After several years of  "Adventure Racing", I returned to the more organized, systematic and pristine sport of triathlon, only to encounter my most significant adventure. The day started with numbering and a walk out on a jetty into Lake Utah. My only thought was that the water looked angry and was a far cry from the placid indoor pool used for training. From that moment on the event headed into a chaotic ill fated sea of bad luck, poor decisions, crushed dreams and a very unfortunate death. The simply summary was that the wind caused waves on lake Utah that caused an early start to the race, dislodged the buoys, required the recall of the smaller safety craft, and eventually ended in the cancellation of the swim. As a participant in the event, I was simply try to complete the swim in the midst of the anarchy and was presently relieved to simply make shore and locate my other Team Santa Fe teammates.

Following cancellation of the swim, the event organizes turned the triathlon into a half Ironman distance duathlon. Upon first notification, the shortening of the course seemed unreasonable, but based on the energy expended in the swim and the mental fatigue caused by the resulting uncertainty and at times fear in the swim, the shorter distance was likely appropriate. Gary Johnson went on to have an extremely fast time of 4:57 and placed 9/119 in his age group. He was hoping for a Kona spot and just missed. Jen and Ries were not as speedy but enjoyed the race equally as much. Jen has especially pleased with her bike time that was produced on a Tuscany LiteSpeed. Also in use during the race were Bolle sunglasses and plentiful amounts of GU.

TSF members Barb Dutrow, Carl Gable, and Joel Krypel, together with Brad Fawcett competed in the first Subaru Primal Quest.  A superb support crew consisting of Jessica Harrison, M.D., of Tucson, AZ, Bill Roth and Jennifer Harrison, joined them (no relation) of Santa Fe.  To keep our family and friends informed, we also arranged for daily updates to be e-mailed by Darrell Henry.  These are posted to website of Barb's local running club and can be viewed at: http://www.lawired.com/csr/home.htm Pictures of TSF during the race can also be viewed at: http://www.geol.lsu.edu/dutrow/tsf_pics.html

After spending the morning of July 4 loading the support vehicle, race was advertised as having 68,000' feet of vertical gain over 251 miles; 151 miles of biking, 32 miles of kayaking and 68 miles of trekking.  And, it was high.  Nearly the entire race was over 9000' of elevation!  At the races end, Barb recorded 54,790' of vertical gain on her altimeter, short of the projected gain.

Arriving at Mountain Village, the scenery was breath taking.  The condo provided a great staging area for the race.  Although SPQ Bill's flatbed truck, TSF was off to Telluride.  This adventure had scheduled teams with a specific time for checkout, if we came early they would work us in.  That was a blessing.  We headed off for checkout, complete with ALL of the required gear - including bikes, early July 5.  And, what a thorough, but pleasant, checkout it was.  There were teams of volunteers to speed one through.  Selected required gear was tagged to make sure it didn't get swapped for lighter gear later!  For the ropes skill test, the ropes were, of course, anchored to the bummer of a Subaru!  Having the whitewater checkout in the pool, fully geared up with gondolas overhead made for a surreal start.  We were finished, our photos taken, our goodie bags gathered by 2pm.  Now we had a full 2.5 days to reorganize gear.

On July 7, racers lined up in chute, after receiving their GPS unit for tracking, for the start of the race at 3pm.  Weather conditions were great, even if hot!  Trekking was the first event, taking racers on a short leg - 25 miles, over 4 passes. Once the countdown began, racers were off in mass, up the Telluride ski slope!  Up was followed by down, across a high mountain meadow, ablaze with wildflowers.  After a strategic move to contour around at 13,000' and avoid the ridgeline, we descended and then climbed Ajax Mountain for the descent to the Imogene Pass Road and into Telluride.  This was a major mistake! At the top of the mountain, the couloir leading down was a 1000' unstable rubble pile.  We waited about 30 minutes for Team Stryker to clear the debris area, before continuing on.  It was clear from the teams immediately ahead of us and behind us that many did not know how to safely travel on such unstable scree slopes.  We set off, keeping another team close by, down the unstable and dangerous slope - following the few glow sticks that hadn't fallen by previous rock fall.  About half was down the slope, the team above us moved - although we had yelled for them to stay put - and sent a tire-sized boulder careening our way out of the darkness.

TSF jumped to the side, and thankfully we were missed only by inches.  This could have been a life-threatening and certainly race-ending event had we been only a few feet over.  Joel had a nasty cut on this thumb, but it was still functioning and attached!  After the adrenaline rush was over, we finished the descent and were off to Telluride to the biking transition.

Transition to biking was preceded by getting the checkpoints for the remainder of the race.  Realizing that the next bike leg was over 100 miles, we quickly were on our way.  This leg was a mixture of single track, roads, and the all too common, hike-a-bike.  Unfortunately for Barb - who likes uphill and roads - the technical single track in the dark was a scary beginning.  Daylight soon came, as did friendlier roads and gorgeous scenery.  Completely circum-navigating the Lizard Head wilderness made for spectacular scenery.  During the middle of this long bike leg, we were allowed to meet our support crew. Fortunately, they had prepared a feast for us - plates of steaming pasta.  And, they had prepared boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and peanut butter and jellies for us to take on the next segment.  Our transitions were too long, because they fed us too well!  By the end of this bike leg, our seats were so sore everyone rode the down hills with their quad on the bike seat!

Everyone was looking forward to the mountaineering leg and being on our feet again!  Much of this segment was traveling cross-country, over many steep couloirs that were scree slopes instead of the nice snow chutes they would have been in a wetter year. Midway through, a ropes segment was setup to ascend a fixed rope, the rappel down the other side and zip across another long scree slope.  As Carl, Joel and Brad sat below watching Barb descend, a loud crash signaled that a rock fall (with 3 sofa size rocks) had spontaneously broken off just above Barb off to the right - and funneled directly down into the descent line.  Fortunately the angels were there, if Barb had been a minute further down, she would have been pummeled by rock fall!  We all felt very lucky!

Only a short bike ride away was kayaking.  Unfortunately as we headed up Corkscrew Pass, we realized that this was going to be another hiking section!  At the top, just as Barb started down while she was changing gears she hit a rock, and fell over to her right - her arm and hip coming down hard on rocks.  After a scream and some tears, the guys checked the bike and all was well.  The rocky downhill made it painful to grasp the handlebars, but that soon ended in a fabulous long smooth downhill where you could cruise at high speed.  We fortunately got to boating transition about 6:30 am - enough time to change, be on and off the water by the mandatory 9pm cutoff.  However, when Barb looked at her arm, there was swelling to the size of a grapefruit.  A quick cold compress and wrap followed.  Trying to squeeze into a wetsuit with a non-functional right arm was difficult, but Jennifer kindly helped!  (Three weeks later Barb discovered that she had fractured her radius).

We were all looking forward to boating, to be off our feet.  Ha! With water levels so low (150 cfs vs. the average 1500 cfs) it was soon clear this would be hike-a-boat.  We put in about 8:30am, a good time that should allow us to be through the canyon by 9pm and not have to spend the night.  Carl and Barb soon mastered the one-foot out and one-foot in push along the river technique as well as the scoot technique.  It seemed that you couldn't go 10 feet without getting stuck.  Brad and Joel chose instead to line their boat, Brad not caring so much for this segment.  We arrived at camp 1 two hours before the cutoff. However, as the day wore on, Carl and Barb got too far ahead for Joel and Brad to see how they ran the rapids.  The pace slowed, too much.  Carl and Barb were about 0.25 miles from takeout when 9pm arrived. Joel and Brad further back.  After being met by river guides, we deflated our boats and carried them to camp2.  For each minute we were not at camp 2, there was a 5-minute penalty. We ended up with an 8 hr penalty that had to be served there.  We were not prepared to spend the freezing night in the canyon, so despite the time - sleep was not restful.  At 6:20am we could leave, and started the trek out.  Nearing Purgatory we were met by a camera crew who followed us into camp - and then on the next biking leg!

It was a relief to know that the final biking leg was soon to be behind us.  Reaching the summit about sunset made for gorgeous film footage.  But then came the "bone-jarring downhill", as the race instructions stated.  Barb said lots of explicatives as she road, but the team was very tolerant.  The pain of her broken arm made her go faster as she wanted to get through this as fast as she could.  Of course this mortified the guys, they didn't want her to crash again!  Riding up Lizard Head Pass, 13,100', again was wonderful!

After a transition with more delicious hot food and some sleep, TSF was off at 2am on the final trekking leg.  This section displayed the stunning San Juan scenery, viewed from atop several passes.  It also brought the final, grueling uphill climb - in the heat of the day on a south-facing slope.  Once at the summit, Joel shared smoked salmon, which had never tasted better.  Down Bridal Veil Basin to the rappel and then to the finish line! Nearly running downhill, we arrived at the rappel about 8:30pm in the light.  There were three unranked teams ahead, so we, as a ranked team asked to go ahead.  They told us no!  So we sat and waited nearly two hours before rappelling.  Rappelling in the dark brought its own set of challenges.  Barb, Carl and Joel all ended up rappelling into the trees - all had a different strategy for getting through.  Barb crashed through the 20', Carl ascended the rope to put it down on the correct side and Joel bent the tree down under the rope.  After a treacherous path off the mountain, the finish line was near.

Team Santa Fe finished at 1:45am Saturday morning, July 12. Overall it was a great race.

TSF would like to thank the generous (equipment) sponsors:  Leki, Thorlo, Scrade Knives, OR, Ortlieb, Varsity Sports (Baton Rouge), Litespeed bikes, Black Diamond, Petzl, Suunto, NiteRider, Golite, Snow Peak, AXO Cycling, LP composites, Spinergy, SweetWater, and SealLine.

Having completed my first adventure race at Primal Quest I'm sure now that it is just what I have been looking for, and I hope to do a lot more. I was lucky to have someone with Carl's experience on my team for my first race because it eliminated so much of the guesswork and really lowered the stress level for me. From what I have seen and heard our team worked well together as a group and we had almost no conflict to speak of, which seems like it can ruin even the most powerful teams. The other thing I felt fortunate about was that we had no major physical or mechanical breakdowns just the usual foot and sleep thing, which probably will come up in every race I ever do of this length. The low point for me was getting the 8 hour penalty in the boating section, because in hind sight it could have been avoided, but for me it will be helpful in all of my future races. It was the one place where a different strategy would have made a world of difference. One person running on shore and one paddling was a brilliant idea I heard one team used. The high point was of course finishing with an official ranking, but during the race it was when we made a good navigational move and passed 5 teams in one checkpoint. Overall I had a total blast!! It was nice to meet the other team members at PQ and I wanted to say Congratulations on the great finishes you all had, very impressive!! I look forward to seeing you all in the future and hope we can race together sometime.

Finally...a race close to home.  It was refreshing to get to drive equipment to an expedition length adventure race rather than fight the airports with equipment and bike boxes.  The team name was Stryker, for the corporation who would sponsor us.  The goal was to come in 25th and improve Team Stryker's placement after a 29th finish at Eco Challenge, New Zealand.  The teammates were Lisa Barnes (Phoenix, AZ), Kim and Jan Bear (Santa Fe, NM), and Ries Robinson (Albuquerque, NM).  Bill Giff, a journalist from Outside Magazine, would race as part of the team for different venues.  This was called the "write along" program.  We had met Bill at an earlier race in Virginia where he mountain biked with us, so we welcomed back knowing this journalist was very fit and worked well with our group dynamics.  Sandy Draus, Lisa's massage therapist from Phoenix, AZ was the sole support person for Team Stryker.

The team met with Bill Giff the night before the race and reviewed race philosophy and rules: decisions by consensus to involve group's best thinking, no isolated stragglers, hard on problems not each other, forget mistakes and focus on end goal to finish.  We ended up with our motto taken from Ken Choulber, race director of the Leadville Trail 100 races:  "You are better than you think you are and you can do better than you think you can!" 

The race began at 3 pm on Sunday, July 7, 2002 above Telluride at the base of the Mountain Lodge ski resort.  Bill, the journalist, began the first hiking venue with the team.  The start headed teams straight up ski slopes and immediately the altitude was felt.  Lisa would later tell us that her resting heart rate at check in was 110.  She attached to Jan's towline and the team pushed on together.  Lisa continued to feel badly because of the altitude for the next day or two, but never complained and did not slow the team down.  The team was very impressed with her strength and determination!  Bill was surprised at our pace, but the philosophy was to push hard and having raced together before, it was felt it would not affect our later pace. Our first check point (CP) was above the Lake Lewis saddle.  Many teams were their including Ian Adamson, Isaac Wilson and Billy Mattison.  It was fun to be able to chat with people who had won the Eco Challenge in previous years.  Our next CP was Black Bear Pass, we were in around 28th place; from there we hiked over to Ajax Mountain where we would have to climb up to 12,785 feet.  It was dark and the descent was marked with chem. lights; the descent surprised the team as it was on very loose scree fields. The rocks that were knocked loose were directed to a chute where teams were hiking down to the valley.  We waited for another team to exit the chute, but did not realize how long the chute was until we were in it.  It was scary, but the teams on top waited for us once we explained about the loose rocks and potential for getting hit by rocks in the chute.  We finally were able to hike to CP#3, Tom Boy where we were in 30th place, over to Imogene, Telluride, and then up to Mountain Village to the transition area where Ries and Jan got the rest of the maps. 

The next bike section would take us about 24 hours with one stop with support.  Bill opted out, and off we went at around 3 am.  The trail was nice single track in many places; Ries had ridden the area, which helped in trail finding.  At 5 pm, we finished the first section of the bike route and decided to sleep.  Lisa was still feeling the altitude and felt a little "down time" would re-energize her.  We learned a good lesson about sleeping when the sun was still up and in a transition...it doesn't work.  We ended up leaving earlier than planned from camp, but the good news was that Lisa did feel better.  We took for Last Dollar Road.  Three of us had ridden it in the last ten years and it was still just as steep.  We rode all night coming into East Dallas on single track that went up more than down and checked in to the TA at 6:50 am.  Sandy had food and gear waiting for us. 

After an hour, we were off to the "mountaineering" leg.  The first CP was hidden on a contour line, which we fumbled with finding.  Finally we saw it up on top of a hill.  As we were checking in, Inside Lane who had 2 ex-Team Santa Fe members were hiking in.  We joined up with them as we struggled to figure out which peak was "teakettle" as there seemed to be several rock formations, which could look like a teakettle.  After a difficult ascent on loose scree, both teams huddled to keep away from a storm with lightning.  We tried hard to find a route where we would not loose all the altitude we had just gained by traversing a ridgeline, but finally had to drop back down the other side of a loose scree field into a valley only to hike up more scree fields.  Inside Lane had taken off and we were impressed with their trekking skills.  We wished them well and thought we would never see them again.  Finally, we were able to see the rappel site that we ascended up with jumars.  It was a short rappel and then across a fixed rope to descend on scree.  We trekked into Ironton arriving again at breakfast time.  

At the TA, we heard the kayaking section was "Brutal!"  Water sections in previous adventure races had never been described as brutal, we could not imagine why.  We took off on our bikes to climb the pass into Silverton.  The sun was hot and we pushed our bikes up because it was so steep.  Finally at the summit of the pass, we enjoyed the view, did some navigating nattering and then took off on a fast descent.  Kim flatted about 2 miles into the descent, Ries and Jan quickly changed the tire and we were off again.  We came into the kayak TA at 11 am.  We took off at noon into the head in our boats thinking we would have a great dinner that night.  It immediately became apparent that we would spend more time in the water pulling our boats off rocks because the water was so low, than paddling.  It was a section, which was never ending, and not a lot of fun!  Finally at 9 pm, we were about 100 yards from the pull out.  The dark zone began at 9 pm; we had lost our map, some clothes and equipment and were READY to be done.  The river guide penalized us 1 hour for being in the dark zone and 5 minutes for every minute we took to get our boats to the take out area.  We took 7 minutes to get our boats to the designated area and served our penalty of 1-1/2 hours.  It was used for sleep by some of the team. 

At 10:40 pm we had our gear packed up and began our hike to find Sandy.  We were carrying much of the gear in our arms.  Without a map, we thought we had about 1 hour to get to the TA.  The river guide had given us a little info, but as we came to a fork in the trail, and everything seemed to be 7 miles away, we turned back to the river to find the guides for more information.  We woke up the guide, got a little more information and realized we needed to pack up our equipment to haul it back to the TA.  We used the foot travel on the trails to guide us out; hours later, we arrived much to our SURPRISE in Purgatory at 7 am the next morning.  It was agreed that the kayak and hiking section was BRUTAL!!!  

We took some sleep at the TA; Bill had found us again and joined us for the next mountain bike section.    He was also kind enough to tune our bikes, which made the section very pleasant.  We biked to Hermosa Park, up to the Graysill Mine, over Bolan Pass, then to Lizard Head Pass and then back to the Matterhorn workstation arriving at 3:00 pm.  We left around 4:30 knowing that our next stop would be the finish. 

We planned to summit the ridgelines at around 5 am as the sun was coming up, so that we could maneuver the scree fields in light.  We took some sleep on the hike to the Clear Lake CP.  Kim experienced a "first" and began throwing up to the point of dry heaves.  We all slept about 1-1/2 hours; we used the sleeping bag and Ries finally realized that after being caught in the rain on day 1, the bag was wet and HEAVY.  He had been carrying around extra wet ever since.  We bundled up in the tent, slept, and upon awaking, felt a little better.  The plan worked, we arrived at the Clear Lake CP at 4 am, climbed the scree slopes and reached the more technical areas as the sun came up.  We traversed to Ophir Loop, hiked Ophir pass and arrive at the CP at 8:00 am.  The next hike led us to Bridal Veil Falls.  Ries became anxious to make dinner reservations that night at 8pm so he became creative and trying to make us pick up the pace.  At the Falls, we rappelled 400 feet together.  From there, it was around 2pm, it would take us until 5:37 pm to hike back through town (stopping at the market to get drinks), hike up the ski slopes back to the Mountain Village, and then down the slopes to the finish line.  We were excited to see that we would be in 17th place; but we think Ries was more excited to see his wife, Jen on ski slopes.  Ries was able to make his dinner reservations and the rest of us hit the showers!  We finished in 122 hours, Friday around 5 pm. 

In our debriefing, we felt that our LiteSpeed mountain bikes helped us be consistent and fast in our riding.  The whole team used the same bike.  The trekking sections were challenging because of the loose scree and slopes; the team all used Leki trekking poles and Montrail shoes which helped our pace.  We did get blisters, but they were from the hiking section after the kayaking.  We had not prepared well for a 14-mile hike to Purgatory.  GoLite rain gear was mandatory.  We were caught in the rain and hail; this gear protected us from hypothermia with the added bonus of not adding a lot of weight to our pack.

Jan and Kim Bear went to Leadville, Colorado to do the 46 mile mountain bike race after the Off Road Iron Man Triathlon in Rifle was cancelled. The Silver Rush bike race was very different from the actual Leadville 100 race to be held on August 10, 2002 it was a different route leading over towards Mosquito Pass, was mostly small logging and mining roads with some single tract mixed in.  It had a lot of elevation gain and as Ken Choulber described, it was all the hard parts of the100 mile race while taking out the easy stuff.  Jan placed third in his age group, with a 16th place overall finish and a time of 4:50:26.  He finally got an award and Kim didn't!  Kim came in 95th overall and was glad to get a silver bracelet out of the ride.  It was a challenging race.  Next event:  Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race.