APEX Race Day 4 & 5 - Innertkirchen to Brienzersee.
As an unofficial team, we slept until morning so we could enjoy the views on our final trek. We left Innertkirchen when there was still some chill in the air and the clouds from yesterday's storm were burning off. It was far more spectacular than it would have been if the day had started out clear.
There were two routes from Innertkirchen to the village of Reuti - the longer obvious route that followed main roads for much of the way and a more intricate route that climbed more quickly, passed through quieter areas and appeared to peter out in someone's back yard at one point. It was fun and it worked. When we made it to Reuti, the inevitable happened... my teammates had a fight. It's not unusual in longer races. ;)
Hingo and I had been craving coffee and were disappointed not to see a cafe in Reuti. Hard to believe we're able to survive in the wilderness for days in North America! We ended up at a fancy hotel's free breakfast buffet where we convinced them to let us pay to just have coffee. (They didn't seem to want to charge us anything.) It was a fantastic day and we'd been making great time so we called Staffan, the race director, and asked whether it would be OK if we visitd the two high alpine checkpoints that had been cancelled due to safety reasons in yesterday's bad weather. He agreed and we offered to bring them down. We were happy to have a useful purpose to our day.
The next CP after Reuti was beside this stream.
We decided to skip CP #43, which was a smaller out-and-back climb, so we could focus on the extra CPs #45 and 46 on the high ridge portion of the trek. We would climb over 2,000 meters today which would give us views that most teams would miss and earn us plenty of Swiss chocolate. Before the big push up to Wilerhorn, we stopped at a restaurant where I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich to take along. They gave me a huge bag containing a ham sandwich *and* a cheese sandwich. I talked them down to a single sandwich but couldn't help wondering if I'd committed a faux pas.
As we climbed higher, the scenery kept getting better. Warning: we took dozens of photos and I had a hard time omitting any favourites from this race report!
What could be more Swiss than this scene? Close your eyes and imagine the tinkling of cow bells.
We gained height rapidly.
Looking back toward Innertkirchen where we started several hours ago.
The Swiss sure know how to build trails with a view!
Hingo and T. Rex looked awfully cheerful, considering that we still had to get to the top of that cliff.
At last we made it to the summit of Wilerhorn where CP #45 was located.
Although we would be taking the CP with us, we set strict rules for ourselves insisting that the CP *must* be punched at the correct location in the terrain. Even unofficial teams have standards!
From Wilerhorn (2004 meters), we would spend the next couple hours trekking along a rolling mountain ridge that finished at the summit of Brienzer Rothorn at 2351 meters. Here's the first part of the ridge.
And from partway along the ridge, here's the view back toward Wilerhorn.
For people who might wonder why this trek took us so long, we clowned around and took a lot of photos. Remember, we were an unofficial team and thought we'd just be taking a train back to Interlaken in the evening.
Tree pose by the Tree Huggers.
The trail was exposed and spectacular.
We could see why the lead team felt it was too dangerous for other teams to come through this section in bad weather in the dark.
If you slipped in this snow patch, you could shoot over the conveniently placed cliff just below.
Here's the view further along the ridge, looking back toward the Wilerhorn.
The Brienzer Rothorn is on the right. As often happened on this ridge, we were going to lose elevation before climbing to the peak.
As we approached Brienzer Rothorn, we came to a tunnel entrance and a sign saying that it was 20 minutes if you took the tunnel to the top and 30 minutes if you took the outdoor route. The sign warned that the tunnel would close at 5 p.m. It was now 4:40 p.m. Our pace had been faster than the hiking signs had indicated so we decided to take the tunnel. 'Bent and I hiked through a tunnel over 1 km long inside Mt. Lagazuoi in the Dolomites so this didn't seem too weird.
Bad choice! Turns out the sign failed to mention that the tunnel is not open in May. Of course, we didn't find that out until we hit the locked doors at the far end of the tunnel, having gained some elevation as we travelled underground. Boo. Taking the long way around the switchbacks on our second try, we made it up to the beautiful summit of Brienzer Rothorn where we punched and picked up CP #46.
Alas, the restaurant wasn't open for the season yet but they let us come in to use their washrooms and replenish our water.
Here I have both of the big checkpoint stands in the back of my pack. Note the awkward tree branches in my hands. I'd spent $150 on awesome lightweight Black Diamond Ultra Distance trekking poles which were safe in my gear bag. Doh! I switched out my hiking sticks for better tree branch specimens several times during the morning but nothing compares to real trekking poles. From now on, I'm putting a reminder in my gear bin.
It was an epic, knee crunching 1800 meter descent to Brienz with a CP halfway down.
We punched it but didn't take the control because we weren't the last team out - hard as that may be to believe after our all day photo session. When we got to the campground at the eastern end of Brienzersee, we had missed the paddle cut-off as planned. We mentioned to TA staff that we were going to catch the train to Interlaken after dinner and their eyes widened. "But that would change your status. At the moment you are unofficial but ranked. You just have to walk to Interlaken and cross the finish line. If you take the train, you will get a DNF."
Really?! Well, there are a few things we might have done differently if we'd understood that "unofficial" is different from "unranked" in Canada. However, I'm glad we got to hike the high ridge with the cancelled checkpoints, so maybe it's better that we didn't know. At this point, we only had to walk a few hours on a road to avoid a DNF, and that was easy, so of course we would do it. The volunteers took a Tree Huggers team photo and we headed back into Brienz.
The sun hadn't set on Saturday evening yet and the race course didn't close until Sunday at 2 p.m. There was plenty of time. We decided to have a hearty dinner that included beer for Hingo and me. The restaurant owner was familiar with the route we'd hiked that day and where we were going next. He kept repeating all the village and summit names in order, then shaking his head and declaring us "crazy".
After dinner, we started walking along the main highway on the north shoreline of the Brienzersee.
It was a bit of a death march; my feet were not happy hitting the pavement for 22 km in trail running shoes. It was nervewracking at times with the narrow road lanes, lack of a shoulder and cliffs beside the road. If a car was coming in the dark, we would leap over the guard rail into the grass. At times, the guard rail was beside a cliff or there was a tall fence. In those cases, we'd get creative and cross the road before the car got there. This was the only scary part of the race.
We'd been told that we didn't need to visit the paddling checkpoints but I found one on the lakeshore just a few meters from the road and couldn't resist punching it.
That is the last photo ever taken of my cherished Princeton Tec EOS headlamp. Shortly afterward, in the confusion of taking off my Buff and getting my hands back onto my trekking pole wrist loops (I'd picked them up at the TA), I managed to accidentally fling my headlamp into the lake. We stopped for a few minutes to look for it but unfortunately I'd turned it off because of the streetlights. I'd only planned to use the EOS for sections like this where I didn't need a powerful light. Luckily, I had an emergency headlamp that got me through the final hours of map reading. Oops!
In Swiss villages, there are often spouts with clean drinking water pouring out. Unless there is a sign saying that the water is not drinkable, it's OK.
When we got to Interlaken, we had to visit the checkpoint at the end of the paddle, located in an industrial suburb. Then we walked through town to the finish line, arriving at 2:55 a.m. Thanks to Hingo and T. Rex for making our last two days of unofficial racing so much fun!
We were greeted by some friendly race officials but they were distracted because they'd just received an emergency call from a team with a hypothermic member. A helicopter brought the racer down and he spent several hours in hospital warming up. All is well.
It appears that our ranking was 18th of 28 teams but that's just a reward for our stubbornness and refusal to quit. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do APEX as a race but our team would have been near the back of the pack in this field in any case. I think we could have completed one of the official short courses if we'd all been healthy but the full course was out of our reach.
There were a few firsts in this race... I've had several comments about the post I made to Attackpoint during the race while we'd stopped for dinner when MD was unwell. At that point, we thought we were spending the night in the hotel next door and we were curious about any race updates following the storm. After checking on the race, we still had a few minutes of Internet access left for our 5 Franc coin, so of course we contacted the outside world through AP!
I drank wine and beer during the race (!) and bought a lot of great food and drink along the route including two schnitzel dinners. I used a flush toilet 100% of the time. I got a decent amount of sleep. Our team got several hundred photos. This was not Wilderness Traverse - that's for sure!
In spite of our disappointment, we had a terrific time at APEX. The event was fun, safe and well organized. The race course was spectacularly beautiful. The organizers and volunteers were friendly, knowledgeable and hard working, and the international racers were great to talk to. Glad we went.