Date: May 18-19, 2013
Racers: Adam Rains, Brooke Manning and Josh Braun
Race Report By: Josh Braun
Team Adventure Capitalists/BDAR sent Josh Braun, Brooke
Manning and Adam Rains to race the 2013 Atomic adventure race in Blue Ridge,
GA, in the coed elite division. Jason
Finnell was signed up to race with us, but due to an injury he had to sit this
one out. After a tough, wet
course, we place 3rd overall and 3rd in the coed elite
division. Below is a report of the
adventure....
Skeenah Mill Start
– Trek (CPs 1-9)
We started off at the Blue Ridge lake recreation area. This was the location of the main TA,
which we would be visiting towards the end of the course. We had 1 gear bin that would be
available at another TA towards the middle. Also, Pangea staged our bikes and paddling gear for us on
the course. We started off being
bused from the main TA to Skeenah Mill where we took the team photos. This was a wonderful location for the
start. Once photos were taken and
we had a short debrief, we started off on a trekking section to find CPs 1 –
9.
We took off towards the front of the pack and easily found
CP1. With 2 other teams in front
of us, we stumbled finding CP2, primarily because we got punked by another team
saying the CP wasn’t there. Going
back to the same location later, we were within 20 yards of it originally. With our one mistake out of the way, we
took off towards CP3. Passing a
few teams on the way, we breezed through CPs 3,4,5. We then nailed CP6 and on our way to CP7, we passed a few
teams backtracking to get CP6. CP7
was a nice hike up to the top where a recent burn had taken place. Coming back down we knew we were
probably in the top 3 position as we never saw any of the previous teams coming
up to the top. We had some ground
to cover to CP8, which was an easy find on a spur leading down. We decided to bushwack off the side and
then had a waist high crossing across the Toccoa. Grabbed CP9 and headed towards the first TA (Deep Hole Rec
Area). Arriving at the TA, we
found out that we were in second with Rev3/MK Masters in front of us. We love racing against those guys;
Chris, David and Julie are awesome folks.
Deep TA – Paddle
(CPs 10-12)
We had a short transition and hopped in the canoe. We figured we would be able to make up
some ground on the paddle, but to our surprise, we were wrong. We had a pretty
good distance to get to the first paddle CP. Shortly after we found CP10, we took a big spill in the
rapids. We weren’t prepared for
this one and it shook us up. Adam’s pack took off down the river during the
spill and it took us a while to recover.
Finally after we were back in the boat, we took off searching for Adam’s
pack. Luckily Brooke was able to
spot it. Once we picked it up, we
hit a logjam. Getting turned side
ways in the boat, we took another spill.
This is the one that sent us over the edge. I got trapped under the logs and broke my finger. With all of us wet and shaking, we were
ready to be done with the paddle.
Carefully treading down the rest of the Toccoa, we picked up CPs
11&12. At this point, we saw
2-3 teams pass us on the section, so we knew we were behind again…..
Dial TA – Bike
(CPs 13-20)
Pulling into the Dial TA, we were very glad to be off the
water. It started to rain at this
point, but we didn’t care. Our
team is strong on the bike, so we set off to make up ground again. We took a clockwise approach to this
section and it worked really well for us.
We picked up all the CPs, excluding 16 & 17, which were
removed. Now we headed towards the
Stanley TA where our gear bin was located.
Stanley TA – Bike
(CPs 21-23)
Pulling into the Stanley TA with daylight to spare, we had a
surprise waiting for us. The night
before we visited a local pizza place in Blue Ridge and made sure to bring home
left overs. We chowed down on some
pizza and calzone while others were enjoying their goos and clif bars! The next decision was the turning point
of our race. CPs 21,22,23 were on
the bike. We took a few minutes
and debated on these. There were 9
CPs later on in the race, located in the Aska trail system. We decided to skip these 3 bike points,
so we would be certain to clear the Aska section. Racing Blue Ridge AR in years past, we knew the Aska area
and were looking forward to gaining some ground on that section. Little to our surprise, the forest
service closed down that section, after we opted out of the 3 bike points and
we couldn’t go back for them after starting the next trek section (which we
found out after we completed the following trek section).
Stanley TA – Trek
(CPs 24-32)
We took a counter-clockwise approach to attacking these
points. We picked up CP29 and CP31
without any issue. CP26 was a
tough climb up into a “rocky reentrant”.
This felt like it took forever to find. We were on the right drain and just had to keep climbing. It was a nice to find this one; great
challenge from Pangea! After
finding it and heading back down to grab CP30, we decided to skip CP27 and CP28,
because we knew it was going to be a similar haul as CP26. At this point, we didn’t know the Aska
trails were closed or else we would have gone for these. Coming back down towards the TA, we
picked up CPs 32, 25 and 24, which were fairly easy points. After going into the TA, we found out
about the Aska section being closed.
This was very disappointing for us as this was the section we were
banking on clearing next. We now
knew we had plenty of time to finish the rest of the race, but we still wanted
to hit it hard, just in case the other teams made the same decision we did
about some of the points. We took
off toward the main TA for the last section.
Stanley TA – Aska
Trail System Bike (CPs 33-41)
As mentioned before, the forest service closed off this
section due to the rain. We were
really looking forward to this section as it has some very nice single track!
Main TA – Paddle
& Trek (CPs 42-53 to Finish)
We were one of the first teams to make it back to the main
TA. At this time we also heard
that Bright Byte had dropped out and that Rock Gear was having some
trouble. We made it there before
our paddling gear arrived, so we took off with the single blade paddles they
had there at the main TA. It was still
dark, so this was a little bit of a challenge at first. We lost some time due to the single
blades and darkness. We were
instructed that we must visit CP50 first.
We followed the terrain and arrived at CP50, where we hopped out of the
canoes and did a counter-clockwise attack on 5 of the points. We had some
trouble finding CP46, due to a torrential downpour and low visibility for about
an hour. While regrouping, Adam
looked up and it was directly in front of us. Hopping back into the canoes, we hit the 4 remaining paddles
points and headed towards the main TA.
At the main TA, we had 3 remaining trek points, which we ran and grabbed
without any issue.
We finished in 23 ½ hours. Knowing that we were 6 ½ hours before the cut-off, we knew
some teams had the chance to beat us due to number of CPs. We cleared 37 out of 42 CPs. With a grueling wait for other teams to
cross the finish line, we finally saw the others. Big congrats to Rib Mountain for a first place finish and
Rev3/MK Masters for second. You
guys rocked it! Also, big thanks
to Pangea and the volunteers for an amazing race. We had a wonderful time and this one goes down as one of the
funnest races we’ve had. Adventure
Capitalists/BDAR is looking forward to it again next year!!!
