Descending down Rat Jaw was an incredible experience. It was very runnable without any briars, the polar opposite of my last descent down Rat Jaw at BFC. At BFC I was overheating as I spent an hour thrashing and crawling through the towering briars. At BFC I yelled at our group to get back under the power line when we briefly ducked into the woods…now that my field of vision was more than a couple feet ahead of me, I could see the pit that would have otherwise swallowed us!
My shoes had stayed surprisingly dry so we opted to climb out of the ventilation opening at the prison to prevent getting our feet wet. I panicked for a moment as Stephen pulled me to safety as I wasn’t able to quite pull myself up. I nearly forgot to grab the next book as we jogged by.
We complemented each other perfectly as we nailed navigation to the next books. I was happy to see that the two racers we had lost prior to the New River had caught up to us and we made the final climb together. I fished out a headlamp of my pack as we ran the trail back into camp and we decided that we’d try to regroup on trail as we climbed out of camp after interloopal.
At the gate, my stomach dropped when Laz’s count was one book short AND so was mine. I briefly looked on the ground and then desperately unfolded each of my quartered pages, finding the hidden page! My interloopal took the longest in the group (it didn’t help that I had to go to the bathroom since my period began just after race start), so I raced to catch up to the others. I was surprised to see several headlights floating in the woods, after a short bushwhack connecting two trails. Soon I was able to catch back up to Stephen and we were happy to be together again.
We chose to be conservative on our next approach knowing that if we reached the next river without knowing whether the book was upstream or downstream we could lose a lot of time. We ended up too far upstream and lost a few minutes traversing the slopes along the water, but were content with the conservative approach. As we left the book, we saw two more headlamps which used the exact same strategy as us.
As we made our next climb, I was incredibly thankful to have Stephen who flawlessly thumbed the map while I followed our bearing. Once again we saw headlamps on both sides of us on incorrect bearings. Unfortunately, I thought we had reached the top of the climb when in fact we hadn’t so we lost a few minutes backtracking as we pretty much walked past the book a hair too low. As we backtracked, we met back up with the group of four we had encountered at book 2 who had generally gone a slower pace but must have been more efficient at stops and nailed navigation. We proceeded with them all the way up to Rat Jaw which I found to be rather enjoyable with poles to aid my climbing. Just before we crested, Stephen broke the news to me that he’d be dropping due to his feet. He wanted the best for me so he encouraged me to join the group of four. I had looked forward to finishing loop 2 with him, but knew his mind was made. Most of the water jugs were frozen at the top of Frozen Head Mountain but we found some in the middle that were usable. I was elated to reach the top toasty warm including my hands, in the middle of the night at the coldest spot on course (during the coldest night in the past month). I didn’t stop long since the group was extremely efficient and darting back into the woods.
Little things adding up
I was thankful to have an experienced group with three veterans to allow me to join them even though I was probably crashing their party as they were all friends. This was the section that Stephen and I had devised a strategy of attack on the tricky downhill, but I wasn’t sure this group’s plan and I didn’t want to disrupt their team dynamic and plan of attack. I made the mistake to wait until I was certain they were off course to speak up. By then, we needed to make a significant adjustment and now knew we’d have a rough going the remainder of the descent. By the time we neared the next book they were able to get back on the correct line and we didn’t waste any additional time searching for the book.
Not only did I not want to get scraped, I also wanted to contribute to the group, so I informed them of the ideal place to cross the next river which they were unaware of. As we continued, we found two more racers backtracking. For a brief while I marveled that 17 hours into this crazy race we had seven racers bunched up, with me being the only American! As the two pulled away, one of the four suggested that I consider going with them. Both were veterans that were capable of scraping me and I opted to stay conservative with a group of slower racers. I recognized I was at a decision point but didn’t have the confidence in my navigation to potentially go solo if scraped.
Shortly thereafter, I got in my adventure racing “following mode” only to discover we had gotten off our feature we needed to follow. As soon as I realized this I let the group know, but none of us were certain how long we had deviated from the feature so we were unsure if we could make it back to the last known point. I immediately put on my coat as the wind blew atop the mountain and I feared the worst. My skills for determining a location on a map in the dark with few features is non-existent, so a wave of relief rushed over me as we wandered and someone miraclously spotted the next book location.
Amidst the excitement, a few of the others began running downhill. I yelled at them that we needed to follow the spur, but they did not follow me. I began in my own direction in search of the spur and luckily one of the others was agreeing with me after consulting the map. I soon found the spur and the next landmark which finally convinced the others to follow me. I was out of water (again) so I wanted to get ahead and fill up my water and help the others quickly tear out book pages to save precious time since we were battling the clock. Unfortunately, I lost the spur at the bottom began wandering. When I turned around I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t see any headlamps. I retreated and quickly found the others tearing out book pages. I skipped the water fill up so I wouldn’t lose the group.
Chasing the cutoff
I caught up quickly and this is where I should have pushed the pace at the cost of breaking away from the group; however, I wasn’t confident in my navigation skills. Looking back, the remainder of the course ended up being very straightforward and I should have reassessed as we fell off pace. Additionally, the group was making small errors based on their memory of the course and weren’t helping our situation as our cushion was evaporating. After daybreak, two of us pulled away on the hardest climb of the race which took an hour including 2/3 mile section averaging 44% grade. Our footing was ideal since the ground was frozen and I can’t imagine the struggle in muddy conditions. My poles were critical, even with the frozen mud balls on the tips and sometimes had to make mini switchbacks. At the top we decided not to wait for the others and make a run for it, although we feared it was too late. After descending we made our way up the final climb where I couldn’t help thinking the brutality of repeating these climbs on a third loop. I secretly hoped to reach the gate at 26:39:50 to get my loop 2 to count but not have enough time for my pages to be counted and depart. If I had any time, I’d have to continue on, until I could no longer trudge on, especially since I still had enough food in my pack for at least 1/2 loop.
