LEG 3 - ARE WE THERE YET?
Bike 80K, Trek 36K, Bike 84K, Kayak 32K, Trek 20K, Bike 55K
Vince and I checked in and picked up the Leg 3 maps.
This time we would ride east to Confluencia then north across a high mountain pass, Paso Cordoba, before arriving at a camp on the banks of Lago Filo Hua-Hum. We would do a trek from there, then ride around to Lago Falkner for trek and kayak sections that we could do in either order, then we would bike back to Villa Traful - and yes, we would ride that same 27K section of jackhammer road we knew so well. We'd be gone for at least 2 days.
We arrived at the central camp at dusk, packed for the next leg and set a 2-hour alarm. Between the lights in the building and a sudden urge to Leukotape my feet, I only slept for about 75 minutes but the boys did better.
We left before 10 p.m., knowing we would spend most of the night on our bikes. As we left town, I heard footsteps beside us and heard Chad gently scolding an animal, "OK, that's enough. You go home now." I turned to see a horse trotting along beside him! This was a change from the cattle we sometimes met in the road.
I started seeing occasional large spiders on the road. As one must always do with such things, I confirmed their existence with a teammate to ensure they weren't hallucinations.
Although we didn't get to see it until our bus ride to the airport, the scenery along the lake was spectacular. All we knew was that we were continually climbing up and down big hills as moonlight sparkled on the water below.
Vince was out in front when he suddenly stopped partway up a hill. His light pointed back toward us. Strange. Then Chad halted abruptly, and Paul and I pulled up beside him. "Rockslide!" he said in awe. Sure enough, good-sized rocks were pummelling the section of road between us and Vince, sending up a big dust cloud! Paul and I had the same thought at the same moment... Let's get out of here! We rode back 30 m and watched the finale from there.
Vince was wide-eyed when we rode up. "A wild boar came out of the forest right beside me!" We'd been warned to steer clear of these ill-tempered beasts. Luckily for Vince, this boar wanted nothing to do with him and dashed up the crumbling slope, setting off the big rockslide.
The road got flatter as we followed Rio Traful to Confluencia, then we turned west onto the road toward Paso Cordoba. In case anyone is wondering, it was mandatory to go all the way to Confluencia and illegal to swim the river as a shortcut to the road leading to the pass.
We started hitting stretches of volcanic dust that grabbed our wheels like sand. We wove around constantly looking for the best track. We were riding along the boundary of Lanin National Park and even in darkness, the full moon revealed wild volcanic rock formations all around us. I would have loved to do this ride in daylight like MBR did - although we were lucky to do most of our treks in daylight so it was a fair trade.
My photo below was from the bus ride to the airport where we travelled south of this park on a different road. I've also "borrowed" this wonderful photo by Martin Papalia.
We climbed steadily - gently at first, and then we started going up switchbacks with steep hairpin turns. We finally reached the lookout at the top - which we only knew because there was a parking lot by a wooden deck - then we flew down the other side. It was a loose gravel road with tight turns, a bumpy, rat-a-tat-tat washboard surface, and steep drop-offs alongside so I kept my speed in check. This would be a bad place to crash or skid off the edge, especially in the dark.
After awhile, I saw the boys in the middle of the road with their packs off, putting on warm layers with numb fingers. We wore nearly everything we had. The air temperature was in the low single digits, and the wind chill on the descent made it crazy cold. We seemed to go down forever, which would normally be a nice reward after such a big climb but the road rattled our bodies so much that we just wanted it to be over. Sitting on my bike saddle had become less pleasant, and I overheard the boys sharing a few private comments about their nether regions.
We entered the park and arrived at the CP on Lago Fila Hua-Hum. These aren't my photos; we got there well before dawn.
This camp was a luxury resort by adventure racing CP standards. As soon as we arrived, a volunteer ushered us to a table for four and asked if we would like hot pasta and bread. Oh yes, we would! She pointed out the washroom building next door, which had showers. Some racers were sleeping on the floor in the dining area; others gave us weary smiles as they scarfed down their food. We checked the timesheet and were thrilled to see how well MBR was doing.
Leaving some gear behind with our bikes, we followed the road west from the camp. We had to visit two CPs above the treeline southwest of the lake, about 1000 meters higher than the camp. There were many route choices and I'd picked one close to the camp that minimized bushwhacking since we'd seen how slow that could be. It looked steep on the map but the terrain looked steep everywhere.
First light came just as we arrived at the planned starting point so we could see that we wouldn't be cliffed out - at least not on the first part of our ascent. It was steep and we had to grab tufts of vegetation as handholds while trying not to kick rocks onto one another.
It was like going up a staircase so we gained elevation quickly.
It was Day 3, and the racing was starting to take its toll. Amongst our team members there was a sore knee and assorted foot blisters. The boys had forgotten sunscreen for Leg 3, and I only had a small supply that wouldn't last everyone for two days. It got quite warm - mid-20s - but I stayed fully covered with long sleeves, the same Windstopper tights I'd worn during the cold night, trekking gloves and a brimmed hat to fend off the sun. I was warm but it wasn't as bad as I would have thought, and I survived better than usual in the heat.
After a few hours of climbing, we reached the treeline.
Then we emerged onto a mountain plateau with incredible views. It reminded me of our last trek at the Apex Race in Switzerland. We still had some distance to go across the plateau.
After 5.5 hours, we reached our first CP. It was tucked away on a forest edge, a little hard to find.
We emerged from the trees and purified drinking water at a stream (possibly the one that gave a couple of racers giardia!) Two other teams arrived, both of whom had left the camp before we did so I knew our route had been efficient. The Italian navigator asked me how we had come up since he didn't want to return to the camp by the same stream valley route they had taken. I explained what we'd done and as both teams headed into the trees to look for the hard-to-find CP, I wanted to get some space between us so we wouldn't have to show other teams the specifics of our route. We're not a fast team so we have to capitalize on small opportunities.
We made good time to the second CP on a rocky knob almost 3K away.
There were several route options to the road 1000 meters below with unknown difficulty in terms of bushwhacking and cliffs. All we knew for sure was that we'd reached the first CP faster than two other teams, and at least one of them wanted to descend by our route rather than returning the way they'd come. When we saw both teams approaching along the ridge, I made a quick call to stick with the same route down - relatively easy terrain that was familiar to us even though it was about 1 km longer and spent more time off-road. If we hurried, we could avoid showing others the good lines we'd found through the trees.
This didn't work out well. I didn't realize that my teammates weren't merely uncomfortable in the sun like I was; they were suffering. I felt energetic and wanted to use this opportunity to be strategic and try to move up the rankings but this meant moving quickly across the open plateau. Under the circumstances, a shady route with bushwhacking - no matter how slow - would have been better for the team.
The Italians caught up easily as our pace slowed on the plateau, and our teams ended up chatting and going down most of the way together since one of their team members was feeling the heat too. Paul felt light-headed for the last part of the descent. When we reached the road, Vince ran ahead to the camp and returned with cold Cokes - the most delicious drinks anyone has ever had. :)
We arrived at the camp after dark, and they were making fresh pizza. Yum - gooey, cheesy goodness. :) I was thinking we might need an extra long sleep here to revive Paul but it only took one slice of pizza and a Coke to return him to normal!
We took our second "long" sleep of the race after dinner - about 2.5 hours. Two teammates awoke on separate occasions before the alarm and thought it was time to get up. Given the trouble I have falling back asleep, I didn't get much rest. I think we left around 1:30 a.m.
The bike ride to the camp on Lago Falkner was shorter than advertised and nobody was complaining. We arrived in the dark. (Not my photo.)
Just a reminder. The camp was on the road between Lago Falkner and Lago Villarino.
From here, there was a kayak leg and a trek leg that both finished at the camp. We could do them in either order and we chose the mountain trek first so we would have daylight. Shortly before sunrise, we headed up, up, up.
There was a trail until we got above the treeline then we picked up the first CP by a stream, and it was mountain scrambling from there. In this pic, we were on our way up and over the ridge in the distance.
We were baking in the sun so we ducked into a tiny piece of shade while we waited to get the team together.
I was nervous on this climb with all that loose rock and sand. When I've been with mountain guides in areas like this, they've made us travel in parallel to avoid rockfall accidents but with other teams around, we didn't have that luxury. One teammate kicked down a large rock and fortunately, there was no one below. I took a slow, circuitous route to the top to avoid walking below any of my teammates. Or at least I *thought* I did but this photo proves that I didn't always succeed!
There were some race safety staff on the ridge, including Nuna the rescue dog. That's Lago Falkner down there, where we had started our day.
The pass was well worth the climb. We took a lunch break in the shade.
Here's what we had to go down. Once again, I stayed back and took a different line - this time to avoid kicking rocks onto people's heads.
As we approached the CP, we had a rare sighting of the Milton Basement Racers. They had already done the kayak section so they were well ahead of us. They looked good and it was great to see them!
They were doing the CPs in a different order so they'd spent some time looking for this one, which was tucked low behind a rock. Our verbal instructions had been more helpful than theirs since we were told to look beside rocks near the stream.
This is the pass we had come down from.
And this is where we were going next - to the right, skirting the base of the cliffs.
After that, we were treated to some of the most open forest we'd seen in Argentina.
We met another team at the next CP - a communications tower - and got a rare full team photo.
If you look *really* closely at this photo, you might see the other team's four lime green bike helmets as they trek across the plateau. And check out those clouds! Clearly, the weather was about to change.
A couple of teammates purified water for the long trek back to the camp.
The kayak section was a pair of out-and-backs. We paddled 12 km from the camp to the end of Lago Falkner and down a small river into Lago Nuevo where the CP was located at the far end. Then we paddled back past the camp and another 7 km through a river into Lago Villarino and down to its far end. It was close to 40K of paddling. Here are some helicopter views of Lagos Falkner and Nuevo.
Here's the view from the camp.
More professional pics. We didn't see much of this in daylight.
The funky clouds we'd seen earlier must have been a warning of the heavy wind that hit us shortly after we got on the water. It was hot when we started paddling in late afternoon but it would get below freezing overnight with wind chill so we were prepared with lots of warm clothing.
Luckily, the wind was at our backs, and this time the sail made a big difference. I just hung onto it for awhile as Vince paddled in the stern. Paul and Chad had their sail up too. The wind was strong enough that we worried about making progress upwind on our return paddle but on the bright side, we got to the end of the lake in no time.
When we landed on the east shore of Lago Nuevo, our first priority was to pull on our warmest paddling-at-night layers, even though we still had a few minutes of light to search for the CP. I was wearing neoprene vest and pants, light and expedition weight polypro tops, paddling jacket, rain pants, neoprene socks, Goretex shoes, toque, neoprene cap and thick neoprene gloves.
The wind died instantly when we started our return paddle, and the water stayed calm after that. Chad got chilled and I asked if he'd like to detour to the camp for a warm-up between the two lakes. He thought he'd feel better if he switched to paddling with Vince so we did that for the Lago Villarino portion. When we got to the far end, Chad was still chilly so Vince ripped arm and head holes in his emergency bag to make a fashionable foil robe for him.
In my boat, Paul was warm and paddling well as always until he started suffering from sleepmonsters in the last couple of kilometers. No matter what, it's difficult to make a big plastic sit-on-top kayak go where you want it to. Now try doing it when the person in the stern is incoherent! I talked non-stop for 30-40 minutes, trying to keep him awake and explaining in excruciating detail exactly what he had to do as we meandered toward camp. "We need to go to the right to avoid hitting that rock, which means you need to paddle harder on the left. Left. Left! LEFT!!" It turned out Vince was in the same situation with a sleepy Chad in the stern. I could relate since biking made me sleepy in this race!
As soon as we arrived at camp, Vince helped Chad get into his warm sleeping bag indoors while I took all the gear off both boats and started packing up. Paul got a nap too, and I got everyone bowls of hot pasta before we rode off on our bikes into the dark again.
The adrenaline that had fuelled me when two teammates were struggling vanished as soon as I started pedalling. The next couple of hours felt like endless climbing with my eyelids at half mast. At one point, I said (probably with a slur), "I'll need a quick nap at the top of the hill." I meant the hill I could see just ahead but it turned out the hill kept going as the road curved, and the guys kept on riding. I contemplated lying down right where I was, wild boars and all. But at last we hit a high point and collapsed on the volcanic ash. I don't think anyone set an alarm but we weren't there long since we were awakened by the lights of a passing team. :(
I still felt foggy after the nap but it helped when the sun rose and when Vince stayed with me on the familiar gravel road back to Villa Traful. We finished Leg 3 mid-morning on Day 5, just as Adidas Terrex crossed the finish line at the end of Leg 5 to win the race.