Endeavor 2014 Daytime Challenges

The Challenges Daytime Orienteering, Mountaineering, Weight Event, Obstacle Course, Team Reaction Challenge Day O This year a change was made to Daytime orienteering. It was a clogging spot on the course last year. Last year teams had 2 hours to find at least 1 of 8 marked targets before advancing to the next challenge. This year ETC made another improvement and located the entrance to Day O on the route back to Bear Valley Village and the remaining challenges. They issued one target number to each team to find, which was on their way regardless of the route they took. There were 10 target options so teams could not just follow the lead team. If a team found their target quickly that enabled them to have time at the other end of the challenge field to search for more targets. (which was key to the winning and lead teams getting 'bonus' points). Our target was fairly near the mountaineering area, so we hustled our packs down the hill to find our target, and make it to Mountaineering Challenge in good time. We rested for a few minutes at the entrance to Mountaineering, grabbed a bit of food and cool drink and headed up to the ropes. Jack and I both opted for a 'medium' climb. These climbs were on a pass / fail basis. We had :08 minutes to ascend our 40 - 60 foot, 5.7 rated climb. They separated us, so we could not support each other, ( we did notice some of the other , later teams were coaching and supporting each other) . We both succeeded in making our climb in the allotted time. Again we realized that rock climbing is a real thrill. We need to do this more than once a year, for this race. We continued up the hill to the Tyrolean Traverse. My friends Aaron and Seth had rigged this set up again, so I had no qualms on the safety and efficiency of this 'bridge'. There were 2 sets of ropes set up to race across. This was to be a timed event, the fastest team across to earn the highest amount of points. Jack and I had a side bet on to see which of the two of would be fastest. I owe Jack a beer. My 88 kilos betrayed me again. The rope I was on was tested by a 180lb rider the day before. Since then I believe, the rope had sat out in the baking (ok heating) sun for a half a day and as its first rider had to sustain a 195 lb rider across its 300 foot length. I sagged that rope like nobodies business. My last 8 - 10 pulls across were literally 2 handed pull ups, as the slope up to the landing rock was that steep. I finally made it close enough to touch rock, but had to hang on with hands and legs for what felt like another minute or two, but may have been :45 seconds, as the receiving team rigged a sling to reach out for me to help drag me up and over the landing rock. Nothing serious enough to write home about but with the weight event coming up I was hoping to still have most if not all of my strength about me. After a brief, easy rappel, we made our way back down the canyon to the Mountaineering check in area and found our main support crew waiting and cheering for us. Laura, Mom, Dad and Keith were there to help us through the remainder of the Challenge events. Or so we thought...As we recovered from our climbs, scrambles and rappels, we made plans to meet the family over at the Weight Event in :15 - :20 minutes. A legend is born Jack and I drank some recovery mix, ate a handful of food and wandered across the road to the Weight Event. We were the 3rd team to arrive. We waited around for a few minutes, ok maybe 10, for the sound of Keiths F350 and our support team to arrive. Other teams were starting to show up, we wanted to get this done so we could have time at the end of the day to eat, rest and go search for more Day O targets. We signed in and were given our instructions. We took one last look for our support team. Nothing. We had to go. We were to Transport these 6 items up into the granite rocks, about 50 - 60 away, (up and away), and return them to their starting position in the shortest amount of time. The items were, two 5 gallon buckets of water (if the buckets came back with less than 4 gallons of water, tape mark, you received a 5 minute penalty), two 8 foot long wooden posts, a 24" x 24" x 24' plywood box, and an 8' long creosote soaked railroad tie. The first two teams to arrive and start on the load carrying were the ultra runner teams. They had started while we were waiting for our fan / support team. WE donned our gloves, got our final directions and said "go" to the starter. Jack grabbed the 2 posts, I grabbed the 2 buckets of water. We headed up into the rocks searching for the easiest route from our start location. Basically we just headed straight up. We set our loads down at the turnaround spot and raced back down for our next load. Jack and I had discussed previously about saving a few precious minutes by only one of us carrying the RXR tie up and the other carrying it down. Jack grabbed the tie, I grabbed the box and we headed up. When we got to the turn around the judge was looking at Jack oggle eyed. I raced up to set down the box for the tie to rest on when the judge said "just need to be behind the line, don't need to set them down" Jack did a quick 180 and headed back down. I had to really hustle to beat him down to give the RXR tie a place to rest. We raced back up, grabbed the buckets and posts and were done in a record 6:24 . We were mostly recovered when the ultra runner teams finally dragged the rest of their loads back down to the finish. We tried to hold in our smiles...We did good. The only problem, as far as we know, No photo evidence. We haven't found a picture to prove Jack is that friggin strong. All we have is the handful of witnesses judging the event and the stunned look of our competitors on the course at the time. But they will remain with us for a long time. Time to head to the Obstacle Course, where we could already hear the cowbells of our family and fan crew.. O and TRC courses The obstacle course was pretty much the same as last year. There were 6 specially designed obstacles to overcome, a 1/2 mile run up to the lake, a 50 meter (ish) swim the length of Bear Valley Lake dam, then (new this year) a 1/2 to 3/4 mile run back down the the start / finish line, with another 10' wall to climb and span. We were comfortable on the obstacles again this year. We basically used the buddy system on all the obstacles this year, earned a few bangs and bruises along the way and finished in the top 4 overall. The Team Reaction Challenge was not going to beat us this year. We had honed our math skills, remembered our reading glasses, practiced our knots and lashes. It turns out we would not need hardly any of those skills this year. The TRC turns out to be two of our our top 5 major skills. Fire starting and cooking. We had to traverse a couple of small obstacles carrying our wood, pan of Jiffy POP popcorn, three matches and measuring cups. Our goal was to split enough wood to start a fire to make enough heat to pop 2 cups of popcorn. Remembering my Boy Scout days I immediately took charge, splitting enough wood for Jack to start whittling us some good fire tinder. We assembled a log cabin style base, inserted as much pine wood shavings as we could, used my bandana as a wind break and started the fire on the first attempt. Once we read and then re-read the instructions on the top of the Jiffy POP, we realized we needed to remove the cardboard top so the foil would have somewhere to expand. We built up the fire, had a good base going and started cooking. At the first pop, Jack started shaking vigorously, per instructions. In few minutes the foil was at maximum stretch. But kernels were still popping. We waited a few anxious minutes more and chose to open the foil and fill the cups. Luckily we waited just enough time. I guess it take only a few kernels to pop the foil, definitely not 2 cups worth. I appears I had wasted needless time splitting extra wood, as we had as much left over as we had used. OH Well. That's the Boy Scout / Coastie in me. Be prepared. At 22:24 we were again in the top 4 finishers overall. It was just 4:00 in the afternoon. We had finished all the Challenges and had plenty of time to eat, get our blisters tended to and head out to find more Daytime Orienteering targets. We figure we traveled another 5-6 miles to recover another 7 targets. We had noticed the ultra teams, we figure our main competition, had set out immediately after TRC to find the remaining targets. Jack had a couple blisters that needed caring for, We both had stomaches that needed filling. We figured an hour of eating and recovering would leave us 2 hours to find as many targets as possible. We had a plan. We followed it. We found 7 more targets, 8 in all, out of 10. We were happy. We got back in time for a short rest before we had Nightime Orientation briefing.