Team Santa Fe at the Races

Four Winds USA Supreme Adventure Race
400+ Mile Expedition Race
Driggs, Idaho
August 4-12, 2001
By Lisa Barnes and Don Moden 

The race started on Saturday, August 4 at 8:00 a.m. in the center of Driggs, Idaho in the beautiful Teton Basin. The first leg of the race was mountain biking, and the start was planned to coincide with a local running race, The John Colter Half-Marathon. The start line was split in two, with adventure racers and mountain bikes on the left and runners on the right. After 2 blocks, the adventure racers split off from the runners and our week of racing began.

This first mountain biking had sections of road riding, single track, and hike-a-bike. The hike-a-bike was less than we had anticipated and we finished up this leg faster than we expected. The first two checkpoints were found without any problems. We never found the 3rd checkpoint at its plotted location, and we were relieved to be told at Checkpoint 4 / Transition Area (TA) 1 that other teams had also reported the 3rd checkpoint was missing. The race officials recorded how much time each team spent looking for the missing checkpoint.

We had a fairly fast transition of 40 minutes and by early evening Saturday, we had started a long trek with a summit of Garns Mountain (9,016-feet). Just before dark, we caught up with Team Adidas and hiked through the night along with them. The trek to Garns Mountain went fairly smooth and we knocked off Checkpoints 5, 6, and 7. We saw three of the teams in front of us coming down while we were going up Garns Mountain, and two of the teams behind us going up while we were coming down the mountain. The navigation upon leaving Garns Mountain became tricky, and we heard later that all 12 teams managed to make the same navigation error and end up in the wrong valley. The navigation for the race was challenging s! ince the topo maps for the area were as old as 1951, and we were given poor quality black and white photo copies of the topo maps. The race officials gave us a Forest Service Map to use as a supplement, but warned us that neither map was up to date. There were a lot of new ATV trails and roads that were not on either map. At one point we were surrounded by 7 teams, all of us confused about where we were located. The teams bushwacked various different ways to finally reach Checkpoint 8. From Checkpoint 8, it was a fairly straight forward trek to Checkpoint 9 / TA 2.

We reached Checkpoint 9 Sunday night and decided that we needed some sleep before we transitioned to the horses. We slept for a couple of hours, got some foot repair done for our blisters, and then transitioned to the horse riding section of the course. One of the shorter sections of the course, we completed this leg in 5 hours, which was a good time for this section since it was during the night. Lisa rode the horse while Don followed on foot and did an excellent job of navigating. Pal, our horse was very spunky and was not very excited to leave the other horses behind. We also learned a lesson about traveling at night with headlamps and horses. They do not like th! e extra light, so be very careful where your headlamp shines. Once we understood this, and learned that Pal would rather cross the creeks next to the bridge instead of trying to cross over them, things went pretty smoothly. She was a sure footed horse and did an excellent job at the steep descents during the ride. We found all of our checkpoints without any problems and by Monday morning we were at Checkpoint 12 / TA 3.

TA 3 was the same spot as TA 2. They had us do a big loop on the horses so they could be returned to the same area. While at TA 3, Don took an hour nap since he did all the walking/running during the horse section and Lisa prepared things for the next section of the race. After the nap, Don was fresh and ready to navigate the next trekking leg. We were warned that this would be a long dry section of the course, and that we should carry an extra water bladder to fill at the waterfall at Checkpoint 14. We also were required to carry our mountaineering equipment for the summit of Mt. Baird (10,025 feet). We reached Checkpoint 13 very quickly and then had a very long tr! ek to Checkpoint 14. The navigation was a little tricky at one point, but Don did a good job of deciphering the horrible black and white photocopy of our topo map. We decided to take a trail that was not on the map, but was the right choice to take. We eventually hiked along the beautiful Palisades Lake and reached Checkpoint 14 at the waterfalls. We filled up on water and began our hike to Mt. Baird.

We reached the foot of Mt. Baird at 9,000 feet at around 11 p.m. Monday night. At the foot of Mt. Baird, we ran into two other teams, Adidas and Blade Runner, who were sleeping. The guys from Blade Runner explained to us that they had just come down from Mt. Baird and were waiting until morning to scout out a route down Hell Hole Canyon. This was a shorter route than all of us had drawn on the maps, but there were not any trails this way on any of the maps we were given. We decided to sleep for a few hours, summit Mt. Baird before sunrise and then join the other two teams on their descent down Hell Hole Canyon. The ascent of Mt. Baird, Checkpoint 15, was on slippery loose rock that went fine going up, but offe! red some excitement coming down. We did a little sliding, but made it down fine.

 

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