Race Report: Berryman Adventure Race

Fraternizing with the "enemy" pre-race.

In the warm predawn of Saturday morning, somewhere in the Mark Twain National Forest just East of Fort Leonard Wood and the Big Piney River in South-Central Missouri, a group of 150-odd adventure racers with head lamps on, stood looking every which way under the inflatable arch of Bonk Hard Racing, LLC, awaiting the start of the 2013 Berryman Adventure 12-hour, a real ass-kicker.

Our four-person coed team, 34Down, had now been together for a year. The 2012 Berryman Adventure Race had been our first race together. It was bittersweet to be racing without one of our own (Jason welcomed a son into the world just last week, and therefore was excused), but Jay, an outdoor adventure veteran in every sense of the word and all-around cool guy, offered to step right in, pretend that he was 34 years old for a day, and run around in the woods with us.

Now, Gary, megaphone in hand, counted down from three, and then we all scattered in the general direction we had been looking. 34Down headed back into the parking lot, passed the Honey Buckets, and jumped immediately into the tall grass, up to our waists (Jay’s shoulders).  No one followed us. Jeff surged ahead, and within two minutes we popped out onto a single-track trail paralleling the road.  Another team came out of the grass onto the trail just behind us. Less than two minutes later, we left the trail, headed for the hills and our first planned checkpoint (CP). One minute later, we were thigh deep (Jay’s waist) in shoe-sucking marsh water, and I wondered if I was going to have to do the rest of the race in my socks.

And that was just the first five minutes. Jeff took us up onto a spur, and we fanned out across a clearing looking for the first CP. I had the passport, and I swept my headlamp in a full circle hoping to catch the reflective tape on the otherwise orange and white flag that indicated our target. Nothing. Jeff looked at the map and led us down a reentrant and onto the next spur, where we found the trail again. Not good. We had been on the right spur. We took the trail back around to approach the spur from the top and came practically face-to-face with the CP. Sometimes that is how it goes.  We shook it off and checked off the next four CPs in quick succession.

A racer's sock covered in Beggar-lice (mine
my teammates were similarly besnaggled).

We came out of the woods, peppered in Beggar-lice (and as time would tell, tick-bombs), but near the front of the pack. At our bikes, we packed in our new kayak paddles, donned helmets and cycling shoes, and plunged back into the woods once more. The first CP on the bike confounded us a little as it was buried deep in a beautiful “natural tunnel”. I had already taken off my headlamp, so I fumbled with it before I could negotiate the darkness. Not immediately clear on where the trail went from there (and NO Bike-Whacking allowed, as per race directors instructions), Josh suggested there was a trail on top of the tunnel, and I led our exit stage left through the tunnel, and onto the trail.

The single track was rocky and sandy in turns, with unrideable uphills, and washed out sections of little rocks we quickly dubbed “Pop Rocks” for their ability to suck all of our momentum and pop us off our bikes. The rest of the bike went by in a blur as we came out on the road and made our way to the Big Piney River bank.

At the riverside, we found ourselves in second! This section required us to put the bikes in the canoes. So while, Jeff and Josh carried boats to the riverside, Jay and I put together our shiny new paddles that were supposed to make us uber-fast in the water. And I suppose they did (no one passed us on the river), but I still felt like I was paddling with toothpicks (my arms). Josh was having a little trouble in the back of our boat; the bikes were too close in front of him, and he was forced to sit on the back of the boat to get the full benefit of his long arms and paddle stroke.

We heard a team come close to us, but they opted to beach the boats and go for two “FREE” CPs by riding their bikes up a river road. We thought it might be faster to paddle almost the entire seven miles to the other side of the peninsula and then trek for the free CPs after beaching the boats across from the takeout. There was no question that we would go get them (they were worth two points each). As we left the boats, I asked if we were going to take our packs. Jay and Jeff insisted that we should (duh they have our race numbers on them), and it was a good thing we did. One of the CPs was a gear check!

At this point, Jay and I were trekking behind Jeff and Josh as they navigated us through a sea of stinging nettle, tiptoeing and sashaying like uncoordinated ballerinas.  As we skirted the contour of a particularly heinous uphill, I almost stepped on a turtle just as Jeff called from ahead, anyone want a deer skull? But, it was the hive of yellow jackets that we encountered next that I would have loved to miss. Both Jay and I got bit, both of us yelling in surprise and pain.

Back in the boats, I ran straight into the river to cool the hornet bite on my leg (through my leggings). The others thought this was a good idea, and jumped in too, Jay even dragged/guided both boats from the water across the shallow river to the take-out. Once on the beach, we reattired our helmets and bike shoes, and rode our bikes up the biggest hill, granny gears all the way.

Eventually we came to another riverside where we dropped our bikes, chugged cokes and trail mix out of our gear bag, reloaded on water (we had been at it for ~five hours), and mapped the next big O-section.  Team Fusion/Kuat was just leaving the CP in first place. Looking around for a flat spot to map on, Jeff pulled down the tailgate of an ancient Chevy truck that looked like it had been abandoned there a long time ago. The volunteers informed us that the front of the truck had caught on fire earlier that morning, and the owner had just rolled it out of the way and left it there, so maybe “a long time ago” wasn’t exactly accurate. Maybe it should have been. As we mapped, I noticed a foul smell tickling my nose. The area was swampy and marshy, and probably recently flooded, but it wasn’t until one of the volunteers mentioned duck heads did I place the smell. Apparently, the area had been littered with animal carcasses/pieces when the volunteers arrived and they had had to tidy it up. That is above and beyond.

Jeff took a few minutes to study the map, and then commented, “This is going to take a while”. Between every CP and us was a sea of tightly spaced contour lines, indicating the ups and downs we were about to experience. And we were tested. We did not see a single other team in the woods until we were heading to our last CP in the section, Bushwacker and the inimitable Rachel Furman passed us going the other way. We also found another yellow jacket nest. This time, I received two stings, one in the arm and one in the back. The one in the arm seemed to simultaneously seer and put my arm to sleep! But, Jeff was dynamite, and before long and still in full daylight we arrived at the riverside for a second paddle. And we were in first!

PIcture

All four of us jumped into the river bodily before floating the boats into the rapids. Almost immediately we were faced with a tricky section filled will half submerged trees and debris. Years of paddling experience between the four of us (I may not have brawn, but I can keep a boat afloat), we moved through it quickly. Paddling might be simultaneously my most and least favorite section. Josh kept my spirits up and the boat moving rapidly forward. It wasn’t long before we were paddling along glassy expanses, and Jef and Jay helped us out with a short tow. Rather than singing "row, row, row your boat, we tried to remember and sing off key the refrain to “Some Nights” by Fun. I asked Jeff if he thought we might be close, and he called out (as he is apt to do) the chorus to Disney’s Pocahontas “Just around the river bend!” The sky had been threatening rain since “lunch”, and halfway through the paddle, a warm steady rain began to pour down.

It was about this time in the race that we could almost taste the cheesy potatoes and BBQ chicken that we thought surely must have been delivered to the finish line by then. And we were sure that once we exited the boats, we would be told to hop on our bikes, and head back to the start/finish for a victory celebration. Bonk Hard had other plans.

We were handed another course to plot at the paddle take out, and my heart sank as I saw eight CPs listed, including three “FREE” CPs this time. Jeff pulled down the same tailgate once more to map, I chugged another coke and we divvied up the remainder of our water between the four of us, emptying every last drop into our packs. I had sucked my bladder dry during the paddle, so I was happy to onboard another liter. With night falling, Jeff plotted our course in the rain, making ghostly red watermarks on the map in the general vicinity of the CP.  I packed the non-water proof clue sheet in a sandwich bag previously occupied by a PB&J.  Just then the truck owner came ambling up. We apologized for using his truck, but he absolutely cared little, instead starting to tell us the storied history of the earlier fire. We politely listened as we finished up the mapping, and soon he turned his attention to the business of getting his truck “fired up”. As we rode out of the transition we heard behind us, “It’s a good thing we brought the fire extinguisher. Keep it close by.”

It was still daylight, but we knew that would end soon.  We would be forced to do our first ever night navigation to finish the longest adventure race any of us had ever done.  Our strength was waning, but our resolve was strong as ever, and at each CP we would decide to keep going. Navigation on the bike is tricky enough without night falling, but a lot of the CPs were on unmapped roads or off-trail a couple hundred yards. I knew something was up as I approached one in particular. According to Jeff, the CP was “just ahead on the saddle” adjacent to a feature called the “King’s Sink”. As I approached it, passport in hand, my energy faltered. The sign on the CP read, “the punch for this CP is at the bottom of the deep depression to the East”. And an arrow, pointing east. I called out to the guys, “Hey, you’re going to want to come check this out!” Good sports that they all are, Jeff called back, “Is it cool?” as he and Jay came down the hill. “You might not think so.”

Did I mention they were good sports? They accompanied me down into the deep depression, using trees like climbing ropes to repel us down what felt like a vertical slope of loose soil. And just like the sign said, there was the CP, at the very bottom of the deep depression. Climbing out was no picnic, but as I approached the guys, I called out, “Race you to the top!” and we all took off scrambling.

Darkness was falling quickly, but the rain had for the most part ceased. The next CP was three kilometers out of our way, at the end of a road and off the beaten path. The clue suggested it was near a small pond, and as we reached the end of the road and found the edge of a farmer’s field, we realized that the rain had turned every dip in the proceeding jeep trail into a small pond.  We did our best to skirt the big puddles, taking furtive glances at the gorgeous sunset, and trying to maintain speed. One puddle came up to fast for Jay, and he went in up to his hubs.  We found the CP practically in the pond, banks swollen with rain. The rest of our ride would be in darkness.

Riding along the trail back to the road, the beams of our headlamps on the ground became our focus. Two teams came in hot pursuit up the trail as we were exiting, and we knew we had to see this one through to the bitter end.  The next CP came on singletrack.  Mountain biking at night is hard enough without having to navigate, but Jeff was really going above and beyond. We ran into a couple of teams going back and forth along the trail looking for the same CP.  We were looking for the second of two hills off to the right that came after a deep reentrant as we climbed up to a ridge.  I tried to help out by turning off my headlamp and looking through the trees for sky and stars that would indicate we were going past the reentrant.  At the same time I spotted the sky, Jeff let us know that we should be about there and pointed into the darkness. Thankfully it was close to the trail, but as I punched the passport, I was plunged into darkness, and a momentary stillness and sensory-deprivation swept over me.  <shudder!>

We rode on, Jay illuminating the way for all four of us with his 300+ lumen lamp.  We kept looking at the clock, not wanting to get too close to the 10:30 race cutoff, but not wanting to leave any CPs out on the course, either. But as the minutes ticked by, and the miles didn’t, we had to face the fact that we were not going to make it to the last CPs. We held a 34Down summit on the trail near one of the connectors to the road, the finish, and the cheesy potatoes to discuss the prospect of calling it a night. We were all in agreement. It had been a great day filled with firsts and adversity, but it was time finish.

We came in with ~45 minutes to spare. We had to wait until all teams finished, and the 10:30 PM mark passed to see if we had cleared the most CPs.  After 14 hours and 52 minutes of racing and 36 checkpoints (out of a possible 38) cleared, we had won the Berryman Adventure Race, a real ass-kicker.

34Down - Berryman Adventure Champs 2013

Huge thanks to my "enemy" Doug for building such a sweet mountain bike for me to ride, to my teammates for being such good sports, to the Bonk Hard organizers for laying down such an amazing course the was equal parts fun and ass-kicking, and to all the volunteers who kept us safe and organized out there! Picture credits also to the volunteers, spectators, and race organizers.