Training Log Archive: vlin

Accotink

Wakefield

Primal Quest Race Report - Summary
Day 1 - "Toughest Prologue Ever, and 45-mile Trek"
Day 2 - "River is Closed, skip to another 45-mile Trek"
Day 3 - "The Trek That Would Never End"
Day 4 - "No paddling, Bike 137 Miles Instead "
Day 5 - "Crazy Mountains, the Hardest CP Ever, Death March"
Day 6 - "Another Century Ride, Things Fall Apart "
Day 7 - "Jacked-Up (Worst) Ridge Hike Ever"
Day 8 - "Another Ride, Stranded on the Ropes in a Storm"
Day 9 - "No More Trekking, Bike to Finish so we can Party"

Day 1 -"Toughest Prologue Ever, and 45-mile Trek"

Started hiking up a massive Lone Mt, folliwing ski lift, onto trail, it soon turned to snow. Slow going as we walked up the steps kicked into the snowslope (much more of this to come), where gaiters and poles were essential. Slowed down on loose, rocky sections, got to the fixed line about 2/3 back of pack, and waited 10 minutes at the bottleneck. Waved at the helicopter to pass the time. Had an amazing view from the ridge, 15 ft wide in most places, and quite narrow along the fixed line. Continued up even steeper snow slopes, passing signs saying "Danger, Summit area closed" to the summit, CP2, elevation 11,000+ feet. Started descending, feet slipping and sliding in the snow (a common theme for days to come). Came to the long glissade spot, used poles as brakes and bent one in the process, but bent it back. Everyone hade frozen butts, and wet pants, some bruising from rocks. Longer than expected hike back to TA following flags, many teams still jogging and passing us. First encounter with crazy fast cameraman that would run ahead and shadow Team Active Racing, who we were with on Day 3 and 7 long Treks. Ran the last part before the TA in front of crowds just for show. This was the last bit of running we would do for the rest of the race. We are already 3 hours back from Nike after 8-mile mountaineering prologue. TA was hot, with no access to our full gear bins. Went with 1 food bag and a sandwich to go, and ate all the leftover pasta salad. Almost forgot trekking poles (would have been a big mistake), but Andy ran back to get them for me. On the way walking out of mountain village, a guy in a car says the shortcut is to walk up the ski lift to the road, so we did. Starting to get hot under the full sun. Met many teams walking the road to the trail. Mandatory trail looped around a bit, up a scenic little valley. Many teams passed us on the uphill. Walked in snow for a good bit, then long descent to a stream took us out to a road to meadow village. Already evening, and getting tired and out of water. Refilled at a house by the shopping center, skipped the tempting stores for food, walked the road to the waterfall trailhead CP5. Began the 12+ hour hike to CP6, with feet already as tired as after 3-day EFIX (due to humongous pack we carried + snowshoes). Initially confused by non-existent trails on map, but followed passport to correct trail that slowly climbs Flattop Mt. More teams catch up to us as the trail disappears into open snowfield / grassland and it gets dark. Impossible to follow trail so we follow footprints to the top and the ridge road covered with crunchy snow around midnight. Many teams here confused by signs, and which way to go to get onto the trail. I lead us down a drainage, downhill in the correct direction, and we put on snowshoes to follow the footprints further. Eventually, the trail emerges, but Miguel is hurting bad from today's effort, altitude, lack of sleep, and basically so we rest a bit, and get passed by more teams. We continue forever along the river with many teams, but pick up a trail at a tricky intersection. We hike on alone, the trail begins to fade, but we hit a fast river crossing at dawn and are hesitant. We watch another team cross so we follow, but Andy is almost swept downstream. The water is painfully cold, I have to stop to change to dry clothes. We begin hiking up again, and I take us 300 foot up the wrong mountain ridge. We drop back down and hike up to the right trail that soon (several hours) takes us down to CP6. Another bigger river crossing before the CP, but we find a bridge. We are all out of water and food, but its another 4 miles on flat road to the TA. It got brutally hot: burn-your-face, no-shade, no water and painful for our soggy feet. Everyone's feet had blisters already. We crawl into the TA close to last place but in time for the River portion. This 28 hour trek to start the race was probably our easiest trek of the whole race.

Day 2 - "River is Closed, skip to ANOTHER 45-mile trek"

We refueled at the TA, got in our wetsuits, layers, and pads, and got in line for the duckies. We tried to sleep in our river gear in the designated area while waiting 1+ hour for boats. Just as they arrive, the river is closed - cancelled due to surging water levels and 4+ rescues downstream. Bummed, we undress, pack up, ride to Storm Castle TA, and pack for another 24+ hour trek, leaving in ~25th place, skipping ahead of many teams. We hike with Dancing Pandas for a bit on the road to Telephone Ridge. Halfway up the steep climb, it gets dark and the trail ends at a campsite where one team is camping. We follow a trail that eventually veers the wrong way and disappears. We see many teams when be backtrack to the campsite. We bushwhack and follow another overgrown "trail" but it disappears as well. We follow the ridge up and hit a false summit. I get more confused as to where we are, so we bivy for the night and let other teams pass us and break trail. We hang our packs, and several teams and a camera crew pass us and disturb our sleep. After our nap, it is still dark, but we can see that going uphill keeps taking us the correct way, so I figured we haven't event hit the real ridge top yet (where I though we had camped). Lesson learned - teams often camp at places where navigation starts getting tricky. I also come up with the Don Mann theory on trekking course design: To connect 2 disjointed but close trails, he just puts a dotted line "trail" on the custom topo map, and the lead teams will bushwhack/blaze the formerly non-existent "trail" for everyone. I call it a Don Mann non-existent trail.

Day 3 - "The Trek That Would Never End"

We continue up Telephone ridge, and follow footprints as the hill turns to snow and ice everywhere. After a few sketchy (icy) snow slope traverses, we gain the ridge top around dawn and see an endless snowy landscape in front of us. We find a way down off the other side of the ridge and follow snow tracks in the beautiful morning sun to the correct stream and road and CP. It is another 20+ miles to the end of the trek, and we have been going 12 hours already, but the daylight re-energizes us. I manage to keep my feet dry through all the snow. In the early morning, we pass teams on the road still camping. We go down a long steep trail in a deep but dry drainage - Wheeler Gulch - and shimmy across a skinny log to cross a raging stream. Many teams are helping each other cross here, as it is a bottleneck. We fill up our water, follow the stream through beautiful meadows, then up a side stream to a nice waterfall that provides some nice cool wind - natural air conditioning. We climb through a stunning alpine meadow filled with wildflowers. Team Active Racing cameraman films us some more, and we regret not bring our GoPro camera. We start resting every few hours, and only seek out shady rest spots with the most spectacular views (e.g. Hyalite Reservoir set amongst huge mountains). Our swelling feet start to get painful, especially when we sit due to the change in pressure from not standing, so I start the prop-up my feet routine at every rest stop, while teammates start with the painkillers We continue down switchbacks to the road by the reservoir, and start the hike over another ridge with a few other teams. We actually pass them by shortcutting through a meadow, but fumble around trying to find the trail off the other side of the ridge, just as a brief storm moves in - not the best place to be, at the top of an exposed ridge. We descend a crazy switchback down a long, very steep gully - sheer tortue on our feet. At this point, we have to laugh at how difficult and slow the trail is, in order to ignore the pain. We continue on an endless road to the bear lake trail, and another long hike over yet ANOTHER high ridge. Everyone, especially Michelle, was expecting it to be not much further, but the remaining distance, shown on a separate map than we have been using all day, sadly, tells a whole different story. We refill our water, and I struggle to interpret the terrain of the next mountain range we must hike over in the dark. I called it an orienteering final exam - at night, bland foothills, complex contours on a ridge, tired feet, sleep-deprived, running out of food, and following a possible non-existent "Don Mann" trail that may disappear under snow in the high meadows. We start the climb, and half our team is already sleepwalking. We have a "diasagreement" of when we should camp, if at all. I want to camp before the mountains, and Michelle wants to get to the bike drop before sleep, (an impossible 8+ miles away). We decide to push on. Luckily, the trail is easy to follow and correctly marked on the map, and we easily hike over the ridge, but we are relunctanly forced to bivy again as nobody can stay awake well enough to keep contact on the map, or negotiate the trail, with its deep ruts filled with water that were difficult to cross or go around. Every camp spot was breezy and cold, so we only sleep a little. We start going again, and pass NVRacing, whose tent was in the middle of the trail (dumb). At dawn, as we hike out of the mountains, we say good morning to a surprising number of teams camped along the trail. The last few miles of trail were beautiful but torturous, hard, uneven, pothole-filled dirt (from cattle) that filled us with hate. We were bunched with 5+ teams slowly hiking out a gravel road to the bike drop, just after dawn. It was a 36+ hour, 2-bivy trek for us. I amazingly survived on 1 bag of food. Miguel called it the Trek That would Never End.

hill sprint