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Life is an Adventure
Race, Sept 2002
Fall Creek Falls AR
By Jim Farmer
My wife, Carol, and I are still comparing scrapes, bruises and poison
ivy welts from the Fall Creek Falls Adventure Race. She’s
got me beat in the bruises department with two eggplant-size shiners
on her quads from a couple of falls on the mountain bike. Luckily,
I stopped my big wreck with my helmet so it left no visible damage. I
have to admit that I’m slightly envious of her bruises. They
make quite a conversation piece. Our other teammate, Brad Harvey,
left the race relatively unscathed physically but I’m sure he
was mentally drained from putting up with Carol and me for an entire
day. It was the first adventure race for both Brad and Carol
and boy was it a doozy. It took us around eleven and a half hours
to finish. However, I preferred being on the course to sitting
on my thumbs most of the day like our support person, Ted Biderman,
had to do while waiting for us to reach the designated transition areas. Luckily,
Ted had his wife and all of the other support people to keep him company,
along with a cooler of “adult beverages” to help dull the
pain. We owe Ted big time.
The Fall Creek Falls Adventure Race was being run for the first time
and was advertised as being an eight to ten hour race covering thirty
five to forty miles involving trail running, canoeing, rappelling,
mountain biking, orienteering, a short swim and mystery events. It
sounded like a heck of a lot of fun and Team Scattered, Smothered and
Covered (that’s us) was extremely excited about the prospect. On
Friday night, we all had to be there for a gear check-in followed by
a free pasta dinner at the Fall Creek Falls Inn. We then had
a pre-race briefing where I expected to get some course information;
however, very little information was divulged. We were simply
told where to place our canoes the following morning and where and
when to meet for further details. Needless to say it was hard
to doze off that evening given the prospect of a full day of racing
without knowing any details. The booming thunder claps and periodic
lightning strikes in the area didn’t help either. Scattered
thunderstorms were predicted for Saturday but we didn’t care since
we considered ourselves “mudders”. Fortunately or unfortunately,
depending on how you look at it, Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous
day for racing.
At 6:00AM the race organizers handed out passport booklets and maps
to the team captains and gave instructions to the support personnel. The
race started at 7:00AM so we had an hour to make sense of the map and
the directions in the passport booklet and determine what gear we needed
for each leg of the race. The map was a standard topo map of
the area with only the main roads and contour lines, but none of the
trail systems or park landmarks, buildings, etc. We had to navigate
through fourteen checkpoints and four transition areas in order to
complete the course. The passport booklet contained some directional
clues as well as empty boxes for signatures from race personnel stationed
at various checkpoints. Although no other maps could be used
during the race, they didn’t say anything about using them before
the race, so I spent a good ten minutes or so overlaying the trail
maps I had either printed out from the web or taken from the information
kiosk and writing in trail names, approximate distances and any other
information I could fit. Essentially, I was playing connect the
dots with the checkpoints. By the time we got all of our gear
sorted out and the bikes on the car racks, it was time to start.
The first leg of the race was a short run, about two miles or so, from
the Fall Creek Falls Inn to the other side of the dam where we had
left our canoes earlier that morning. It would have been a nice
warm-up for a full day of racing except for the fact that we had to
carry our paddling gear with us the whole way. Along with the
paddles and lifejackets, each racer had a list of items that they had
to carry with them at all times from the start of the race to the very
end. This included a long-sleeve wick-dry shirt, headlamp, space
blanket, knife, whistle and other safety items along with a hydration
pack for carrying food and water. The safety items were necessary
in case a team got really lost and had to spend the night or race during
the night. We thought it was kind of overkill and just something
to keep the insurance and park people happy. Boy, were we wrong. But
I’ll save that for later.
Once we reached our canoe we had to pick it up over our heads and carry
it to the other side of the dam. Carol carried the gear while
Brad and I waddled across the dam. We were one of the last teams
to reach the canoes and I’m not very fast when I’m carrying
an Old Town 158 on my shoulders so we ended up being the last of the
thirty-one teams in the water. Not that we had any grandiose
dreams of finishing anywhere near the top of the heap, but being last
just plain sucks. But we made good time in the canoe and jumped
up several positions, due mostly to using dual-bladed kayak paddles
along with keeping our strokes in synch. We had to pass through
two checkpoints at the far reaches of the lake before heading back
to the marina and Checkpoint (CP) #3. After putting our canoe
up we had to place all of our gear in a plastic garbage bag given to
us at CP2 and start the swim leg that would take us back to the Fall
Creek Falls Inn where we started. Swimming is not my strongest
event. In fact it’s the reason I got into adventure racing. There’s
usually little, if any, swimming involved in these things. The
swim leg was about a quarter mile long and was made easier by having
our lifejackets on. However, pushing along a garbage bag full
of our stuff as well as having to carry our paddles with us made it
frustrating at best. I was very glad when that was over.
The next leg was mountain biking which is the part I live for. The
first section of the bike leg was along the lake on a path strewn with
moss-covered rocks that made for very tedious riding. This is
where Carol got her shiners. After hitting CP5 we came to a junction
in the trail so we, along with a couple of other teams in our pack,
stopped to read the clues in our passport booklets. The booklet
said to make a hard right at the trail junction. We all agreed
that this was the junction in question and the trail notes I had scribbled
onto the map before the race indicated that the Piney Creek trail,
which was to the right, would take us directly to CP6. It seemed
like a no-brainer and, given the fact that all of the other teams in
the race did the same thing, we were not alone in that assessment. However,
the Piney Creek trail was due to be closed soon and the hard right
mentioned in the clue was supposed to be farther up the original trail. We
very quickly found out why they wanted to close this trail. We
spent about half the time on the bikes and the other half carrying
them over fallen trees and brush. We should have known that something
was wrong when Gary Pickett from Team Rough, Tough and Power Puff,
who had crank arm problems from earlier on in the bike leg, came running
past us with his bike on his shoulder well ahead of his teammates. He
had the right idea. It was slow going to say the least.
When we arrived at CP7, with some directional help from Terry Smith
and Team Liquid Hot Magma, we noticed that there were not a lot of
names on the checklist that the race official was using to keep track
of teams as they came through the checkpoint. To our great surprise
we were in eleventh place. Apparently, the top seven teams had
gotten lost somewhere between CP5 and CP6 and other teams were scattered
throughout the course. But the fun was just starting. After
biking on to CP8 we got to put on our rappelling gear and head over
to the Fall Creek Falls Overlook so that we could shoot down off of
a one hundred and fifty foot cliff into the valley below. Unfortunately,
due to some difficulties with the apparatus along with some slow rappellers,
we had to sit on our duffs for an hour and a half waiting for our turn. Some
teams had to wait as much as two hours. Although they took us
off the clock during our wait, it was frustrating. But we made
the best of it by doing some socializing with the other racers and
taking in the atmosphere. The frustration quickly evaporated
once we hit the ropes and were treated to a great view of the falls
as we made our way down the cliff.
The rappel was at CP9 and put us onto the valley floor alongside Cane
Creek. CP10 was northeast of our position on top of the ridge
and the booklet said to proceed along the creek bed until reaching
a suspension bridge, and then proceed on the Overnight Trail to CP10. Since
I had overlaid the trail system onto the race map I knew that the Overnight
Trail passed over the creek about a half mile or so due east of our
current position. We, along with many other racers, figured that
there was a suspension bridge across the creek at that point relating
to the one mentioned in the directional clue. So we made a beeline
from the ridge to the creek bed in order to get out of the rhododendron
thickets and navigate along the creek. As we hit the creek bed
we came across a park ranger looking happy to see something other than
cobbles and the occasional squirrel. Feeling confident about
our navigation plan I pointed east, expecting a confirming nod. To
our dismay he pointed northwest and proceeded to show us on the map
the “Suspension Bridge” marker at the top left-hand corner
of the map. He then told us that only six teams had passed him
up to that point, but we were eleventh at the rappel so we knew that
half the teams had worked their way along the ridgeline before hitting
the creek bed and never came across our friendly neighborhood park
ranger. These teams took, what was later designated as, the “Alternative
Course”.
After two and a half hours of climbing over slippery moss-laden boulders,
walking tediously on slick cobbles and trudging through thick brush
along Cane Creek, we finally hit the “Suspension Bridge”. It
was less than five miles from the rappel but it took forever and drained
us more mentally than physically. At that point we picked up
the “far end” of the Overnight Trail and made our way back
along the top of the ridge to CP10. What had looked like an hour-long
trail run according to our original plan of attack had turned into
the Bataan Death March. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but it’s
analogous to seeing an oasis in the dessert and having it turn out
to be a mirage.
Due to the delays at the rappel, along with the Death March, it was
now approaching 5:30PM Central Time which meant that we had less than
two hours of daylight left. Wisely, the race directors closed
the last bike leg section, that apparently took around four hours to
complete, leaving us an hour long trail run to the finish. Only
a handful of teams were able to complete the entire course, including
the last bike leg. They were placed in the “Intended Course” division. We
were placed in the “Shortened Course” division due to missing
the last bike leg. Then, of course, there was the “Alternative
Course” division. That’s not how the race directors
intended it, but it’s the inaugural race so we have to cut them
some slack. Many teams, even with the closing of the last bike
leg, finished well past sundown. Although we didn’t have
to use it, the safety equipment we were required to have with us at
all times definitely came in handy for quite a few teams. Despite
all of the problems encountered, this race was a blast and we’ll
definitely be back next year.
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