Team Santa Fe Adventure Racing

Adventure Racing Links.

United States Adventure Racing Association, www.usara.com.
Colorado Adventure Training, www.adventuretraining.com.
Mountain Quest, www.mountain-quest.com.

December 2001 News

Southern Traverse
November 12-17, 2001
Queenstown, New Zealand

Team Santa Fe member, Cindy Gagnon, participated in this year’s Southern Traverse on The Inside Lane – Mercy Corps. Team members included John Freudenberg, Ben Binger and Robert Beauchamp. Our great support was Louise Beauchamp, Robert’s sister, and Libby Brown and Justin, North Island New Zealanders who gladly volunteered their time to support us. The team finished the entire race in 21st place out of 58 competitors. Only 21 teams finished the entire course. The Southern Traverse race is recognized as one of the world’s three most formidable adventure races along with Eco-Challenge and Raid Gauloises.

This Denver based racing team, in light of the tragedy of September 11, decided to team with Mercy Corps, to help raise money for the Comfort for Kids program. This program designed to aid families and children in New York City that might otherwise be overlooked by relief, recovery, and counseling efforts such as those in refugee, immigrant, and low-income communities. The team raised over $3000 in their efforts.

The weather was awesome (sun with not a cloud in the sky) for the start of the 2001 Southern Traverse along the waterfront of Queenstown. The first day of racing was designed to be somewhat spectator friendly with 4 short stages close to Queenstown - a short mountain bike (7km), followed by a short kayak on Lake Wakatipu (14km), a short trek through Arrow Gorge (11km) and finally another mountain bike (34km). Given the short stages, the pace was fast. Team Inside-Lane found themselves riding hard and running during these short legs just to keep up toward the middle of the pack. However, these legs were not that easy, with having to cross cold rushing waist deep rivers at least 8 times during the 11km trek and riding down wet grassy fields on the bike, which found many of us riding sideways with the brakes on. In addition, this is where we learned the strength of New Zealanders was paddling, and paddling was our weakest event. In addition, our kayaks were the not racing style boats, so we were incredibly slow. I gave up counting the number of teams that passed us on the first kayaking leg when I hit 10. It was a bit demoralizing, but we tried to make up some of the time, by running the next trek leg and riding hard. Inside-Lane finished these first 4 stages during the daylight of day 1, somewhere around 37th place

Stage 5 was the longest trek of the race, and was the determining factor for many teams, as it also was the first cut-off. The 52 km trek through the Hectors, with an estimated finishing time of 13-26 hours was very demanding trek. All teams carried the extra mandatory gear of ice ax, crampons, stove, tent and sleeping bags because of the eminent changing weather. The first 10 km followed the lakes edge along a farmer’s paddock. We then traversed the Hector range, which consisted of tussock valleys, rocky saddles and snow-covered slopes. The problem was the terrain was not that it was very steep. It was that the route was "traversing" rather than climbing to the top and walking the ridgeline. This is where I discovered; the one thing I did not train for was "traversing" for hours. I found my ankles and knees were not accustomed to steep traversing. We continued our forward progression through the night. The weather was cool with light rain on and off throughout the night and the next day. We took our first sleep break (20 minutes) around 11am on day 2. This consisted of just lying down and covering ourselves with the tarp as it was raining. Well rested ;-) we continued on. The weather got worse as the rain was now steady and heavy. We opted for the straight down the tussock slope, versus the winding traversing road, once we saw the transition area below us. Although very steep and tough on the knees, it was definitely shorter.

We were welcomed by our enthusiatic support crew, who catered to our every need. The stage took us about 22 hours. We had moved up to 34th place. We decided to take a 1 hour nap, as our next stage was the longest bike stage, a 53 km bike stage through the Garvie Mountains. I ended up also having one toe nail removed at this point as it was just hanging on with a thread. Given the weather, we were encouraged to carry the mandatory treking gear (tent and sleeping bags) as it was raining at the TA, but snowing heavily at Mt Tennyson, one of our destinations. This was the low point of the entire race for me. Here it is the evening of day 2, and I’m already wanting to drop out. I did not sleep during our designated 1 hour nap, and I was really tired. Its pouring rain and cold and I’m very worried about heading out on the bikes. Memories of my frost-bite experience in the moutain bike leg of a race last year haunt me. John reassured me that we are taking the tent and if I get cold, we will stop and let me warm up. Reluctantly, I put on as much clothes as I can, with an outer layer of gortex and mounted the bike. We leave for this stage at 9pm on day 2. 12 teams had dropped out already, and some other’s did not make the cut-off following the trek.

The directions give us the following "this stage involves spectacular mountain biking, and pushing, along the top of the Garvie Mountains. The downhill is steep and interesting, a long 1143 m (4000 vertical feet)."

Be sure to check out our ongoing feature - The Racer's Story.
This segment teammate, Slate Stern, trains for North Pole adventure