Terrain: flat-ish, snowy forest, frozen marshes, snowmobile trails
Weather: minus a few, crisp and perfect for racing
Format: 2x 8hr rogaine, 37 controls, any non-motorized travel permissible (we skied both days), manual punch with a time sign-in sheet to see who is where
Team: Swish Swish Thump with CB (the swish swish is for the skiing, the thump is for when we fall on our asses)
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| If you click on this and squint real hard, you can see the tracks from both days overlaid. |
I had done only one 10hr urban rogaine before, while CB had done some real ones in the woods. The only advice I could contribute from my meagre experience was that once you take time to travel into an area, you should grab all the controls there no matter what. I had skied a total of 11 times in my life, and never off-trail, other than in tracks that had already been cleared for me by others in a ski-O. CB was going to be the leader on this team through and through.
Started off with a short road run along with everyone else (who were mostly on snowshoes, the cowards! LOL), but we ducked into the first snowmobile trail, while the others continued on. The trail was soft and easy to ski on. Our first bushwhack to #43 was really tough, with lots of icy moguls in the forest, which I could not figure out how to move on. CB seemed to slide and hop from one bump to the next, but I was very frustrated and delayed us quite a bit. We then had to climb an icy, crusty hill up to #42. Again, CB got up there pretty quick with an aggressive herring bone, while I slid all over the place. Finally side-stepped to the top. Coming back down was a little blood-curdling! Had to slide sideways as well while CB mostly skied. And waited. A lot! I didn't realize until after the race that there was no rule about each team member having to touch the control... oops!
We quickly hit #51 , and our next objective was #49, but even though the marsh we crossed to get close to it was thickly frozen over and snowed in, there was a sizable river in our way that didn't have any lucky natural bridges. We pressed on to #55 instead.
The scenery became more and more beautiful. 55 was in another frozen marsh. Unfortunately, crossing this marsh to #48 was probably the most tiring part of the day. Nothing but little moguls with water holes in between. Apparently this is where CB took a nose dive into one of these! I myself had already fallen over a hundred times thus far, and gotten my skis stuck in bushes a hundred more. It took us a whole hour to cross that marsh. I had just started getting a bit more comfortable with what my skis could take on the uneven terrain, thinking that if CB's skis could take this punishment, so could mine, right? Then I noticed: she has touring skis, about twice as thick as mine!
At this point, we realized that we hadn't seen anyone else so far. We had hit 5 virgin controls, with no other sign-ins. Wish there were bonus points for that! Although it was tough going, it was very satisfying to keep hitting the controls dead-on after kilometres of lonely marsh-whacking.
After CB got a little wet, I vowed I wouldn't go in the drink myself. There was this one little stream (which she just flew over) that my little legs couldn't span properly as I tried to step to the other side. I got all unbalanced, but determined not to touch water in any way, I threw my arms out and landed in a sweet plank across the stream. My skis and poles were stuck in every direction possible. I yelped and heard "can I help?" from up ahead. "Yes, please!" When CB rounded the corner, all she could do was burst out laughing... and start taking out her camera! With this great help, I had to extricate one of my poles with my teeth, haha.
PHOTO TO FOLLOW! Maybe even the video. Yes, she took video.
We were disappointed trying to find the trail to #53 as there were lots of private property signs along the snowmobile trails. We just couldn't find a way in. So had to give it up and finally do a satisfying fast ski up to #65 and then on to #46. By this time, there were definitely elephant tracks to the controls, so at least that was easier, although kind of disappointing too, as we got so used to finding our own way.
Instead of going back out to keep dodging the snowmobiles, we decided on a direct route to #21 - murder! Maybe the second most frustrating leg through a very tough forest, and now we had crusty snowshoe tracks to contend with. CB also lost her compass there at some point, and she went back out to find it - and she did! Crazy and awesome! It was busted in two though, so I had to take over despite the fact that I was exhausted and disoriented. I got us a bit off-track at #45, so we wandered a bit to re-orient. #37 was easy, and now we were doing everything to stay on skiable trails or open tracts of the forest.
We finally saw some familiar faces (Attack from Above, first male team, what what!) at #44, and although at this point the two snowshoers were quite jealous of our "fast" skis, I made sure to give them a front-row seat to wipe-out #367 of the day. While I baby-giraffed myself back to my feet, they gingerly pranced right past me.
The last trail ski was a bit of a blur. I was exhausted beyond belief. We got to ski more easily here, but I had very little left in me and felt so bad for CB who constantly patiently waited for me to catch up, and who at every control we hit would yell out, "We're AWESOME!"
We got #33 and #35 and had a little time left, so we debated catching #22 as our last control. CB made an executive decision to go straight home, and as someone who is perpetually late for things, I agreed with her sense of timing. We took off across the frozen Lake Loraine, 300m+ of very nervous skiing, at some of the fastest pace we had put on the whole day - and that's not just because of the smooth flat surface!
We ended up having about 20mins to spare, and it turned out that we wouldn't have lost points for lateness on day one, but would have been delayed by 3x each minute at the start the next day. If we had known that, we probably would have gone for #22. But we were exhausted and happy and very proud of ourselves on this first outing.
Great post-race food, and then later dinner with the 16-strong Team Canada, and of course planning for Day Two. Took the Tree Huggers' advice on utilizing our, ahem, speed on the trails and minimizing the ski-whacking. I don't think I could take another whole day of that!
--Distance: 22.5km
--Duration: 7:40:00
Gear Worn:
LG Ski pants, ski socks, HH shirt, arm warmers, ultrathin windbreaker, ear band, ski gloves, 20L pack + 5L front add-on - Other than gloves, I nailed my clothing for the day, perfectly warm and dry
Gear Packed:
Ski jacket, 2x Socks, Turtle mitts, Toque
8x Roctane, Cheese sandwich, salt pills, 2L water + 1.5L water
Headlamp, Towline (which I lost - sorry, CK!), First aid, Knife, Emergency blanket
Gear Snafus:
Didn't pin my map, so kept taking it out of the front pack. Good thing CB was the navigator.
Didn't drink most of the water, so really just dragged a lot of extra weight.
Forgot my tiny liner gloves, so when my hands got cold had to squeeze my regular gloves into my mitts. The mitts were also too big for my pole loops, gah.
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