[Jim K]

All I can say is I have never seen or been on a lake that did what that one did. I remember looking up at the dam and saying damn!!

I have to hand it to the whole Bushwack Team they did one hellva a job keeping it interesting!! I really like the different segments rogaine style with time management. Learnt alot on this one.

Thanks to everyone on support for helping our wives out too. Kathy had a blast

Great way to spend 24 hrs!

Jim
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"We do not stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing"

[Steve Morrone]

GREAT RACE! Don you and Patrick did a great job pulling together 3 races in one weekend in the middle of no where! A job well done goes out to you and all of your voluneers, I really can't say enough. The Impossible Panther was a tough race (3 flat tires for my partner in the first 2 hours) but one I was really glad I came out to get my feet re-wet with... During the "mandatory tire change" several teams passed and asked if they could help but when we realized Tammy's CO2 was as flat as the tire, team TBD really showed what adventure racers are like by passing along their pump and then later along the course a spare tube. I really need to return the favor or at least replace the tube. Please get in touch with me...

Great tunes at the boat ramp and the welcoming committee there was great too

You can count me in on the next Bushwacking Adventure, as long as it's not near a KanDo Adventure...sorry, I had to say that

Oh yeah, was CP #6 really out there?
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"There's No Such Thing As Can't!"

[patrick_d]

Hey Steve - Glad you liked the race! It is a bit like a 3 ring circus trying to direct 3 races at the same time, but we think it helps give racers of all levels a chance to race and play. Clearly our 24 hour event is mostly experienced racers, but our 6 hour race had over half first timers! We love that mix and letting the new folks rub elbows with the experienced folks at the post race party is part of our plan.

I am so glad to see that the spirit of AR showed up during your "mandatory tire change"! That is part of what makes AR so cool.

The Bushwhack Adventure Race will be in the greater Raleigh area on September 25-26th. (I don't see a race on Kando's calendar that weekend right now!)

And yes CP6 was there! We sent a volunteer out to clean it with just a marked up map and they found it. (And so did a few other 12 and 24 hour teams.) That CP was set up to encourage bushwhacking. Is that how you attacked it? We try to keep it challenging so teams keep coming back!

[jollespm]

CP6 was there. The road that it was on was a little tricky to find coming from CP5. The first trail I thought it was on was actually one of the prohibited trails (yellow blazes?). However, once we found that, it was trivial to find the correct road. The point was about 600 meters up the correct road.

I'm not sure that anyone would bushwhack to CP6 point as the trail ran right by it. On a bike, the bushwhack to trail option has to be at least 1:5, and if the trails are any good, it is usually more like 1:8-10.

Now that I say that, I think I'm going to regret it this fall.

[patrick_d]

Hey All - So Peter is talking about CP6 for the 24hr course and Steve is talking about CP6 for the 12hr course! We try to keep you guessing even after the race is over!

But Peter is right on with his comments about the 24hr CP6, bushwhacking would not have been the best idea.

CP43 on the 24hr course was the same as CP6 on the 12hr course. Maybe Peter can say how his team attacked CP43? (Also the point values varied between CP locations b/c the 12hr race S/F was at Deep Water and not Badin Lake GC. See the crazy stuff we had to organize!)

[jollespm]

Well, that changes things significantly. To get CP43, we came north on 553, starting from the ORV trail (that CP40 was on) to the south. We hit the small horse trail just before 6581, took the immediate right and went up. We rode as far was we could, which wasn't too far, and trekked the rest of the way up the trail. You had to cross the ORV trail which went over the top, and the point was just beyond that. Eagle eye Bo spotted the point from about 50 yards out, but I didn't see it until we were practically on top of it.

[Steve Morrone]

Based on that, either I was blind or just couldn't see straight, because we were all over it. Hated to walk away without it too. I think I need some pointers from Bo.

It really was a great time even though I thought I saw my heart jump out of my mouth on some of those hills, it kinda makes you feel alive

Any idea as to when and where we can see the pics from the race?
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"There's No Such Thing As Can't!"

[Bo Martin]

Here are a couple of videos from the race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvE-lLCqXeQ
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNapUEc0pOg

[bob.may]

It was great to see an Adventure Race from the volunteer stand point. The camping, drums, live band, and video presentation are all great additions that make the Bushwack ARs so unique - by far my favorite events I have attended. Great job to Don, Pat, and Jeff for putting together such a great race and adapting to the extreme "Lake" conditions on Tillery.

Rob and I vetted the initial MTB leg for the 24 HR race, where we got a little turned around at the connector trail from the Badin Region to the Woodrun Region - It was a bit overgrown. Then after placing some of the Badin area points and the 6 HR paddle points, I felt like I did a small AR as well. The first night of the race I helped man the river crossing. We watched the Uwharrie River swell from ankle deep to chest deep in a period of a couple hours forcing the last 24 HR Team to have to ride around to the RTE 109 bridge. Great job to all the racers for overcoming Mother Nature's challenges.

[patrick_d]

Great video's Bo! I set that control at the top of Sugarloaf Mtn on Thursday afternoon in the middle of a really cool rain storm with 30+mph wind gusts and dark clouds. It was nice to see what it looked like up there with the sun shining! I was hoping your video would show you guys finding that one, it should have given you a nice view of Hattaway Mtn.

Please post any other video's, we'd love to see them. Don is working on getting the pic's posted. They should be up soon.

[bmw73]

Well that was certainly the wildest adventure race I've done yet! Though that was due more to our own interpretation of the race than anything. That's one thing I love about the two Bushwhack races I've done thus far - the pure rogain format. Ya'll did a great job orchestrating three races at the same time and from what I can tell everything ran really smoothly. The checkpoints were well placed (well, at least the ones we got to), the use of the terrain was new (at least from the last race despite being in the same location; I expected to be paddling the lake again), the volunteers were helpful and friendly and it seemed like there was good communication among them to keep things organized (glad the woman at the rappel site told us CP 22 - for the 12 hour course - was underwater!), and as usual, the post-race food and atmosphere was a great way to end the day!


Here's a recap of our race:
I managed to gather a couple of friends that had never raced before for the 12 hour section. Having never really trained together, we decided to hit up the paddling/O-course first and save the biking for last figuring we didn't know our paddling speed and if we started getting short on time we could always skip out and hit a main road back the the start/finish on a bike; it'd be a bit harder to skip a section of the river. We were all told at the start of the race that there was "no flow" on the river and it would be almost like paddling on a lake. We were one of three teams to paddle first and thought the flow was great on the water as we headed for the dam, found the portage trail, got to the bottom, and were a bit surprised by the current to say the least. But at least we made good time getting to the O-course.

One of the guys I recruited just happened to be a superb navigator (ok, so I knew that before I recruited him, which may have been one of the reasons I wanted him on my team) and took us literally right on top of almost every checkpoint, and the two we didn't hit immediately we found within 2 minutes of getting to where we thought it would be. Unfortunately there were two setbacks: 1- we somehow completely missed marking CP 15 on our map, and 2- I had a chunk missing out of my toe from two weeks before the race that should have been healed by then, but was very much not, so I held up our team because I had to pull up and limp a lot. But we made it back to the boats 3 hours later which felt good because it looked like the other two teams that came down with us were only minutes ahead.

We started paddling back upstream, but when it took us 5 minutes to get 50 yards we pulled back over and started following a trail up the west bank. We ran into a local who said the trail went all the way to the dam, but NOT over and around it. We also noticed a road on the map that followed the bank and cut up and around the dam, but then just kept heading west, and goodness, we didn't want to bushwhack back to the river carrying a canoe - ha! So we got to the base of the dam at the top of those islands, assessed the situation (where we put in we couldn't see that the trail kept going, but we didn't bother to check anyway), and Michael said he could keep the boat angled correctly so we could eddy across, lose some ground but probably hit about halfway down the islands, then use those to block the current some and get around that way. It worked, too. We didn't even get swept too far down stream, worked through the islands, and were maybe a minute from reaching the east bank when we just got turned a little too much and swamped. Luckily we had strapped all our gear in, but we got swept downriver trying to keep the boat somewhat afloat (thank goodness for the life jackets!) and finally swam it to an island where we could empty it. Got back in, made it the rest of the way across, and decided to try and paddle up the bank a bit where there would be less current. Wrong. We immediately got swept around and carried even further downstream (though still in the boat). We paddled back up a little ways, then just got out and bushwhacked back to the portage trail and up and around. From the O-course to there took over two hours. We hit up CP 20 and coming around the bend saw the whitewater from the other dam and the huge cloud of waterspray and decided to skip CP 21 and just shoot for the rappel. We got there with only a few teams in front of us, so we got back out fairly quickly and paddled back to the start/finish.

We had exactly 4 hours for the biking section and headed straight for CP 8 and 9 since they were high points and not too far in on the trails. We got both of those no problem - arrived to each one about the same time as Team Osprey so worked with them - and had two hour left. We decided to just head back to the finish because it looked to be mostly uphill until the last bit, one of our teammates was hurting on the bike which I sympathized with having had my own trouble with the running, and we figured though we could have gotten one more high pointer and made it back, we would have been pushing it and basically lost everything if we were just a few minutes late. So we made it back with nearly an hour to kill, but that was ok.


After looking at the results I think the only reason we did well is because other teams didn't know the paddle would take as long as it did. So while they racked up on bike points, it would have been hard to clear the course which total was worth 400, whereas the O-course including check-in/out totaled 370 and took less time to clear, and a lot of teams just didn't get to make it down there, unfortunately. So it was total luck of the draw that paddling first worked for this race. But my teammates and I were really excited, and they say that they can't wait to get out and do another race! Thanks again for getting this organized; we had a blast!!

[jforest1]