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ARC
Overnight Adventure Race - Haliburton - June 7-8, 2003
Post
Race Review (Provided by ARC)
The Start
In the early morning hours
of June 7th, 2003, participants in the ARC Overnight Adventure
Race at the Haliburton Forest in Ontario, were greeted by cloudy
skies and an on-again/off-again drizzle. Despite the rain,
everyone was eager for the start of the race that would take them
on a 24-30 hour non-stop journey through the spectacular lakes,
trails and wilderness that make up the Haliburton Forest.
The ARC Overnight Adventure Races
are the next step in adventure racing for participants who want to
challenge themselves over an extended period of time, with the
addition of night travel and navigation, and a fixed rope
component in the race.
The race started at 7am sharp, as
the teams ran up the North Road, on their way to between 5 and 10
hours of trekking in some of the thickest and wettest woods in the
Haliburton Forest.
Trekking
The first two CP's on the
trek section of the race course were unmanned and located near or
'in' beaver ponds, and at one location, a team member was required
to swim out to a sign in the middle of the pond to recover a code
that was then written into their passport.
Checkpoints three and five were
manned with volunteers who had hiked into their locations and had
camped with the bugs until the teams found them as they made their
way to the first Transition Area at CP8.
Biking
The bike ride started off on some of the dirt roads
within the Haliburton Forest, but before long teams entered the
single track riding for which the Haliburton Forest is famous,
however this year with all the rain that the area had experienced
this spring, these trails were extremely wet and muddy.
Most of the teams spent between 3
and 5 hours on the bike before they reached TA2/CP12, where they
headed up the Lookout Trail to the start of the fixed rope section
of the race.
Rappelling
At the top of The Lookout, teams were not only greeted
by a spectacular view of the Haliburton Highlands, but also the
start of a double rappel to the bottom.
The first rappel was approximately
120 feet and the second rappel was over 150 feet, making this one
of the highest rappels in any wilderness adventure race in the
province. And it was even more challenging for the teams that
arrived at the top after dark, as they had to feel their way down
the rocky descent.
Night
Biking
After the rappel, the teams were back onto their bikes
for another 3-4 hours of biking at night as they traveled east to
west across the Haliburton Forest.
The last leg of the ride was on the
Kendra Trail which is not only the most difficult biking trail in
the forest, but also one of the muddiest; and this caused the
teams to carry and push their bikes for long stretches until they
reached the final Transition Area at Stocking Lake.
Paddling
to the Finish Line
The final section of the ARC Overnight Adventure Race
was a long paddle and portage on a combination of small secluded
lakes, large open water lakes and meandering marshland.
The upper section of the paddle
brought teams down south from Stocking Lake and through Base Camp,
while the second section of the paddle consisted of a loop that
took teams east to The Lookout, where they had rappelled about 10
hours earlier, and then back to Base Camp on a series of more
northerly lakes, before they traveled on foot to the finish line.
The top Coed team (Hardwood Hills)
finished in a time of 24hrs. 53mins., followed by Team Wilderness
Plumbers and Team Vigormotis.
The top Open Male teams were Team
Boohai and Team Hack Attack.
Congratulations and thank you to
all the Teams and Volunteers that participated in the ARC
Overnight Adventure Race.
A special thank you to all the
sponsors and supporters of the race, including:
Haliburton Forest, Soles Custom
Footbeds, Superstands, Vector Bar, Rub A535, Naya and Ford of
Canada |
