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After a last minute call to replace an injured Noel from Ireland, I started preparing for the race two weeks from the start. Luckily I have been semi-prepared for an adventure race for most of the year, having trained with a Godzone team earlier this year and adding my name to the EA board in late April. I arrived in Johannesburg on the morning of May 1 and caught up with a bunch of family at my Aunt and Uncles, which was luckily only 10mins or so from teammate Shelly in Randburg, Joburg. JD arrived on May 2 and we prepared gear at Shellys that day. The next day, Friday, we drove down to the Drakensberg and the three of us stayed at the Amphitheatre Backpackers for Friday night and headed over to the Orion Hotel Mont-Aux-Sources, race HQ, on Sat morning after a final sorting of our gear and food at the backpackers. We arrived and met Ruan, our fourth and team captain. As it happened, Ruans family run a business which includes the Warriors gap year program, and they had a bunch of Warrior students join him as volunteers for the race. They would make the bulk of the race marshals and volunteer help, and we greatly enjoyed their cheering and support during the race. The setup at the race hotel was generous to say the least as accommodation and some meals were provided the night before and all nights after the race, plus we could leave our bags in our hotel rooms for the week of the race. With the famous 5km ridge and 1000m cliff line of the Drakensberg Amphitheatre as our backdrop we set about socializing, relaxing and mostly preparing and organizing for the race to come. First thing to do was to waterproof the supplied cardboard boxes by adding tape to the outside bottom, top and edges. We bought some tape but did not realize the size of the boxes these were massive which was great for the 29er bikes but required a good bit more tape than we had. We hit the Bergville supermarket on Sunday morning on the way back from the community project school visit and bought another 18 rolls of tape which saw us through the race. A small disaster happened when we had to go to the race briefing at about 3pm when we left our boxes stacked up against a tree, but evidently not good enough as halfway through the briefing we got word from one of the marshals that two of our boxes had blown into the pool! Now, late in the afternoon with little tape and time you could say we had our first team bonding moment as we worked on fixing these and the remaining boxes, and are thankful for some great help from Ruans girlfriend Renske and the Warrior volunteers. Saturday evening we enjoy a buffet dinner and attend a Q&A session. The first question is how far will we have to swim across the dam at the start of Leg 3. The answer is 400-500m, or you can hike 1-2hours and get it down to 40m. A bit daunting at this stage, but turns out to be a nice swim once were there. We get some more info about the need to carry slings on some of the trekking legs as there are some steep and exposed sections where a rope might help. Again, a bit daunting to imagine it, but once were there were comfortable doing it all without slings or ropes, even with ice and rain in the mix.
Sunday morning we visit a local school for a community project meet and greet and plant trees, return to the hotel, hand in all gear boxes, get map 1, prepare map 1, dinner, early to bed. We are quite relaxed by the time we get our single map at about 3pm as weve handed in all gear boxes and we have lots of time to prepare the map. The route up is mostly all on national park trails, which were not allowed to veer off, all the way up to the Tugela Falls at about 3000m. Then the route choice back down gives us a number of passes to come down with starting with the most steep and treacherous Ifidi and Ifici passes. With 10k more walking we could do an easier one. We google the pass details and Ifidi gets a 9/10 difficulty, not to be done in wet and icy conditions, and Ifici gets 10/10, and the further option as a 5/10. Later find out from the webpage author (who is in one of the teams) that the Ifici gets a 10 because of the thick vegetation and not extra technical difficulty. Much chatter amongst the teams about which pass to take down. We ended up taking the first one, the Ifidi pass, down, with a bit of ice on it but it was fine, and the rock climbing and hopping was a fun break from regular hiking/running. The only negative from my hotel stay is that Ive been sleeping with my head next to an open window and I develop a cough and cold which gets worse for the next two weeks. The team is: Ruan, 27 from Magoebaskloof, Limpopo. In top shape from earning a living guiding outdoors, Ruan is super strong and larger than life with the passion and energy of one of his super bright 1000+ lumen bike/spotting lights. Ruan was team captain and co-navigator. JD, a bit more than the reported 39yo, from Alaska, US, living in Germany, army paratrooper training officer. JD was probably the most experienced racer in the field having raced solidly for the last 15 years or so, theres hardly an expedition race he hasnt done and has the refined kit to prove it. Shelly, 33 from Johannesburg. A rock climber and runner, she was the dark horse of the team. This is her first proper adventure race, she said shes found it difficult to properly train for it, but the fact that she completed a 100k run and a marathon in the weeks leading up to the race gives a clue as to her superior abilities on foot, bike and paddle. She was powered only by her protein mix and handouts of real food from the rest of the team. Andre, 46 from Perth, Australia, team navigator. There was talk of some navigation experience. With only 2 weeks notice to join the team, Andre made it with all gear intact save a few team items which were kindly prepared for him. Andre did all the bike nav and shared trek and paddle nav with Ruan.
We head on to Ifidi pass which is the first available down option to see if its down-climbable. We get there about 330pm with one other team and it looks ok, just a little bit of ice. We cover most of the steep stuff in day light, and leave the other team behind as our pace seems to be faster down the gully. We following a distinct stream going down, hopping boulders, but finding only scraps of a path as it occasionally winds around big drops, we descend from 3000m to 1700m. At about 1740m we look for a track that contours on the left ridge, which we find and follow. A bit later we see the lights of two teams on the other side of the river who missed this path and have seen us and are starting to cut across to join us on the path in the dark. A few km later I lose and then regain the path as it winds across the ridge and we end up at a local cattle herders yard goats, dogs, chickens. Ruan asks for directions. We walk on and find the river crossing with two other teams converging and the 12 of us start on a bigger vehicle track about 5km towards to T1, so time to get in a bit of running and take the opportunity to eat some food. We walk past T1 since we still had a 10km out and back to CP7 left, and head down the road there. Here we see a bunch of team ahead and behind us as we are all doing the out and back. From CP1 to CP7 and then T1 our placings are given as 26th, 26, 24, 27, 23, 22, 12th, 15th.
We head out and walk about 2k to the water edge in the dawn and then swim 400m across to retrieve our boats and paddles. We leave our bags on the shore and swim across getting the boats and then paddle back for our stuff. Its a nice fresh swim to wake us up as we pass our first night without sleep. We paddle the 7k or so across the Woodstock Dam to our first portage, quite a long one and we cut out a fairly large loop in the river by going an extra 300m or so on the portage. We paddle for a number of hours with a couple of weirs to portage around and finally get to CP14 at about 430pm, with just enough time to get water and a quick rest before the 5pm cutoff. Suffice to say my butt got a little bit sore sitting on the plastic boat. Even my foam cushions provided only little relief. We head on and have 8 rapids to run ahead of us. They start out fairly small and progressively get bigger. At about the 6th rapid we see all teams getting out at the left and starting to portage. Ruan takes a good look and sees a line. He asks me if I wanted to go with, but I decline, as the last rapid was about as much as my limited experience could handle (steering the boat from the back). So Ruan goes solo and makes it. JD sees this and goes solo as well both boats through and Shelly and I run down along the rocky river edge to meet them, passing at least one team. We quickly reach rapid 7 and this time with more courage I go down with Ruan. We get stuck across a big rock with Ruan and I on either side. We push towards my end, with me pushing down on the tail and then jumping in as the boat starts moving. Then its just me and the boat going down and I bring it in to a quiet pool and Ruan makes his way over. Rapid 8 is looking pretty bad but we are now so low on day light that we get going after a quick scout from the side. Ruan and I just manage to stay in and we look back to see JD and Shelly get caught and tipping over into the water. For a while JD is trying to dislodge a stuck paddle out of the water. They recover and we quickly set on before total darkness not knowing if this was the last rapid or not. JD says hes never had to do a grade 3 rapid with the need to have a headlight on its pretty insane how close to dark were running the largest rapids. Luckily we paddle on and find no further rapids. We stop and put our headlights on properly and head on down the canyon. The dimensions in the canyon start getting larger and larger with high walls on either side now up to 600m across and winding left and right with about 1-3km straight sections, it becomes quite tricky to navigate. At some point Ruan gives me the map with a guess as to where we are and I then try for the next hour or so to figure out where we are as we slowly paddle on trying to keep the RHS edge within eye sight. I start seeing a pattern, but its a parallel problem as Im too far ahead on the map and make the mistake of trying to cut across an inlet and stead reaching the other side of the canyon and then continuing with it at my right. But now were heading back up the canyon and not out. I figure this out fairly early on and turn back to complete a loop. At this stage were getting colder and colder and are really not sure where we are. We see another team beached ahead while someone is changing and pull up. This is team Black Diamond. We sit there talking with their nav, and eventually he points to where we are on the map probably to get rid of us as it was looking like we were going to follow them home. Sure enough, we were about 4km upstream from where I thought we were.
We start paddling out, it all makes sense and we hit T3 at about 10pm, quite cold, but a disaster averted. We enter this leg at 18th, CP11 at 15th, CP14 at 16th, exit the water at 13th. A gain of 5 places thanks to some great portaging and whitewater work. Of the teams that finished the race with us, only Indabushe had gotten caught in the dark zone, making it to the transition at 933am the next morning. They would make some time on the bike leg, and then have caught up by mid camp to start the trek from midcamp with us.
We enter this leg at 16th (some time records missing, so not sure) and finish at 18th.
Leg 6 Trek 56km, Wed 10:32pm Thurs 10:37pm (24:05hrs), +-3200m, abseil
We start out with another team in the dark and walk back up the bike track about 100m ascent back to the plateau we dropped down from on the bike. At this point I have the 1:50k contour map and JD has the 1:50k hiking map, which he pockets and follows me. It would have been better if we used both maps as I have only one trail on mine and assume were on it since were following a trail that is nicely signposted with a yellow boot. The team were walking with is Indabushe (who did great on this leg coming in about 4 hours under us) but leave them early on as they take a left correctly, while we continue on straight. Shelly makes some remarks about staying with other teams but I have too many times experienced group-nav-dumbing and decide to focus on the map in my hand instead. We scamper along way too fast and confidently, and make ground when we should have been climbing already. The direction was roughly correct, but we are now going down a trail towards the Grotto marked on the hiking map which Im not looking at. A bit later I pull up as were descending too much and we pull out the hiking map and realize were on this trail. We decide to continue and cut off from the Grotto trail onto one called Jacobs Ladder which will take us up to the Perdeklip Trail above that we originally wanted, which climbs across the cliffs above to the next plateau where we have a CP at the top of the overlooking peak. The trail to the Grotto turns out to be a slow arduous up and down and finally makes its way around past the cave and then up and we continue as it changes to being signed by a green boot. Well, we got to see a bit extra along the way I guess. After climbing out of the valley we realize that we can see the village below again, meaning weve travelled about a 1-2km away from our destination and around to the right. Fairly frustrated, we turn around and start walking back to a distinct set of tracks that we had found earlier. Just short of reaching here, Ruan, now with the topo map in his hand, and me with the hiking map, calls out for us to start following a track that looks like its going in the right direction for us to get to the Jacobs Ladder track. We follow on and reach a fire break boundary that I can confirm on my map. It looks like the Jacobs track is to our left and we push along the firebreak up the ridge. Soon the firebreak finishes and we continue bush bashing up the ridge. Its a bit
scratchy here with low lying vegetation but not too bad. Somewhere here JD starts having trouble with his stomach and continues to be sick for most of the rest of the race. Full credit to him for hanging in there and maintaining his energy levels in this state, something hes definitely done in the past as its fairly common in expedition racing. We continue up the ridge and finally hit a faint trail which turns out to be Jacobs. After a bit of scattered walking by the team including passing above this trail and then returning through really bad patch of brambles by some of the members we get on this trail and it takes us around and up as per the hiking map. A bit of confusion as these tracks are not on the topo map, but we manage connect to the Perdeklip trail ok and finally get going at a positive pace. Just there I bend down to get some water from a stream, my headlight goes out, I stand up and slip and get beaned on the forehead by the edge of a boulder. Happily nothing more than a bump on the head and a bit of a black eye later. We walk on and reach the CP just after dawn. It was a crazy night for us and the low point for our morale. We had lost a number of hours, but its a beautiful day and can now walk on at a good pace and we put the night behind us. It is a beautiful hike south along the escarpment under the high (up to 3350m) peaks of the Drakensberg mountains, including Monks Cowl and snow above. We continue along and finally descend to the lower plateau down a steep ravine and reach a river crossing and a tourist camp with a store where we buy a few goodies like chips and a coke, and finally see another team. We feel a bit better about the previous night after hearing that they started out almost 4 hours earlier than us (Issy Adventure, who were to pull out after this leg). Wasting no time, we continue along to the opposite side of the valley where we have a 600m climb up the other plateau on the other side. We climb up a trail with some wooden ladders up a pass through the 100m cliff band and make our way up the plateau where about 1k later we find our first CP at a concrete weir. Ruan runs off and gets it while we take a rest on the track, bless his energy levels. Ruan then runs a bit further going back for his backpack that he left behind near the CP (I think), and then a bit later again back to find the map that he dropped a few hundred meters earlier on the trail. We walk on into the afternoon, hearing some stories of past adventures, accidents, bull rides and stitches, and cover a number of ks on the plateau till finally getting to the peak with the CP at about 430pm and then head down to find the correct spot to descend off the plateau to the start of the abseil before dark. We find it and see a beacon on the cliff edge showing where its safe to climb down to the ledge where the falls start for the abseil. We hit this right on night fall. A solitary guide at the top checks our setup and describes how to get between the 5 abseils below and then off the mountain. Im not sure any of us remember where to go right/left and stop short and kick over as well be hanging over a pool of water, but we manage to do it all and pass at least 2 teams on the way. Were clambering about in the dark with water flowing over fairly tall drops trying to find the way to the next abseil, tying in while standing on slippery platforms, and crossing flowing water on ledges a number of times. After the final section its still really steep and were not sure if we should exit left or right. We go left and with a bit of scrambling on steep grass we make it down to the road at the bottom. Just about here I get a slow-release ibuprofen from JD and my bodys feeling fine again.
Here we need to run down to a fence line for about 1km with 140m descent to get a control. Ruan and I start on the straightest line but pretty soon hit a bit of a swamp, brambles and I step in 4 foot hole and land on my ankle with much pain but luckily just a bruise. We retreat and walk down the road to try along the fence line which is the way to go as theres a well-trodden path through lots of brambles along the way. Ruan fetches it at the bottom with me about 100m away, Shelly and JD taking a break above, Shelly chatting to someone from another team and JD sleeping somewhere off the trail in the grass. Three of us get back up to the road and we cant see JD anywhere. After calling his name out were a bit concerned that he could be sleeping for hours in the grass somewhere. Were about to walk on up the road to the road/river crossing when we see JDs figure emerging from the grass below, yay. The last 5k walk on a road to the transition was quite a challenge as JD and I are hit with sleep monsters. Luckily Shelly and Ruan are fine and guide us back. We enter this leg at 15th and exit at 17th, getting passed by SXM and Indabushe (who went on to have a great race and come in at 8th overall).
about half of this, find the trail and get to the road again just as another team turns up who had ridden the long way around on the road which in hind sight was quicker but less fun. We continue on the road, up and down hills. I get a caffeinated chewing gum from JD and my power doubles, soon Im doing a bit of towing. A lot of road riding later we get a CP in a small town and continue on. A number of ks on we turn right and we arrive at the fence of a game park, Quaggashoek. By now weve caught up with the French team SXM and their navigator and I try to figure out whether the dirt trail off the tar road heading up the ridge on the left that everyones started riding up is the correct one or whether were on the wrong ridge and it could be a dead end. Taking what seems to be an age as the tracks near this fence have changed, we cant say for certain but guess this is the right one and call for everyone to continue. It turns out to be the right one, and all the bike tracks on the ground would point to this as well, although you never know if they are all the same direction. Its a big ride/push up a rocky track (the Bezuidenhoutpass) of at least 5k and gaining about 500m altitude or so. We finally make it to the very top where JD and Ruan climb a small hill for the CP, and then continue along an up and down rough dirt track towards the Sterkfontein Dam. The trail gets better and we meet a race marshal in a car who says we need to get on the dam by a 6pm cutoff. Its about 3pm and Shelly and Ruan start leading the charge home. They are now doing a time trial and its taking everything we have to get there in time. Along the way Alard, Shellys husband, turns up in his car and cheers us along. We hit the tar road and a short while later arrive at the lake side transition at 445pm with the marshal and spectator teams cheering and wooping, so excited to see that weve made the cutoff. We enter this leg at 16th and exit at 14th, with some great riding towards the end, passing Powerbar, Pennypinchers, and SXM.
At 1130pm the funniest thing happens. Having previously been completely comatosed, JD shines a light in my eyes in a panic and is madly waking us up saying hes been looking everywhere for us and weve got to get on the water in half an hour. We explain that the cutoff has been moved to 6am and that were waking up at 3am. I chat with JD and agree its way too long to be lying about, so at about 1230am were up and working away at getting ready. Shelly joins us a bit later, slowly sorting gear and food in the chaos, there are teams sleeping and gear everywhere. I tell her to focus on one thing at a time, starting with the most import what will you wear/need for the trek, and then what for the paddle. I start working on the maps and finish them just as we wake up Ruan at about 230am, knowing he can get ready super quick.
option is to paddle back across the dam and then join the other teams riding back to the HQ hotel. This blew a big hole in our bubble of excitement at having made it across the dam and we each discuss and express our feelings about going on, from racing on no matter what to pulling out happily now. In the end, we make a great decision, to go for a bit of a walk in the mountains and see what its like, and stick with our original plan to rely on Alard as an exit here or at the mid trek CP.
want any part of this competitiveness and is happy for us all to walk in together. One in the back team finally breaks and we pass them. Then we pass the second team which is team Black Diamond who showed us the way out of the canyons on the paddle leg 3. I blush as we run past their navigator saying we owe them but we keep running. We run all the way to the hotel and make it in at 315pm in 10th place. We entered this leg at 13th and finished at 10th, passing Black Diamond, Castle Lite and Olympus.
Epilogue
I found it to be a really interesting race. Most of our race was spent towards the back and middle of the field and we didnt see many teams out there. Then right at the end the last two legs filtered out a lot of teams and we managed to make some good decisions like crossing the dam and tackling the trek only in daylight to be able to run past two teams who had spent the night out on the mountain, and coming in at 10th, a great result and about middle of the second pack to finish after the first 6 teams who came in over 11 hours earlier. Thanks to Stephan for putting on a great race, my excellent teammates for getting us through it, and the Warriors volunteers and Alard for all your cheers and support throughout the race. Its a nice change to be racing a slightly shorter 6 day race versus my previous 9 day XPDs and my feet made it intact with only one blister on a toe getting a bit sore, having not been taped. The medics at T7 taped my right ankle really well allowing lots of movement after it looked quite swollen from my earlier trek fall. By the end my feet and ankles were super swelled and my weight dropped from about 87kg to under 81kg, almost 10%. No rubbings or pain anywhere else. It was a bit rocky but mostly soft and flat underfoot and dry until the last day where it was wet, so our feet fared really well. From what I can gather the rest of the team held together fine as well, aside from some sore backsides from the big kayak and bike legs.