Gorge Games Adventure Race

Last month when I was home on reserve and got to do things I don't get to do when I'm out of town, I went to the Wednesday night mountain bike ride/trail run with the local adventure racing club. It was fun to see some old friends whom I really miss and meet a few new people.

One night, Renee and Russ were pondering who to get for a fourth person for their team in the 24-hour adventure race at the revived Gorge Games. This is the same Renee who always swears not to do any more 24 hour races after she does one. Even though I had decided not to do any adventure races this year (except the one in Utah in September that Zach and I paid for last year), I said I would race with them if they would let me on the team.

So last Friday after I got home from four days of work at 9:30 a.m., I packed everything on my list and headed to Hood River with Isaiah. We were supposed to meet Russ and Renee at the race check-in area at 2 p.m. After we stopped for food, I noted that we would have to call and tell them we were running late. About two minutes later, we saw Russ's car pull alongside us on the freeway. We were all laughing.

Shane, the race organizer and a friend of ours as well as our sponsor, had promised in an email that it would take at least an hour to complete the check-in process. It only took five minutes, so we had some much needed time to organize our gear and set up our team bin that would get dropped off at a remote transition area (TA). At the pre-race meeting, we learned that the race would be "rogaine" style rather than the traditional "fastest-one-there" format. In a rogaine, there are multiple checkpoints (CPs) in a random placement (not necessarily along a single route) and each CP is worth a different number of points. Unless you're really fast and can collect all the CPs, the strategy is in getting the maximum number of points while still being back to the start by a deadline; points are taken away for every minute past the deadline.

The race started at 5:30 p.m. with a kayak section. We felt pretty smug when we saw an inflatable kayak, a whitewater boat and some other not-so-efficient craft while we unloaded our fancy rented double sea kayaks. Ours were nice, but unfortunately the boats don't paddle themselves. Shane had set a stunning course on the Columbia River but had to abandon it for safety reasons in the blustery wind (meanwhile, it was a perfect day for the windsurfing and kite boarding competitions also going on during the Gorge Games). Instead, we had 3.5 hours to paddle out to an island and back as many times as we could. Every lap earned points. We made nine laps and only got lapped by Team DART twice. We were happy to get out of the boats and start riding our bikes.

We had to be off the water by 9 p.m. and could not start the bike section until 9:30. So we had 30 minutes to outfit ourselves in biking gear, pick up the map for the bike section and plot a course. Shane only allowed two hours to get from the waterfront up to Kingsley Reservoir so I wondered how we would get any CPs at all. In fact, we only got one--twice!

We rode out of the TA later than most of the other teams since we were still looking at our map, but we did pass a few on the road toward Post Canyon. We missed on CP that was right on the road because I was navigating toward one that was on a trail I was familiar with. We did find the trail and the CP that was a mile up it easily. Then we followed the course we had highlighted that would take us back to the road and a quick ride to the reservoir. After 30 or 45 minutes and a series of left turns, we saw a CP right along the trail! It had the same number on it as the first one! It was at a Y in the trail and this time we approached from a different way than the first time so it looked different. We couldn't help but laugh at ourselves. Then we followed our steps back out to the road to figure out what we needed to do differently. We arrived at the reservoir TA around 1:30 a.m., two hours late, only to find out that nobody made the time cutoff and nobody lost points for being late.

We spent almost an hour eating, drinking, refilling water reservoirs, ditching bike gear and putting on warm clothes (it was cold at 4,000 feet!). Then we got the map for the trekking section and set out in search of CPs. With Russ and Isaiah navigating, we nailed two right away and had to hike a short ways down a paved road to a dirt road to hit the third one. This turned into a long ways as we dropped down a steep hill, but finally found the dirt road which also continued downhill. The boys finally decided we were on the wrong road--we were way too low according to the topo lines on the map. So we hiked back up the dirt road to the paved road where we saw another team heading down the same way we had just been. We chuckled quietly to ourselves as we hiked up the steep hill of the paved road. We really had gone a long way, but finally found the right dirt road. The whole while we were hiking, I felt that if I just took the opportunity to lay down in the middle of the road I could sleep quite comfortably.

The next CP was worth 200 points--a high number, so we didn't expect it to be easy. We thought we were close, but instead of the road shown on the map, we found a lot of extremely dense brush. We bushwhacked for a while and Russ even thought he was following an old road bed, but it seemed futile so we abandoned the search to move on to other points. It can be a huge mistake in a race to spend so much time looking for a CP at the risk of missing all the others.

I navigated to the area where the next CP should be--down another old road bed overgrown with brush. This one was fairly obvious, however, until it entered a clearing and we split up to find the CP. Isaiah found it. Based on this CP being where we thought it would be, we now had more confidence that we were in the right place for the previous one. With the sun coming up over the Hood River valley, we decided to go back and get it. This time I knew it was there and was determined to find it! The clue was that it was on a rocky hilltop, so I knew we had to find the top of the hill we were on. The daylight made bushwhacking much easier and before too long I topped out near a small rocky cliff and saw the orange orienteering flag. This was a very exciting moment for me because I am usually not the team navigator and am almost never the one to actually spot the flag. I felt quite triumphant.

The next series of checkpoints went very smoothly. We ran into Team DART who had gotten the 1,000 points for summiting Mt. Defiance (the highest point in the Gorge at 5,000 feet) and were collecting checkpoints at a mad pace before the trekking deadline. Russ check back in after apparently being rather out of it for a couple hours. No one had noticed. We actually got a couple CPs we hadn't originally thought we would have time for, but despite Russ's encouragement, opted out of the 50-pointer in favor of getting back to the TA a few minutes early in order to be ready to leave on bikes at the official start time and be able to maximize our biking points.

After the usual TA tasks--eating, drinking, dressing, gearing up--we joined most of the other teams for the 10:00 a.m. start for the final bike section. This time we did opt for the Mt. Defiance summit's 1,000 points. We were only the second team there on our bikes and were greeted by a film crew. The journey there was largely a hike-a-bike as the steep, rocky road was too technical to ride. A really nice hiker gave us all water. We encountered several other teams on the way up as we rocketed down the hill. That was fun!

We collected several more CPs as we made our way toward town and rode some awesome singletrack on the way. Also some loose, powdery sections that weren't so fun and caused Renee to have a nasty crash that resulted in bruises. But mostly really fun riding! Before we knew it we were in Hood River and had several CPs to hit before the finish line. Isaiah laid out a plan and we checked them all off. The most fun one was along a gravel path above the Hood River. On our way to the last one, we took a street that didn't go through but found a blackberry-bramble-lined path that cut up to the street above. At the top of the path was a railing that separated a parking lot from the blackberry field. In the parking lot was a dumpster. As I pushed my bike past, the wind blew the dumpster lid open and it smacked me hard on the top of the head! Luckily I had my helmet on, but the impact still rocked my head and left me reeling. While I was trying not to cry, the rest of my teammates were laughing. It actually was pretty funny getting mauled by a dumpster after spending 24 hours in the woods.

Then a fast, easy ride to the marina and the finish line where the Next Adventure crew waited with burgers and locally brewed Full Sail beer!