to not fall in the water... and somehow made it...
After a mandatory rest stop where my teammates slept like logs I spent most of the time laying around wondering why I could not sleep.. hmm, adrenaline, fear? Anyhow I knew I was in it for a long one since our next mandatory rest would not be for 2 days....
We biked to a tyrolean traverse and traversed over this very cool waterfall to the other side.. only hooked on two single ropes that were attached to the same tree... adrenaline kept us from worrying about it.. the faster you go across the sooner it is over (or as they say the sooner you die the longer you're dead :)....
Heather, Ted and I on our way across....
Roger demonstrating a good style for tyrolean... head down, body up, bike between the legs.. and then pull as hard as you can!
After kayak/bike/kayak/bike we knew we were going to have an epic trekking leg... and we did... 37 h or uninterrupted trekking across two mountain ranges and an impressive volcano! Taking food and gear for 37 h is quite tricky.. how much do you need, what do you need.. we did not get any support for so long... our packs were very very heavy....
Made it!
Does not play well with others.. this is right after I fell head first into a bush of nettles.. .that hurt!
The trek turned out to be a disaster at first.. we lost nearly 7 hours trying to find a trail that was not on the map.. but we had to get across some raging river wiht apparently one place to cross.. the maps were from the 1940s.. you think I am kidding, I wish I was kidding... so it was more like using your spanish (hard to do at 2am when noone is awake) and your wits (hard to do when you got little to start with and not sleeping for 50+ hours)..... or then there is insanity... its when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome... so we combed the trails over and over... and eventually stumbled across a map someone lost (right when Aaron said "I know now we are on the right trail!") and realized it was our own we had lost about 30 minutes ago.... we had run aorund in a circle and come across our own map... thats when we decided it was not only time but essential that we took a power nap...
Power naps suck but even more so at freezing temperatures and being spooned by Aaron and Ted, oh gee! So we got up 30 minutes later and I made myself believe I was totally awake since I had slept an amazing 30 minutes in 50hours... hehehe...
We still did not find the trail but apparently made so much noise around one of the houses that one of the farmers came out and asked us what the heck was going on.. I was the only one on the team speaking spanish and was trying to explain to him. He was cool about it and very nicely pointed us to the right path, but I begged him to actually physically show it to us and so we trotted onwards and found it... by now it was 5am and we were going to have to cross a cold river up to our chest, so we added another hour of nap time such that we crossed when the sun came up so that our bodies would warm up and dry immeditaely....
This was our lowest point in the race and our lowest ranking (35ish) and then we finally got it right.
Aaron visibly tired powering up the n-th hill of the day...
Bridge crossings were not for the faint of heart...
We started passing people getting up to Puyehue, the volcano we had to climb, and then chose a particularly good route down it (with us I mean Aaron who was navigating very well by then, being backed up by Ted), and we passed several teams that got stuck in the many ravines down the mountain and had to backtrack up to 2 hours!
After an amazing night spent on the low plateau on various fire roads I had the most amazing hallucinations.... I was now approaching 70h with 1.5h of sleep, and it took its toll..... it all started when we were looking for a checkpoint in the dimming light of the night breaking in.. and I saw them.... two checkpoint personel sitting there.. I went over and told them how happy I was to see them, in Spanish obiously... only to be pulled away by Heather who pointed out to Ted and Aaron that I was speaking Spanish to cows now .... WHOA!! There they were, two life sized cows where I just saw people...
Border!! 1 mile to go to Argentina...
Amazing, ridiculously dangerous ropes section...
Made it though the night, found a town where we again had to find a little road but this time it was day and I asked every man woman and child for directions and we got through this section much quicker... arriving at our next CP after 37 hours...
2 times 1h of sleep and off we were again, a few hours of kayaking and then a 27h mountain bike ride... which went well and by the time we crossed the argentinian border we knew we only had one trek left....
My feet, the perils for the feet are many in such a long race... sorry
We managed to get that last section started ok but in the TA I was just too tired to care much about reading the spanish instructions about the leg, and the english ones were unusable as always, (since they just use babbelfish!) and so I dropped that paper and told the guy Si, Si when asked if I understood everything, and we got on course... it was supposed to be a short section, just a few hours....
After a few hours (we were making great progress) we got to this singletrack that led us straight to the finish (if it would have been a straight line) but then turned into this bushwhack and ultimately dropped us onto a beach with nowhere to go..... we saw some teams that rambled on about instructions and swim and all that jazz, that s when it hit me.... costeando is coasteering.... coly cr$p..., we need to get into that mountain lake....
So I told my teammates about that I forgot to translate that section... it was only a 1km section of alternatively swimming, coasteering along ropes and on beaches, but it was a mountain lake and 4am, it was soooooo cold! Aaaron Ted and I did not bring extra clothes but fortunately dry bags so at least we were able to drop the clothes in there.. but it meant in order to have dry clothes at the end of it we needed to go commando! So naked coasteering it was! The coldest 15 minutes of my life...
We made it through that and through the very scary ropes section and eventually dropped down into another gully that lead us to have to swim to the beach to run to the finish, but the coastguard (with instructions from race management) picked up every team to forego this (permit issues) and before we knew it we were done! Over 120 hours of racing, a team worthy of the 11th place we got, and very happy to be done! My first expedition race was with great people, great racers, and a phantastic support crew (thanks Rikky, Tom and Adi!)....
Bring out the champain we did it!!!
3 comments:
Looks like the most amazing trip from the bikle rides, hiking the Sevylor but sorry about your feet !
How do I get information about this race, I can't find anything online
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