Starting was the victory; finishing was a bonus
Raid Ukatak
Race Report
6 days/5 nights, covering 240 miles, of snowshoeing, skiing, biking,
rappelling, shivering, etc.
Well, we survived…perhaps
unexpectedly. The marketing director for the Expedition Racing League (Raid Ukatak is the first leg in a worldwide championship race
series) apparently collected $200 (Canadian) by betting on us to finish, but I
suspect he could have gotten a lot more action if he was willing to risk more
cash.
After all,
our team (Rugged/OneWith) did look a little sketchy
from the outside. If uncertain team dynamics (meeting each other for the first
time the day before the race) didn’t stop us, surely one of the bizarre
incidents we experienced (broken bikes and snowshoes (two each), rescue of a
dog and a cameraman (one each), a team member falling through ice up to her
thigh, hypothermia, etc.) would.
Still, our
front line was strong. Team captain Tim had led one of only five teams to
actually finish last year’s epic (temperatures reached –35 F and winds
screeched at 70 mph, leading to many rescues, much frostbite, and clothes
ripped by ice shards), Ellen has a deep ski/mountain
bike/adventure racing background…and lives in
Beyond that, though, the doubts began. Reluctant Ken spent more time trying to bail out than training and preparing for the race. And we ran through fourth teammates like the drummers in Spinal Tap—there one minute, and then gone in a puff of smoke. In fact, about 48 hours before the race, we found ourselves a Gang of Three once again.
But the
race director offered up her friend Andra, a triathlete who had been training for adventure racing last
year. With 12 hours notice, Andra scraped together
the necessary gear and hopped a ride to the race to meet her fate. Brave,
perhaps foolhardy, but indicative of the grit she would show throughout the
race.
At our
first meeting, we realized two things. First, Andra would need help getting ready: her longest previous race was
two-and-a-half hours, her bike had a kickstand and thick coating of rust and
muck, and her skis were hopeless. Second, television cameras were going to be
in our faces for the next week: crews followed us from the moment we met at the
hotel to the post-finish celebration (although mercifully, not to the drunken
post-race party/rave).
The race
covered some serious
We traveled
across frozen lakes, over thickly forested mountains, up and down icy cliffs,
and along river valleys. One spectacular leg sent us through a long,
seldom-traversed narrow “notch” whose walls rose 500-1,000 feet above, less
than 200 yards apart in places. Alas, all the teams missed out on one of the
intended highlights: rappelling 600 vertical feet down to the only fjord in the
East and skiing 15 miles along its surface. An icebreaker came through the
night before the race, churning solid into liquid. Bummer.
Perhaps as
important as the physical thrill, the race introduced us to the Quebecois
passion for winter. The start drew a crowd of 500; even though we were the last
to complete the race, 50 people stood in the snow and cheered us on to the
finish. Every checkpoint had shelter and hot water (saving us from boiling snow
every few hours); many were at private homes or hunting lodges. All offered
incredible hospitality and a chance to soak up the local enthusiasm for the
race. At one stop, where we planned to nap, the available shelter was a drafty,
smelly barn. Then—incroyable!—someone down the road
offered to let us sleep for a few hours on his meticulously clean kitchen
floor, and didn’t flinch as we peeled off layer after layer of stench-ridden
polypro and piled it next to his radiator. Mmm, heat.
Oh yeah,
the race….
Although we
suspected we might not be contenders for the lead, the first leg confirmed that
we would have to be resourceful just to finish. What should have been a
straightforward 50-mile bike turned ugly when my (borrowed) back wheel began
unlacing itself every few miles. After two stops to re-true the wheel, Ellen
pointed us toward a gas station where we paid $10 (Canadian) to have the spokes
individually Super Glued in place.
The bike
led to an all-night session of skiing and snowshoe bushwhacking, followed by
our first big test: spend four hours outside “sleeping” in our mandatory
survival tent and sleeping bags. Alas, about a half-mile before the test, Andra slipped and plunged her whole leg through ice into a
river. Amazingly, she took this mishap quite calmly, and we took an hour
“warming” penalty next to a fireplace before our sleepover, rather than risk
frostbite.
And so it went, day and night, night following day, up cliffs and down
rappel lines, laboring over ridges and crashing on narrow ski trails. Whenever we got close to a
checkpoint, a camera crew would track us for a few miles coming in and heading
out.
At first,
we found it mystifying that a team always near the back of the pack would
garner so much attention. Soon, we realized that the producers and race staff
were enjoying our antics—they said later it was like watching 100 hours of
"Seinfeld” (does that make me Kramer or George?).
Apparently,
we made the local TV news the first night of the race because I was captured
doing a goofy "Fish Called Wanda" imitation while unzipping the pitzips on Andra’s jacket.
And then came biting an ice ball off the foot of a suffering dog....
We had a
dog (and a cameraman) following us around for about six hours at one point
during the race. First, we nearly had to rescue the dog from an icy river, and
then we did have to help her out when she got ice balls lodged between the pads
on her paws. As the camera zoomed in on me trying to dislodge the ice, Tim (seriously?)
says, "When my dog gets those I just bite them off." So I did, and it
worked. The dog got happy and everyone cracked up, imagining how this would
look on TV.
Other
moments from the race: Andra’s freewheel shattering
as soon as we left one checkpoint, and Ellen towing her all the way to the
next; three of us crashing our bikes the instant we turned out of a driveway
and hit the “brown ice” of a frozen dirt road; the astonishing coincidence of
finding a machine shop (and a patient craftsman) at the exact moment we broke
two snowshoes; giving a cameraman part of the water and food we needed for an
eight-hour snowshoe when the nozzle on his Camelbak
fell off and he lost all his water; Tim not talking for hours at a stretch and
then turning into Regis Philbin whenever a camera
appeared; me getting seriously hypothermic on the last night and subjecting my
teammates to six hours of contentious, incoherent zombiedom
And most of
all, skiing across a lake at sunset, as the sun lit up the ice and red rocks of
a west-facing cliff with the deep indigo of dusk for a backdrop.
We rolled
across the finish line in ninth place (a/k/a last, but ahead of a few teams
that did not finish), quite relieved to be done, but delighted with (most of)
the experience. And it’s been sunny and 75 in the Bay Area for the last couple
of weeks….
By Ken White Use when helpful…with appropriate reference.