MAC vs MerGeo

Last Saturday MerGeo.com wrapped up their2005 season with a "fun" adventure race under the radar, called the Mountain Ascent Challenge. No registration, waivers, rules (well some but since its not a race there are officially no official rules:)... just drive up to alpental the night before, first stash some bikes in the middle of nowhere, then run and bike your heart out!


At the top of Mt. Defiance...

Me, Eric Bone, Liz Stahl and Franklin Wood did just that... we were one of seven teams that drove out there friday night and started in 2 minute intervals at 4am from the parking lot, heading out to lost lake and ultimately Mt. Defiance (location of where picture was taken.). We battled it out with team North's Aaron VanderWaal and Ruraidh Stenson, two guys we've been talking about joining our team, and they wanted to make sure we would not change our minds and kicked our butts.... we felt fairly strong but Franklin had some issues and after hurling a couple of times had to drop out at the run/bike transition and so we continued onofficial in an unofficial race.. no harm done....funny anectote is that Eric, who was supposed to fix the big hole that got punched through his rear tire three weeks ago at the Trioba 24, and that he only "fixed" with duct tape, got blown out again, and I forgot my pump, so eric had to run his last six miles of the course in bike shoes while I pushed his limp bike.... sometimes life throws ya a curve ball when you deserve it! :)

MerGeo.com defeats DART, takes 24h title!

Man did we work hard for this all year...
Man did it all come together..
Man did we deserve this...

A year ago I took a gamble by not joining DART but staring my own team with Eric Bone, MerGeo.com, sponsored and owned by him, run by me, surrounding ourselves with strong athletes... Aaron Rinn, Liz Stahl were among them, and these two joined us (just like in the 12h Trioba) to give it one more stab this season. We had raced well before but its hard getting a team to race consistently well, and even with a lot of help and advice from Cyril from DART (he was extremely helpful in helping me out with so much information) we came up short a couple of times.
This race was no different at first... problems in the boat (too tired and mad about it to ramble on) an then a blown out bike tire by Eric (same deal... i ll just suck it up!) made us drop into the middle of the pack, but we recovered after a few hours and got to the bike/run transition in 6th place, about 40 minutes behind DART. Luck changes and this time in our favor.. some of the top teams misnavigated and lost a lot of time on one of the early CPs and all of a sudden we found ourselves in 1st place, hauling butt to get done with the trek and continue towards the finish.
Eric overexerted himself in the effort to stay ahead and started hurling late in the race, and we could slowly see our gains fade.

A last push on the bike saw DART almost catch up with us on the long straight road to Ellensburg, but we dug deep with the motivational shouts of Aaron, towing each other as hard as we could to finish the race just a mere two minutes ahead of DART! We had done it, finally, beat DART, and I could now put that behind me and focus on my next, 2nd season with MerGeo.com!


Liz powers ahead of the boys to get to the last trek/bike TA

Challenge the Lake Wenatchee....

Last weekend MerGeo.com did a fun race up in Wenatche Lake area near Leavenworth. Liz, Yumay and Franklin joined me and we raced the Challenge the Lake race. It was a very well organized race and quite a few teams showed up to give us a run for the money... early navigational problems (I navigated, gee!) threw us back a little, and then not finding a mandatory route threw us back even more... but we hung on, got stronger and passed a lot of teams on the gnarly uphill bike ride and following trek... we finished 2nd in the 4coed division and had a lot of fun!

Raid the North: of grizzly bears and endless bushwhacks....

I have not been in a life threatening situation for quite a while due to the fact that I havent been traveling for a long time, but this weekend it hit me again how one could potentially have the shades go down pretty quickly, but such is life and I would never have this keep me a minute from the outdoors... more to the race later but at about 3am on Saturday morning we were trotting along, bushwhacking with Team Helly Hansen, right behind team DART, when DART got charged by a Grizzly bear.... we heard a ton of screams, for a long time and determined that could be the only thing.. noone falls off a mountain for about 3 minutes screaming like that...
It all ended ok, one of the guys ran into a tree and needed stiches, but the bear just charged twice but did not attack... fortunately. Crazy day.


Rinn looks relaxed on the TT...

To the beginning, Aaron Liz and I got company by Glen Rogers to do the Raid the North 36h and we got right into it... after a lot of gear checks and a day of preparation we got zero minutes of sleep and started at midnight for our big race... a flamethrower and big street party where we started made the race a bit more exciting.. not knowing we d get plenty of excitement on the course.

We battled it out with DART and Helly Hansen for 30+ hours, being slightly ahead and behind until about hour 18 or so...
The race included my longest bushwhack ever (about 6h with no roads) and a grueling 4500 foot climb on the bikes in the midday sun... it was a great race, with long, very beautifully chosen legs... and after a 5h canoe paddle we arrived at a big tyrolean traverse and start of the "Advanced Section". It was us, DART and HH, all within 20 minutes, and then noone for hours, so we knew noone else would make it to the Advanced Course Cutoff and we had 3rd place for sure.... we lost time in the TA and on the last long downhill bushwhack being indecisive, so we ended up 3rd overall, but it was my longest race to date and I was very pleased with it.... more to come I am sure!!


After no sleeping for 30+h Roger looks a bit out of it...

MerGeo.com 2C wins 6 degree of navigation!

Yumay and I had big shoes to fill this weekend when we raced as MerGeo.com at the 6degree of navigation at Lord Hill park in Monroe. Debbie Newell and Dave Tallent put on a great course on a gigantic O-map and Yumay and I had to give it all we had, did real deep sometimes and come back from bad letdowns to win this one! Eric Bone had won it for MerGeo.com with William Emerson and Liz Stahl the two years before, but he was at the World Orienteering Championships in Japan so it was up to my navigation to see how well we will do.
The race started well for us and we built a good lead on the first Orienteering Section, only to realize that I had forgotten to go pick up the kayaks, so we had to run up the big hill again to do so, and were passed by 5 teams...
Kayaking went well and we were once again trekking, this time across the whole park and fought it out with several teams, the nav was hard so teams stuck together at times to find the CP's faster, and it was clear that the Biking leg in the midday heat will decide...
Yumay and I were able to pull away good at the pipeline trail, the steepest section in the park, where we had to carry our bikes up all the way. I carried both bikes and told yumay I will race her up the hill... she won, but the incentive made us gain a few minutes and we were able to break free from the pack.. after that I made some pretty good nav choices and we gained about 15 minutes, only to loose it on a combination of yumay going over the handlebar and messing up her knee and me misnavigating... we were four teams all together going up the last hill of the day when Yumay and I were able to break free and put important minutes between us and the rest of the teams to make it to the rappel first, and that was key for the win. A few minutes between us and Alex, Brandon, Tamara and Michelle, who took second... sweet!!


Bloody happy to be done... we spare you the view of yumay's knee, but she ended up needing an MRI after the race... fortunately it healed well...

X-adventure Bend, OR

Last weekend MerGeo.com competed with the big ones.... !! X-adventure is a series promoted by a bunch of french professionals that have been putting on adventure races for years if not decades.. some of the earliest Raid Guloises were put on by the same team of guys. The organisation is perfect, almost swiss-like clockwork, and a huuuuuuge posse of volunteers, staff, vehicles, helicopters, and film crews from all over the world. It is a world championship qualifier, four races on three continents... and all the best teams in the world present.
I raced with Eric Bone, Brook Nunn, and William Emerson and we finished 26th out of 52 teams... not bad considering the strength of the teams, and a humbling experience...
We did well except for a few major screwups, but its part of racing, broken compass, flats, cramps while paddling, and suboptimal team composition (only three race per section, one sits out, and the team needs to be evenly distributed for maximal performance), but we certainly had a good time and the weather was gorgeous too!


Team MerGeo ready to head out into the night...


Eric in Action....


Eric Bone finishing the X-adventure raid

Pod of whales, penalty boxes and another DART win on the fly...

Two BEAST races ago we had 42 racers for out first midweek AR and thought that was great... now we just got 89 racers to do our third one yesterday! It was an amazing race in so many ways... the massive amount of racers, their smiles and race efforts.. three girls (12, 13, 15 years old) racing with their parents... a friend of mine who lost his leg only 15 months ago racing with his wife as team tripod (what an inspiration bouncing back from such a horrible kayak accident)... and to top it all off Eric Bone had made up one of the best special tests thus far... involving the Orca Fin Project in Magnusson Park, where if people got the answers wrong (based on navigating through the fins) they had to get to the penalty box... here is the hillarious race report from Missing Link's Shannon Cortez.


It was held at the UW Waterfront Activity Center and racers paddled for LeMans Start times later that evening... DART paddled the fastest (Glen and Aaron) and kept the lead until the end, but Ben Hall gave em the best run for the money as usual!

Clif has now started supporting our series and sponsors are lining up for this great opportunity to help develop the sport at the grassroots level, this is going to be a lasting adventure race series!


Jerry and RVG at prerace meeting smalltalk


Boats coming in at full speed....


Racers getting ready for the LeMans start...

Orienteering Section and Special Task (navigatoin involving the Orcas Fin project at Magnuson park)


Finish, Food, Festivities!!

Bike China!!

Yumay and I got married about a month ago and decided to do a very memorable honeymoon... and that's when she came up with mountain biking in China... now that s my side of the story, on a steep climb up to a 14'ooo foot pass in the blistering heat she told me it was my idea and I dragged her out there, but I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle :)

Anyhow, it was a great honeymoon, we had a ton of fun and yes, it was hard, but not that we expected this to be a walk in the park.... I think it was on that same hill that I had her on tow and she looked up, smiled and said "I married into the harsh life now, didn't I?" hehe, yes you did dear :)


We found Peter online at www.bikechina.com and he was extremely helpful and very flexible on what we needed from him, he usually organizes all-inclusive bike trips but all we needed were two bikes, all the peripherals and a couple of maps and we were good to go... he got us all that for a very fair prize, and was very helpful onsite when he picked us up with his recumbent bicycle! Probably the only one in china, but certainly the only one in Chengdu, he gets a lot of stares and laughters about it....

So after a day of exploring Chengdu we were off... we had planned a very nice route through the mountains to cut from Chengdu to Lanzhou, and I knew that even at best case scenario we would probably not make it without taking some buses, especially since we intended to hike and horseback ride along the way as well....


Yumay is all packed and ready to embark on the bike trip of her life!

First day took us through the outskirts of Chengdu (a 10+ million city it takes a few hours to bike out of it!) to some ancient irrigation systems north, about a 50 mile ride away... we left very early (4am) and made it there, hiked around and had enough time to get into the mountains before dark, since we wanted to get away from the massive traffic early on....

We made it up into the mountains quite a bit, though in the later afternoon the skies opened up and we were soaked through and through, it is the rainy season after all.. fortunately we were still at low elevations and in the south so it was quite ok temperature wise.. we cycled with these three teenagers that did a 2 day bike trip, with their beater bikes and in jeans and cotton tshirts... man o man!



Roadblock!! Glad we werent biking right when that happened (15 minutes prior!)


Little rest and warm cup of noodle soup with our new friends..


Rainy season... very very rainy!


Yumay s about to get VERY wet and dirty :)


Enjoying the terrific food of the Sichuan Province


A little rest on the bus...

The next day with combination of rising early, biking and taking the bus we made it up to our first destination, Songpan, where we did a two day horseback riding tour to hot springs in the mountains... well they were not really hot springs but the smelled sulfury and came out of the ground so two out of three counts I guess :)
We had a great time up there, riding horses all day and then camping in old fashioned yurt style while our guides cooked us some yummy dinner....


Horseback riding in the mountains...


Enjoying a cup of tea...


Gorgeous scenery...


Dinner, not the most "presentable" but very good!


Tired legs...

After that trip it was time to head out and get three solid days of Biking in, each day with thousands of feet of elevation gain.... we were the only Bikers, in fact according to the locals the only bikers ever they had seen there... I really wonder if that is true because this seems such an obvious trip to make, local or foreginer.. sure its hard when not speaking the language but one can get through (fortunately Yumay is fluent and I am quite ok at speaking it so it was easier for us)... and the sceneries were just a million bucks!!

The climbs were long and hard, but the payoff was plenty with mountain tops in the 6000m range, and being totally immersed in the non-touristy china... well when not being in the actual tourist spots.. HuianLongSi and JiuZaiGou are laden with chinese tourists, proably because they are so beautiful, but once one goes beyond the main spots the views are just as spectacular but one finds themselves alone instead of immersed in a sea of "follow the flag" and "wear the same hat"...

This was a terrific trip, and we will be back in probably two years either finishing up the trip to Lanzou (which we only got about half way) or going down south more.....


On our way to HuanLongSi...

Incredible waters...


HuanLongSi

JiuZaiGou, where "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was filmed....

Wicked Urban!... wicked, wicked...

MerGeo competed in the wicked urban race in Portland this weekend, or second race of the season and our second second place... DART got us again but not by too much, we still need to work on our biking skills... and Eric needs to deal with having many maps, he is accurate but not the most skillful multitasker. Shane Gibson and Kathleen O'Neal put on the Wicked races and they do a very good job, meticulously organized, plenty of swag and a great course and post race party. To save ourselves an entry fee for one future event we (Liz, William, Eric and I) actually stayed at the race site all night supervising that no equipment will be stolen or damaged.. the race is part of the Rose Festival so there is plenty of drunks running around mad...
It went well (the night) but our lack of sleep made us do some pretty dumb things on course (e.g reading the wrong question from another CP and not being able to figure it out for like 10 minutes...). All in all a good race for us....


MerGeo.com in action


Rapelling off a parking garage...

What a BEAST!!??!!

So about three months ago I started an Adventure Race Team with Eric Bone. MerGeo.com is sponsored by his and Terry Farrah's company, Meridian Geographis, and to make some moola for races to come Eric suggested organizing some midweek evening adventure races.. I thought the idea was quite cooky but then again I had no better one and so I agreed to help him with it... doing course checking, registration and marketing.... really did not think it was going to go anywhere... boy was I wrong... its called Barebones Evening Adventure Sprint Tournament (BEAST).

The first BEAST race was held out at High Point Way by Tiger and took racers up grand ridge on single track with their bikes, over the hill back down to Lake Sammamish State Park, where they would Orienteer at the park and eventually via trails and roads bike back to the finish.
Bruce McAlister was responsible for food and cooked up a storm, and 42 racers showed up to race in a fun, furious, fast (Eric's BEAST Slogan) Adventure Race.

Glen Rogers from DART won, a few minutes before Ben Hall and several other close competitors, and everyone seemed to have had a blast... Team Missing Link came in pretty fast too and they all stayed around until the very end (11pm) when Sabina, Heather and Shannon crossed the finish line and we called it a night, a very successful one.. everyone voved to come back...


Tataaa! Glen is da man!


Lotsa people coming in...


Leader board


Sabina, Heather and Shannon


Joker Aaron cleaning up...

Winteroba

Yumay and I competed in our second adenture race and had a good time at Winteroba... strangely enough only about 35 people showed up at the Hyak Lodge to race, maybe due to the missing snow and the rainy forecast... and it poured!
The race course was fun, taking us up towards Lake Kacheess, back over towards the gold creek valley, by Don Brooks house and the across Gold Creek via a tyrolean traverse.. we connected with Barry from ARGG (Dr. Strangelove) and together (him and I navigated) we got ourselves lost real good on the wrong mountain.... Yumay was already hypothermic and I thought she would have to pull out but she stuck it out and we finished in just under 8h.... learned from some mistakes (clothing, navigation, race prep) and I would do that race again, especially with Yumay.


This is what a checkpoint above Joel's head looks like....


Breakfast for champions....


Off we go...


ACTION!


Yumay on a tyrolean traverse..

Alaska!

The relationship with Yumay has been gradually growing over the year and since we are both "up or out" kind of people we figured a two week hiking trip through alaska would be pretty beneficial to our relationship... along the fact that we both like to travel!

I just forfeitted going to race in Primal Quest with team DART (Matt Hart blew out his knee and they needed a replacement fast) and kept my promise to Yumay, though she was cool enough to give me the choice, since she knows that that would be a big dream of mine! Hindsight can sometimes be a beautiful thing too and I am glad I went to Alaska!

So we set off to the Kenai Peninsula, saying in Seward and Cooper Canyon for almost a week. There we mostly hiked, and took a cruise to see sealife. It was just incredible how pristine the landscape is, even with the masses of tourists the land still very much seems untouched in most places.

Out in seward on our first day...

And on our boat cruise...

Humpback about to impress the tourists...!

The not so lucky ones....

Talk about the catch of the day!!

A nice hike at copper canyon

Marmot

The glaciers sure were impressive too..

Now Yumay is a lot of things but not the greatest most careful planner, and I lack as well in the category, so we totally underestimated the temperatures..... (yes, alaska, but its august for gods sake!)... fortunately she is a trooper and we were able to camp most of the days... as it was more fun (we usually had the whole campground to ourselves...) . We hiked several days, among them some monster hikes in cooper canyon, where we came across a gigantic cadaver (nicely cut up in 4 big pieces and wrapped with cloth) of a moose, which freaked us out a good bit, but then fortunately soon after saw the hunters, a couple from Alaska that hunts a moose per year to have meat through the winter. They had to cut it up in 6 pieces alltogether and carry it out over two days..., incredible!!

Denali National Park

One of our many campsites...

Enjoying making dinner...

I see dead moose!!

Anyhow we went up to Denali National Park as well and encountered some gigantic grizzlybears, but we were in the bus driving through the park, and were about as safe as taking a ferry ride in switzerland, however the adrenaline still pumped pretty good sitting in the bus just a few yards away from a 1000lbs grizzly!

Last but not least.. the grizzly...