Raid the Rock 2004

I suppose you do set yourself up a bit when your team name boasts of dominance in one event. Yvonne Deyo, David Frei, and I went to Little Rock Arkansas to compete in the Raid the Rock adventure race under the team name of the �Orienteers�. It sort of implies that we are great at navigation and can't do much else. It just about worked out that way.

The race is put on by Team Traveler, one of the top teams in the country, so we know that it will test all our skills. The required gear list tells us to be prepared for running, biking, canoeing, and climbing, all while navigating. The 5AM start means that the first two hours will be in the dark.

We don't get any maps or course notes in advance. At the start, we get a pre-marked map for the first leg � a 14-control navigation section. We can visit the controls in any order. David is concerned about a control that is placed on the side of a hill with no natural features nearby. I plan a route that gets that control near the end, hoping the sun will be up by then. I give the map back to David, as he will be doing the primary navigation.

The scale of the map (1:7500 with 2ft contours) is unusual and for the first two controls we struggle a bit, but don't lose any time. Just as we start getting confident, we boom the third control badly. After bailing to a relocation point we get it, but we've lost 10 minutes. Sufficiently cautioned, we complete the rest of the course without any other mistakes. As hoped, we get to the vague control just as the sun is rising and are able to spot it easily. We finish the course at 7:15 AM.

At the transition, we are given the maps (the more typical USGS 1:24000) for the rest of the course along with course notes and UTM coordinates for the remaining checkpoints. We take 20 minutes to plot our points, which is slow but not terrible. Then David notices that one of the points looks wrong. We recheck and realize that we've reversed the East and North coordinates within the grid square. Shaken by that, we take 10 minutes to recheck our points. Then we spend 10 more to, well, I don't know what the hell we were doing to take so long, but it's almost 8:00 AM when we roll out.

Despite our delay, the next team doesn't arrive until we are leaving � David's proficiency at night navigation is again asserting itself. The next two transitions are unsupported, so we take everything we need for the next three legs. David and I decide not to carry running shoes and take our chances running the �marked trail� section in cycling shoes. David has the biggest pack, so he takes Yvonne's running shoes.

The next section is a relatively short biking leg on pavement. The roads are still wet from overnight rain. I ride lead while David and Yvonne are left to ponder the relative merits of drafting when the lead rider is throwing a 10-foot rooster tail every time he hits a puddle. After 25 minutes of riding we get to the canoe exchange. The provided paddles and canoes are OK, but the life jackets are the old-style puffy kind more commonly associated with Boy Scout trips than serious paddling. Oh well, everybody has to wear them, so it's doesn't matter. A portage of about 200 meters brings us to the put in on a narrow creek.

The first two miles are very narrow with many blockages. Our progress is slow as we are constantly hopping out to drag the boat over a shallow spot or fallen tree. One of the race organizers is at a bridge and tells us that the other teams made up some time on us in the transition. No surprise there, but we figure we've still got a pretty good lead.

By the third mile, we are on a much wider river filled with small islands and groves of cypress trees. The river is constantly turning and there are many inlets and bays on each side. David is in the back and is having trouble both steering around the trees and navigating, so he passes the maps up to me. From the front of the boat, I'm able to read the surrounding hillsides easily and although we have a few tentative moments, we get to the end of the 2 and a quarter hour paddle without making any wrong turns.

The marked trail starts on the far side of the river from the takeout. It's not much of a swim, but we don't want to do it with packs on so we ferry our packs across in the boat. Yvonne gets out with the packs and changes her shoes while David and I bring the boat back and swim across.

At first, it seems we've made a wise choice in not bringing extra shoes. The woods are relatively open and the trail is flat. After a quarter mile, we suddenly turn up a steep ridge and begin a 3-mile long traverse. The slope is quite steep and strewn with small rocks. Making things even more treacherous is the fact that everything is covered by a layer of wet leaves. David and I stumble along terribly and by the end of the traverse we have both picked up a fine collection of scrapes and bruises from repeated slips.

From the end of the traverse, we go through some thick and thorny vegetation to get to a long drainpipe. David & I have both buried our headlamps in our packs so the three of us make do with Yvonne's light. The drain is fairly clean and large enough that we don't have to bend over much. The cool water running through it actually helps to relieve some hotspots that were forming on my feet. From the far side it's a short jog to the transition area. �You did the traverse in cycling shoes?� asks an amused race organizer as we punch our card.

At the van, our support person, Amanda, has our gear laid out and we quickly re-supply our packs. This is the last supported transition, so we fill up on water and grab some extra Hammer Gel. It's a little past noon and I estimate that we have about three hours to go. We're told that our lead at the takeout was 25 minutes. Assuming that our shoe choice lost us time on the traverse, we don't have much room for error.

Unfortunately, error is about to become our team motto. We head back out on bikes and get to the next control quickly but when we get to where we plotted the subsequent control, we can't find it. On one of my many falls during the traverse, the course notes fell out of my pocket so there's no way to check if the point is plotted correctly. After some searching, I recall that the notes did say something about taking a power line path to one of the controls. Perhaps we should go back to the previous control and see if there's a power line nearby. David's a bit skeptical and wants to keep searching, but finally agrees that we're just wasting time. At the worst, we could just wait for the next team to show up and follow them.

Sure enough, there is a power line at the previous control. The path is so steep and muddy that we have to walk our bikes much of the way, but once up the hill we can ride. We find the control where a ditch crosses the power line. We had been searching the same ditch further down the hill. The combination of inaccurate plotting and losing the notes has cost us 15 minutes. Our lead must be nearly gone.

We get back on roads to the next control, but still blow a couple of turns before getting to the mountain biking section. David puts the maps away, since we will be following a marked route. We cover just about every trail in the small park. Although things are drying out, the trails are still very slick so we take it easy. Just before the end of the trails, I realize that I've been dragging a brake shoe for a while. The brake is so hot I'm surprised I haven't blown a tire. Perhaps the wet leaves were a blessing after all � cooling the tire just enough to avoid a blowout. By the time I've fixed the brake, we see the second place team, Ozark Outdoor, heading down the trail. Our lead is officially blown. Seeing the other team does jolt us into pushing a bit harder and we manage to get back out of sight by the time we hit roads again.

There's not much left. We have to pass by a reference point, then into downtown Little Rock for the climbing, then back to the reference point and on to the finish. We see one of the race organizers at the reference point waving to us as we blast by. David is calling out instructions from behind me as we wind our way through the streets of Little Rock. Then comes the gut-wrenching call, �Oh, I think we screwed up.� Indeed, we've been following the course from the reference point to the finish rather than downtown. The two paths haven't diverged that much so it's not a huge loss, but it's enough that Ozark Outdoor is now right behind us. A few blocks later they pass us, looking understandably pleased with themselves.

We may have lost the lead, but we're not ready to let them go quite yet. They're faster on the bikes and, being a local team, they don't have to slow down to read the city map, but we've been in dogfights to the finish before and know that a lot can happen in the last hour of a long race. We hop into their draft and follow them to the start of the climbing.

The climbing consists of a cargo net draped over six floors of a parking garage. There are two fixed ropes, so each team will get one rope. We scramble to get our carabineers and ATC's out of our packs and put on the supplied harnesses. David clips into the ascender on the fixed rope first and starts heading up the net at the same time as the first climber from Ozark. For a while, they climb side by side, but then David starts to pull ahead. When David reaches halfway, Yvonne is allowed to start. The woman for Ozark starts a few seconds later and they also climb side by side. When Yvonne gets to half way, I clip in and go.

I've never climbed a cargo net before. I'm sure there's an optimal technique to it, but I have no idea what that would be. It's much harder than I expect. The net tends to pull back from the wall so you are climbing somewhat inverted with much of your weight hanging by your arms. My arms are getting tired after only two floors, so I start taking a short rest at each floor. I can reach through the net and grab the cables at the top of each wall and pull myself upright for a comfortable resting position. By the third floor it occurs to me that I haven't seen the last climber for Ozark. By the fourth floor it becomes obvious why: their first climber has stopped on the net, apparently exhausted from trying to keep up with David. As he's still clipped into the fixed rope, their second climber has to wait and the organizers won't let three people on the line at the same time.

I climb by with a strange sense of sympathy and elation mixed with a growing concern that my arms are about to give out. Although the ascender would catch me after dropping less than two feet, I still don't like the thought of swinging off the net and smacking into the concrete wall of the garage. I launch a final sprint up the last floor and am quite relieved to grab the cables at the top.

I run over to a second set of fixed ropes for the descent. Yvonne is just finishing her descent, so I don't get much rest before clipping in my ATC and hopping over the edge. Normally, stepping off a 60-foot ledge gives me at least a fleeting case of butterflies, but I'm so wrapped up in the team battle that my personal demons have to sit this one out. I leave my brake hand open and rappel down as quickly as the ATC will let. By the bottom it's so hot that I have to use care not to burn my fingers on it when clipping out.

David and Yvonne already have their packs on and they help me out of the harness and hand me my pack. We punch the control and get on our bikes for the final dash to the finish.

The cargo net has taken its toll on all of us. David and Yvonne are both breathing hard and I feel my legs cramping. However, being in the lead again gives us all the motivation we need (to blow a second lead would be too much to bear). Twenty minutes later we get to the finish and much to our relief there is no final test waiting for us there. Our finish time is 9 hours and 49 minutes.

It's a good thing we pushed, because Ozark Outdoor shows up only 8 minutes later (a veritable photo-finish in the adventure race world). Ozark Outdoor has finished second in all four editions of this race, which has to be frustrating. They take it very well and we enjoy chatting with them after the race. At 10 and a half hours, the third place team (defending champion, Bikeseller.com) rolls in.

Since we already had the $400 credit towards national championships entry from David's win at Berryman, that part of the first place prize will go to another team. However, with $450 in cash, another $200 from OuTek for nationals, some nice merchandize prizes, and free entry into next year's event, it comes to a pretty good haul. At the post-race banquet (decent food, good band, free beer � what's not to like?) we are awarded three giant rocks as first place trophies. With my forearms still spent from the cargo net, I need both hands to carry mine.

The race was really well run and the course was a blast. I'm definitely looking forward to next year when we'll enter as the �Orienteers and Cargo Net Climbers.�