2019 NIAR, PART THREE
After a three-hour snooze, we woke up around 7:30 p.m. and got underway on Stage 4, a 50K packraft. However, the packraft portion of the stage, which was to take us west on Gjevellvatnet, had been canceled due to high winds for the top teams, who had come through the day before (or the day before that). So we set off on a nice trail alongside the lake, chatting warmly and gamely jumping mudpits to keep our feet dry. This lasted for all of 10 kilometers.
It got dark, sort of. We climbed up to a road, and then began sleepwalking down the road until the turnoff onto another trail that took us up a several-hundred meter climb into an increasingly beautiful landscape of alpine lakes and towering mountain peaks. It got light, sort of. We got to a nice place to refill water and, after a discussion about whether we needed to filter, we decided to be safe and stop and use the Katahdyn.
In retrospect, this stop was a killer. The filtering process took just long enough that Kit and I tried to snooze and got cold. As we mounted back up and headed further uphill, Kit’s mind completely unhinged. To speed her up, Evan put her on tow. Kit swung like a rag-doll at the end of the line. Her eyes were alternatively opening wide and closing shut tight, like three times per second. She kept semi-coherently asking for 10 minutes of sleep. Because of the cool alpine wind and the lack of shelter, we opted against stopping. This could have been a mistake; we’ll never know. But our progress slowed to a crawl until we hit the pass and began our descent into Innerdalen, a beautiful, hidden valley surrounded by jagged peaks.
The descent started smoothly enough, with Kit waking up enough to speed up to a normal walking pace. But down about 100 meters of vertical, we started running into mud. Marked clearly as a trail running through a swamp on the map, we were about to experience just how accurate Norwegian cartography could be. The next 10 kilometers were shoe-sucking oblivion. The day got hot and the mud got thick, oftentimes knee-deep, with occasional dips in up to our thighs. We started laughing maniacally whenever we saw a footbridge, as they represented such a futile gesture at crossing this endless abyss.
Looking down the valley at one point, we swore we saw a house in the distance, which, in misreading the clue hint, we though held the lone CP of the stage. But we lost sight of it around a bend, and it took us so long to descend the horrendous mudslide of a trail that we eventually became certain we had passed it. Using the AR rule that nine out of 10 times, you haven’t gone far enough, we continued on, somewhat incredulously popping out on a knoll with a park bench and a view of an idyllic collection of wooden buildings down below us, along with a lot of day-hikers passing by on an intersecting trail.
This was the site of our biggest team meltdown. Kit and Kate were hurting, mentally and physically. Kit’s legs had swollen up to the point where she could create indents with slight pressure from her finger on any part of either leg from her knees down. Kate’s feet were also in bad shape, more from general soreness. Everyone was very tired. But on the descent from the pass, Evan and I had done the math and realized our window for completing the full course was rapidly closing. If we didn’t get through this stage in better-than-estimated time, we would probably not have a shot at finishing at all.
The pressure built to the point where it overcame me. I was agitated and I mostly took it out on Kate. At day four of an adventure race, I found it was not easy to gently articulate a need for haste. I definitely lost my cool, and Kate understandably didn’t take well to it. A noble teammate, she was also looking out for Kit’s health and well-being. To all of us, it was a moment of realization that the race course was beating us, and that there was nothing we could do about it.
Evan convinced me to take a time-out, and we walked down to the hut and found they were still serving breakfast. We ate a smorgasbord of bread, cheese, butter and fresh vegetables and downed two coffees each. The hut was simple and beautiful and reminded me of the high huts Kate and I had stayed in during our three-week hiking trip through Austria and Italy a couple of years ago. I thought romantic thoughts, and between that and some sage advice from Evan, I was able to return to Kit and Kate, who were napping on the knoll, and genuinely apologize for my behavior. This race wasn’t worth fighting over. Nor would fighting get us any closer to the finish. Kate and Kit graciously accepted my apology and we mounted back up and headed uphill. About 30 meters of climbing later, we saw a bridge across the river in the valley and realized we had no idea where the CP was. We had been looking for a dilapidated house, having misread the clue as “house near peninsula,” instead of “peninsula near house.” Kit came to the realization that the flag was likely back by the hut where Evan and I had eaten breakfast. Tails between our legs, we retraced our steps and sure enough, the flag was about 30 feet from the house, in clear view of the window we sat beside for 30 minutes.
We got the point, took the opportunity to fill water at the hut, and returned back up the trail, across the bridge, and then headed straight uphill for at least 500 meters of vertical. But we made good time – Kit and Kate’s feet didn’t seem to hurt them walking uphill, just on flats and especially going downhill. Unfortunately, at the top of the climb, we faced a 15k walk around a lake and then a contour out of the valley and down about 600 meters of steep descent. The alpine valley was green and beautiful and lined with crystal clear lakes and streams, but it had gotten really hot under a blazing sun and the long distance of this hike and the previous 65k hike were taking a toll. Our progress was very slow through this last part of the stage. We stopped several times at shady spots for mini-breaks, and common-sense thoughts that this was probably the end of our race dawned on all of us. We just couldn’t move with any kind of pace. The steep downhill took forever as Kit and Kate struggled on incredibly tender feet down a crumbling, near-vertical path. Towards the end, I was all but certain we would have to call it quits.
Then we hit a paved road and got a clap of applause from where we knew the TA was. It was a pair of Canadian raft guides, who seemed pretty excited to see us. This was likely because they had been waiting for us for at least 12 hours, and because we were the last team they had to ferry downstream, but whatever the cause, the positive energy – and the thought that we were essentially getting a free 18 kilometer ride to the next TA, gave us all a second wind. Instead of quitting, Kate and Kit jumped right into race mode again, eating and donning wetsuits as we got a safety briefing. Then we hoisted the small yellow rubber raft down towards the water, and immediately entered a Class IV rapid. We dove into a big wave and, as the glacial-fed river splashed up at us, Kate started screaming. The rest of us all got pangs of fear for her safety, until we looked at her and realized she was screeching with joyful laughter. Kate was having the time of her life! It was hysterical and infectious it took a serious effort at concentration to not keel over in the boat, we were all laughing so hard.
The ride was relaxing and reinvigorating. The views of the intensely steep mountains on both sides of the river, with waterfalls bursting out of keyhole slots in the black rock and dropping for a thousand meters until the water vaporized, simply took our breath away. Our guide, a Canadian ex-pat and passionate backcountry skier, pointed out rarely-skied lines and it was clear Evan was thinking about a return trip in the winter to try some of them out. About halfway through the ride, Kate passed out in the middle of the boat, while the three of us continued to paddle for another hour or so until we reached the TA, where we saw from a distance the bright blond locks of our erstwhile RD Staffan, as well as our old friend Calle, waiting for us.
They welcomed us onshore and even helped us carry the raft to the TA, located in the town of Sunndalsora, where Kate, Kit, and Evan ran into a heated public bathroom and I had a quick chat with Staffan. It was clear the race staff were keen to get this TA shut down, but the team needed a rest. I said we would be happy to stay in a hotel if there was one nearby, and Staffan said that was fine and that, conveniently, there was one less than five minutes away. So after getting some hot food to the freezing and wet rafters huddling inside the bathroom, I ran over to the town, found the hotel, and was able to quickly book us two rooms, which was lucky because it was busy in town and late for booking a room, around 9 p.m.
I got back to the TA, where the team was busy was getting their bikes and gear assembled for what looked like an eight- to 10-hour bike ride. When we were ready, we thanked the race staff and rode over to the hotel, stashed our bikes in a conference room, found our rooms, took hot showers, and ate a ton of food we had brought from the TA. During dinner, we enjoyed a grotesque show from Kit, who had so much swelling she could pretty much carve her name into either leg with her finger.
We crashed out around 11:30, with an alarm set for 5 a.m. The sleep – with clean bodies in fresh sheets – felt amazing. It was tough to wake up, but once I was roused, I felt like a million bucks. We headed down to the lobby and found out the breakfast buffet didn’t open until 7 a.m., but with a little begging and pleading, they opened it up specially for us. We gorged on waffles and Nutella, scrambled eggs, fresh bread, cheese, fruit and lots of coffee. We had to be careful not to eat too much and send ourselves into food coma, and we definitely needed to run back to our rooms a couple of times as our digestive systems kicked back into high gear.
Getting back on our bikes, it was clear Kit was definitely still in a lot of pain. But she was determined to continue. We hooked her onto the back of a pace-line and moved decently up a slight uphill grade for about 15 kilometers. The climb started getting steeper, then turned into a full-on switchbacked haul, heading up around 400 meters in a kilometer or two. But that got us up to a beautiful high valley, highlighted by a huge lake and ringed by cute wooden cottages that we all started daydreaming about breaking into and napping in. But we continued on, steadily climbing and then hitting some slowly rolling hills, starting to move really well as a team and making good time, minus me feeling a little light-headed due to getting a bit overheated while climbing with a jacket on just as the sun came out in full force.
We hit the sole CP on the stage at a cliff overlooking a sheer 600-meter vertical drop, and we had the unique experience of being able to grab it and take it with us, as Staffan had asked us to do. Then we pointed it downhill and started a screaming, 1,000-meter descent. You could smell our brakes as we tried to keep our speed at a manageable level. About halfway down, we stopped to don our headlights as we came up to a tunnel where he had been cautioned lights would be needed. Evan headed in first and he disappeared into the inky maw. I followed and was shocked to see just how dark the tunnel got within 50 feet of entering it. My eyes struggled to adjust and my vision shrunk to the small beams of light from my bike and head lights. Making the experience even scarier was a narrowing of the rough dirt road we had been following.
Evan and I made it through and exchanged a smile and each took a couple of deep breaths. Kit popped out a moment later. But Kate didn’t show up. We waited around for her, and just as I was about to go in and check on her, she rode out of the tunnel, dusty and shaken. “I crashed,” she said, and then broke down crying. After a big group hug and some more deep breaths, we got the story: Kate had moved to make her light brighter but had accidentally turned it off, plunging herself into pitch dark while still moving at least 20 mph. Fortunately, she had been able to make a controlled fall. She didn’t have any injuries, and after a moment, she said she was OK to continue. We kept going downhill and eventually got spit out onto a nice asphalt road. We followed it along yet another beautiful river until we came into the TA, at a beach by a lake in a valley that was probably the most stunning we had yet seen.
It got dark, sort of. We climbed up to a road, and then began sleepwalking down the road until the turnoff onto another trail that took us up a several-hundred meter climb into an increasingly beautiful landscape of alpine lakes and towering mountain peaks. It got light, sort of. We got to a nice place to refill water and, after a discussion about whether we needed to filter, we decided to be safe and stop and use the Katahdyn.
In retrospect, this stop was a killer. The filtering process took just long enough that Kit and I tried to snooze and got cold. As we mounted back up and headed further uphill, Kit’s mind completely unhinged. To speed her up, Evan put her on tow. Kit swung like a rag-doll at the end of the line. Her eyes were alternatively opening wide and closing shut tight, like three times per second. She kept semi-coherently asking for 10 minutes of sleep. Because of the cool alpine wind and the lack of shelter, we opted against stopping. This could have been a mistake; we’ll never know. But our progress slowed to a crawl until we hit the pass and began our descent into Innerdalen, a beautiful, hidden valley surrounded by jagged peaks.
The descent started smoothly enough, with Kit waking up enough to speed up to a normal walking pace. But down about 100 meters of vertical, we started running into mud. Marked clearly as a trail running through a swamp on the map, we were about to experience just how accurate Norwegian cartography could be. The next 10 kilometers were shoe-sucking oblivion. The day got hot and the mud got thick, oftentimes knee-deep, with occasional dips in up to our thighs. We started laughing maniacally whenever we saw a footbridge, as they represented such a futile gesture at crossing this endless abyss.
Looking down the valley at one point, we swore we saw a house in the distance, which, in misreading the clue hint, we though held the lone CP of the stage. But we lost sight of it around a bend, and it took us so long to descend the horrendous mudslide of a trail that we eventually became certain we had passed it. Using the AR rule that nine out of 10 times, you haven’t gone far enough, we continued on, somewhat incredulously popping out on a knoll with a park bench and a view of an idyllic collection of wooden buildings down below us, along with a lot of day-hikers passing by on an intersecting trail.
This was the site of our biggest team meltdown. Kit and Kate were hurting, mentally and physically. Kit’s legs had swollen up to the point where she could create indents with slight pressure from her finger on any part of either leg from her knees down. Kate’s feet were also in bad shape, more from general soreness. Everyone was very tired. But on the descent from the pass, Evan and I had done the math and realized our window for completing the full course was rapidly closing. If we didn’t get through this stage in better-than-estimated time, we would probably not have a shot at finishing at all.
The pressure built to the point where it overcame me. I was agitated and I mostly took it out on Kate. At day four of an adventure race, I found it was not easy to gently articulate a need for haste. I definitely lost my cool, and Kate understandably didn’t take well to it. A noble teammate, she was also looking out for Kit’s health and well-being. To all of us, it was a moment of realization that the race course was beating us, and that there was nothing we could do about it.
Evan convinced me to take a time-out, and we walked down to the hut and found they were still serving breakfast. We ate a smorgasbord of bread, cheese, butter and fresh vegetables and downed two coffees each. The hut was simple and beautiful and reminded me of the high huts Kate and I had stayed in during our three-week hiking trip through Austria and Italy a couple of years ago. I thought romantic thoughts, and between that and some sage advice from Evan, I was able to return to Kit and Kate, who were napping on the knoll, and genuinely apologize for my behavior. This race wasn’t worth fighting over. Nor would fighting get us any closer to the finish. Kate and Kit graciously accepted my apology and we mounted back up and headed uphill. About 30 meters of climbing later, we saw a bridge across the river in the valley and realized we had no idea where the CP was. We had been looking for a dilapidated house, having misread the clue as “house near peninsula,” instead of “peninsula near house.” Kit came to the realization that the flag was likely back by the hut where Evan and I had eaten breakfast. Tails between our legs, we retraced our steps and sure enough, the flag was about 30 feet from the house, in clear view of the window we sat beside for 30 minutes.
We got the point, took the opportunity to fill water at the hut, and returned back up the trail, across the bridge, and then headed straight uphill for at least 500 meters of vertical. But we made good time – Kit and Kate’s feet didn’t seem to hurt them walking uphill, just on flats and especially going downhill. Unfortunately, at the top of the climb, we faced a 15k walk around a lake and then a contour out of the valley and down about 600 meters of steep descent. The alpine valley was green and beautiful and lined with crystal clear lakes and streams, but it had gotten really hot under a blazing sun and the long distance of this hike and the previous 65k hike were taking a toll. Our progress was very slow through this last part of the stage. We stopped several times at shady spots for mini-breaks, and common-sense thoughts that this was probably the end of our race dawned on all of us. We just couldn’t move with any kind of pace. The steep downhill took forever as Kit and Kate struggled on incredibly tender feet down a crumbling, near-vertical path. Towards the end, I was all but certain we would have to call it quits.
Then we hit a paved road and got a clap of applause from where we knew the TA was. It was a pair of Canadian raft guides, who seemed pretty excited to see us. This was likely because they had been waiting for us for at least 12 hours, and because we were the last team they had to ferry downstream, but whatever the cause, the positive energy – and the thought that we were essentially getting a free 18 kilometer ride to the next TA, gave us all a second wind. Instead of quitting, Kate and Kit jumped right into race mode again, eating and donning wetsuits as we got a safety briefing. Then we hoisted the small yellow rubber raft down towards the water, and immediately entered a Class IV rapid. We dove into a big wave and, as the glacial-fed river splashed up at us, Kate started screaming. The rest of us all got pangs of fear for her safety, until we looked at her and realized she was screeching with joyful laughter. Kate was having the time of her life! It was hysterical and infectious it took a serious effort at concentration to not keel over in the boat, we were all laughing so hard.
The ride was relaxing and reinvigorating. The views of the intensely steep mountains on both sides of the river, with waterfalls bursting out of keyhole slots in the black rock and dropping for a thousand meters until the water vaporized, simply took our breath away. Our guide, a Canadian ex-pat and passionate backcountry skier, pointed out rarely-skied lines and it was clear Evan was thinking about a return trip in the winter to try some of them out. About halfway through the ride, Kate passed out in the middle of the boat, while the three of us continued to paddle for another hour or so until we reached the TA, where we saw from a distance the bright blond locks of our erstwhile RD Staffan, as well as our old friend Calle, waiting for us.
They welcomed us onshore and even helped us carry the raft to the TA, located in the town of Sunndalsora, where Kate, Kit, and Evan ran into a heated public bathroom and I had a quick chat with Staffan. It was clear the race staff were keen to get this TA shut down, but the team needed a rest. I said we would be happy to stay in a hotel if there was one nearby, and Staffan said that was fine and that, conveniently, there was one less than five minutes away. So after getting some hot food to the freezing and wet rafters huddling inside the bathroom, I ran over to the town, found the hotel, and was able to quickly book us two rooms, which was lucky because it was busy in town and late for booking a room, around 9 p.m.
I got back to the TA, where the team was busy was getting their bikes and gear assembled for what looked like an eight- to 10-hour bike ride. When we were ready, we thanked the race staff and rode over to the hotel, stashed our bikes in a conference room, found our rooms, took hot showers, and ate a ton of food we had brought from the TA. During dinner, we enjoyed a grotesque show from Kit, who had so much swelling she could pretty much carve her name into either leg with her finger.
We crashed out around 11:30, with an alarm set for 5 a.m. The sleep – with clean bodies in fresh sheets – felt amazing. It was tough to wake up, but once I was roused, I felt like a million bucks. We headed down to the lobby and found out the breakfast buffet didn’t open until 7 a.m., but with a little begging and pleading, they opened it up specially for us. We gorged on waffles and Nutella, scrambled eggs, fresh bread, cheese, fruit and lots of coffee. We had to be careful not to eat too much and send ourselves into food coma, and we definitely needed to run back to our rooms a couple of times as our digestive systems kicked back into high gear.
Getting back on our bikes, it was clear Kit was definitely still in a lot of pain. But she was determined to continue. We hooked her onto the back of a pace-line and moved decently up a slight uphill grade for about 15 kilometers. The climb started getting steeper, then turned into a full-on switchbacked haul, heading up around 400 meters in a kilometer or two. But that got us up to a beautiful high valley, highlighted by a huge lake and ringed by cute wooden cottages that we all started daydreaming about breaking into and napping in. But we continued on, steadily climbing and then hitting some slowly rolling hills, starting to move really well as a team and making good time, minus me feeling a little light-headed due to getting a bit overheated while climbing with a jacket on just as the sun came out in full force.
We hit the sole CP on the stage at a cliff overlooking a sheer 600-meter vertical drop, and we had the unique experience of being able to grab it and take it with us, as Staffan had asked us to do. Then we pointed it downhill and started a screaming, 1,000-meter descent. You could smell our brakes as we tried to keep our speed at a manageable level. About halfway down, we stopped to don our headlights as we came up to a tunnel where he had been cautioned lights would be needed. Evan headed in first and he disappeared into the inky maw. I followed and was shocked to see just how dark the tunnel got within 50 feet of entering it. My eyes struggled to adjust and my vision shrunk to the small beams of light from my bike and head lights. Making the experience even scarier was a narrowing of the rough dirt road we had been following.
Evan and I made it through and exchanged a smile and each took a couple of deep breaths. Kit popped out a moment later. But Kate didn’t show up. We waited around for her, and just as I was about to go in and check on her, she rode out of the tunnel, dusty and shaken. “I crashed,” she said, and then broke down crying. After a big group hug and some more deep breaths, we got the story: Kate had moved to make her light brighter but had accidentally turned it off, plunging herself into pitch dark while still moving at least 20 mph. Fortunately, she had been able to make a controlled fall. She didn’t have any injuries, and after a moment, she said she was OK to continue. We kept going downhill and eventually got spit out onto a nice asphalt road. We followed it along yet another beautiful river until we came into the TA, at a beach by a lake in a valley that was probably the most stunning we had yet seen.
CONTINUED...
