This report is a bit overdue. To be honest, it may be the
sour taste that is left in my mouth after Untamed New England’s 24 hour race in
the wilds of northern Maine last month that has sapped my desire to write a
report. We all had been looking forward to this one, and while the drive up
with Abby on Friday was beautiful and enthralling, highlighted by a moose
sighting that had an excited Abby shrieking with joy, our drive home was a fair
bit more somber.
Abby and I met up with Brian and Jason at Sugarloaf ski
resort and outdoor center, the site of our demise last year when my bikeexploded, turning a 4-5 hour bike loop into a 9 hour hike-a-bike that kept us
from staying on the full course. Sugarloaf loomed above us, and we mentally
prepped ourselves for what would be a grueling 24 hours, culminating with
another trek up the lofty peak, this time from the back side. Little did we
know that for the second year in a row, the wilderness of the Carrabassett
Valley would prove unlucky for team GOALS ARA, though unlike last year when
mechanicals killed us, this year we struggled from pure human-error.
The race started off well with a peaceful paddle down the
Kennebec. After a stretch of ripples and flowing water, the river pooled into a
long lake with loons and silent Maine woods along the banks. Abby and I regaled
Brian and Jason with stories of packrafts, sleep deprivation and wildlife sightings
from 2012, and we came off leg 1 in good spirits for the first big trek west to
Flagstaff Lake. This leg was unquestionably my favorite leg of the race. The
terrain was new from 2012, the lakes and ponds were beautiful, and we got off
trail a few times and summited a peak with nice views of Flagstaff for the
final CP. We made good time, nailed the nav and came into the TA minutes after
the leaders, Untamed New England, started off on their bikes for leg 3.
Considering that they are usually out of sight after the start, we were
thrilled with our progress.
It was at that point that our race began to dissolve. The
first bike control was along a trail. We knew this. We also gambled a bit
rationalizing that this trail would be much slower than riding the road that
was north of the control. We knew it COULD get nasty, but we risked a whack,
electing to ride the road and whack to the point. It didn’t take long to
recognize that this was a disastrous decision. Not only did we drift off our
heading, but Abby ended up helmet deep in a marsh, with Jason not much better,
as I was falling into some watery hole further on. We did finally reach the
control, and made it back to our bikes a bit more drama-free, but we lost a
good 30-40 minutes it seemed. Maybe more.
The rest of the ride was relatively straight forward along
logging roads and then an unmapped network of trails to a new Maine hut sitting
atop a mountain with sweeping views over the Carabasset Valley. Lovely spot,
nice break, and then a slog down the mountain for two foot controls only to go
straight back up the trail. No real nav and rather disappointing though it did
give us a sense of where we stood compared to everyone else as we saw most of
the teams ahead of us coming back up and a number of good teams still behind us
despite our adventure in the swamps coming down as we trekked back up.
Following the O-section, we headed out for another bike leg,
and much like the first one, it was a straight forward haul, this time all on
roads and jeep track. A long section of it involved a long climb up and over a
ridge and then a long, rocky descent down to the final TA. Here we would begin
a grueling trek up into the mountains behind Sugarloaf to the finish. We felt
good about our time to finish the full course since we had cleared the time-cut
off with hours to spare. So it was that I decided I was tired of friendly nav,
and I decided to mix it up. Take the team somewhere no one had been for
decades. Rather than following the leader I just had to make things more
interesting. I wish I hadn’t.
We made good time on the roads and started off up the
mountain, riding and pushing as the road allowed and as our legs permitted. We
made decent time, reaching a split where the main road continued on while
another, less traveled jeep track veered off. On the map, there was a split
that lined up well. According to this bit of information, the split would
shortly come back together with the main road. Well, I made the decision to
take the less traveled trail. I will not publically defend this choice though
there were many weird things that helped me rationalize this, but I will
apologize once again to my teammates. I will then apologize again for being
comfortable with what this jeep track did next, though I swear to the AR gods
that my compass checks seemed to confirm all was well. When the jeep track
ended and we ended up on a narrow, very
overgrown track that was barely perceptible, we collectively decided to stay on
as it was seemingly heading in a direction that would get us back to the main
road. We knew that we were off track by this point, but we elected to go for
it, believing we would break out on the road and save time instead of turning
around and going back out.
Well, this went on for much too long. Why someone didn’t put
their foot down I don’t know, but when we ended up finally being unable to
follow the old track, we finally cried uncle and turned around. It was about as
demoralizing as any experience I’ve had in an AR, and it got even worse when we
rolled into the TA and were given the following information: things were going
slower than expected. They had instituted a new time cutoff at 3 AM to start
the trek. We could still go out since it was 2:53, but we would have seven
hours to tackle the trek, and it was a bear. We knew it would be since Abby and
I had been up in those mountains the year before and it was now raining, which
could make the steep final climb all but impossible. It seemed more likely that
we would end up DNFing rather than making it.
We conferred; Jason and Brian were keen, and Abby was
willing but clear that she thought it unwise. I spent a minute or two concentrating
on the maps, making some calculations, and was firm that we could try but that
my strong feeling was we would not make it. With the 2+ hours we lost on my
misguided decision to practice bike-whacking and worse on the way to the TA
would have allowed us to finish the full-course, but we decided to head out for
a long 20 mile road ride back to the finish. As it turned out, the winner,
Untamed New England took just under 7 hours. This made us feel better about our
decision as we certainly would not have bested them on this leg considering
they nailed the nav and are simply faster than we are, but almost a month
later, I’m still having nightmares about this race.
Ultimately, it was rather simple. We approached this race
based on our experience in Untamed expedition races where creativity and risks
often pay off and nav is rarely as straight forward as it looks. We took a risk
or two when at the end of the day, this race was far more straight forward. When
the map said to stay on the trail, stay on the trail. When you’re on a road,
make sure you use the road, no matter what. Still, I’ll take the lion’s share
of the blame for this one as I should have known better at several times. While
our performance, or lack of it…or my lack of it…marred the race, we were also a
bit bummed that the race was so straight forward. While Untamed New England expedition
races are renowned for challenging navigation, route choice, and interesting features,
this race didn’t quite offer the same. To be sure, a trek over Sugarloaf would
have been great, and we missed that, and there were some spectacular views from
the hut at the O section, but after the first leg, it just felt like a lot of
distance on roads without a whole to think about, and even the first trek was
mainly on trails and roads. By no means will this dissuade me from Untamed
events in the future as I know this event was meant to be more accessible to
less experienced racers. And considering that I couldn’t even navigate a bike
ride along a road, I probably shouldn’t be writing anything at all, but I would
have liked a bit more off trail travel…though I would have liked it without my
bike, and when I was meant to be in the woods without road or path.
All this said, there is nothing like the great northern
woods, and while the race was one of the more disappointing ones
(performance-wise) in my racing experience, I can’t complain about a day out in
the beautiful wilds of New England. Nothing like it in the eastern half of the
country, and I’ll be eager to get back up there for some redemption at some
point. And on a final, more positive note, our friends from NYARA once again adopted Jonathan and together they did a fair bit better than we did, finishing 7th overall.
*All pictures from the first trek. Left the camera in transition to bike. Maybe that was the problem...
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