Untamed New England Adventure Race

Name of Race: Untamed New England Adventure Race
Website: http://www.untamedne.com
Date of Race: June 12-15
Location of Race: White Mountains, New Hampshire/Vermont
Type of Event: Adventure Race
Distance/Length of Event: 3 Days, Unsupported
Team Members: Harper Forbes (‘The Captain and Tracker’), Denise Rispolie (‘Public Relations’), James Galipeau (‘Mule’) and John Ranson (‘Waterboy’)

Race report written by John Ranson…

This race experience is just starting to sink in for me so I am taking the time to get this story written.

James and I (John Ranson) made the 5hr drive from Ottawa to Franconia, NH on the Wednesday afternoon. Denise and Harper had a longer drive from Toronto by avoiding Montreal traffic and ending up in a few shopping stores in Burlington. I wonder who was shopping 😉

This was a nice race logistically to organize as they forced us to have small bins and then gave us the option to use their PFD’s and kayak paddles and they provided movement of all bins.

Thursday morning we were early to get registered as the race start was planned for noon. The gear check was fast as they only checked satellite phones (which we had to rent and bring), our tarps, and ropes. They had several gear checks on the course, which was a really good idea. They were going to provide ascending gear at the ropes so we had the option of not bringing our ascenders. We were told that it wasn’t that difficult of an ascent (i.e. minimal free ascending), so we all used the organizer’s gear.

After looking at the maps, we realized we would only have access to our 4 gear bins twice (roughly 16hrs and 36hrs into the race). We were however seeing our 1 canoe bin 3 extra times, so we decided to add more clothes and food to this one bin, which did not leave enough room for us to pack our good kayak paddles in order to have enough food and clothes. The trade off would be 6.5 hrs of paddling with heavy kayak paddles provided by the organizers. It’s a tough call but we still think we did the right thing. Everyone used the organizers PFD’s since there was just not enough room in the one bin.

Anyway, that’s the logistics now onto the race.

Stage 1

The race started at 12:30pm on Thursday. We were given the UTM’s for the first 3 CP’s right at race start. We left on our bikes and immediately made a 30min mistake on the first CP. Once we got back on track, we moved well all the way to the first conservation project of the race where we had to pile 200 pieces of wood. These weren’t just ordinary sized pieces of firewood, they were 3 times longer then your usual piece. Denise was our loader while the guys piled. I think Denise had the toughest job risking pinched fingers and strain on the back. She got a pretty nice blood blister on her finger. We continued on, knowing that we needed to make up significant time with the 30 min mistake at the start. We dropped our bikes for a quick 1.5hr climb and run up and over a mountain to our boats on the Connecticut River (reservoir). We passed a lot of teams here with hard running. The paddle was nice, and took us about 2.5hrs. We were in around 7th and feeling good with our speed. We had to keep reminding ourselves to eat and drink as we were so focused on keeping the fast pace.

Stage 2

The stage started with a bike and tie. We had about a 6km trek with one bike per team. This was neat but not too different as we were a running team and we were on a hilly power line trail. James and I each biked each one way and towed when needed. Denise was treating any trekking section on the race as a training opportunity for the Leadville 100 in a few months! After the 6km bike and tie we headed back out on our bikes for some road riding. Most of the biking was nice gravel or pavement, but always lots of hills. We had to drop our bikes and do a quick climb up a hill to get a CP. We headed into the first trekking O’course in around 5th or so.

Stage 3

We were given a map for this O course when we arrived. We had to go out and get 3 CP’s in no particular order. This was a out and back where we had to do about 6km out on this boggy trail to a pipeline then up the pipeline to get the CP’s then back 6km to our bikes. We were solid in this section. Harper and James did a good job rebuilding some old beaver dams so we could get over some streams without going up to our chests in water. It was around midnight at this time and we knew this was going to be a cold night (the temperature dropped to +4C), and we had a cold bike ahead, so we were careful on not getting too wet. We passed several more teams on this section and headed out for the remaining bike to meet our gear bins in Lancaster. This was really hard as we were all in our Gore-tex clothing. The temperature was really low, but the bike section was so hilly that you were over heating all the time going up and freezing going down. I hated it. We got to our gear bins and prepared for the next long section. We still were on our bikes and headed out for more hills and aimed in the direction of Mt. Washington toward the 2nd and 3rd trekking O courses.

Stage 4 (2nd O course, Bike, 3rd O course)

We arrived at this location about 3km in on a gravel road. This was to be our home base for all of Friday. They gave us the 3 UTM’s for the 2nd O’course. It wasn’t too difficult. Maybe took us 3-4hrs, half of it was bushwhacking. Harper’s nav was bang on. I had a rough night with food intake and really felt this O’course. I was feeling really sick. My eye was also really swollen from a branch that knocked out my contact in the first O’course, With some good words of encouragement from my teammates and them giving me some better food from their packs, I started feeling better by the end of this section.

We headed out for a 55K bike loop covering significant elevation with the view of Mount Washington and the Presidential Range around us. I think here we really separated ourselves during the heat of the day from teams behind us as we posted the fastest bike split in this tough section. We climbed over two significant notches, including Jefferson Notch Road, the highest public road in NH. We settled into our 2nd place position, not sure how far we were from 1st place. I have good races and bad races with regards to sleep issues. It is probably not my strength. This was a good race except for a long descent in the middle of this blistering hot day were I nodded off and just about went into a ditch on my bike. That was a close call. My teammates never would have known as I only somewhat fell off my bike…..but I still told them.

We arrived back at the home base and received maps for the 3rd O’course. My eye was really sore and I got the medics to look at it. My contact was broken and buried up in the top of my eye. We got it out and with some eye drops cleaned things out. My eye was great after that. This was the big section and we were told that we were 15 minutes from 1st place. We were pumped for this O’course and headed out. There were 7 CP’s and we needed to get 3 to stay on the pro course. We caught Team Summit Achievement (the lead team) half way to the second CP. It ended up we were doing these CP’s in the same order and over the next 7.5hrs we flip flopped several times, ran together a bit and pushed each other. It was great. They were a great team of 3.

We were working off trails but had to do several 600-800m bushwhacks up to knolls and hills and down re-entrants to get CP’s. We ran back into home base at about 10pm in the lead. We got a 15 min lead on Summit Achievement at the 2nd last CP when James stopped to do a #2 as they were running with us and then they continued on and took a wrong trail for a bit.

We were in prime spot. We had just cleared the O’course and had an hour bike to the paddle where we couldn’t start the paddle until 4am Saturday. So any time at the next CP was free time to rest our bodies, bonus time on the clock and also time to eat and sleep. Just as we were getting ready to leave the CP and boot it out of there before Summit Achievement could see us, James picked up his bike only to find out he had a flat tire. The 10 minutes to change the flat resulted in Summit Achievement getting us in their sights….Damn. Either way, we rode into the dark zone together tied for 1st knowing that we were probably going to be the only teams to have cleared all of the time bonus CP’s so far, giving us huge time bonus’s and rest advantage. We spent the next 4.5hrs sleeping, eating and plotting the next section of the course for which we received the UTM’s once we got to this checkpoint. It was now a 2 horse race or should I say Harper ‘The Gazelle’, Denise ‘The Bobcat’, James ‘The fastest Mule in the world’ and me.

Stage 5

Harper and I were so tired when plotting the UTMs it took twice as long as normal and UTMs required constant re-reads.  We finally tried to settle into a sleep under the tarps but most of us only got several 15-minute catnaps over the early hours as short-coursed teams started arriving with their headlamps on us, talking, etc.  We had no idea what we were in for on Saturday. Grant counted down the dark zone lift and we we off at 4am along with the other lead team to sprint it out for the victory.  We soon realized pretty quickly that  heavy paddles the organizers provided and 2 people per canoe compared to Summit Achievement’s light paddles and 3 people in one canoe gave them a huge advantage over us. They finished the 30K paddle (with a short portage) about 40 minutes faster than us. We continued to race hard and biked to the next conservation project where we had to clear brush off a trail. This is such a great idea for race groups to do. We headed to the ropes section up and back toward Franconia. We were starting to see more and more mountains and I was getting worried. We dropped our bikes and headed to the ropes course.

It was one team per rope so the leading team gained another 15 minutes on us there since they had one less person. We had time to read some trail mail and plan our last 7hr trek to the finish and look at the two peaks that we were going to hit. We did a quick 30min trivial kayak around Echo Lake and headed out on the trek. We knew we were a good 1hr behind, but also knew that we had to keep pace making the midnight cut-off for the pro course and recognizing that (although the navigation was minimal) anything could happen up ahead.

The two climbs through the Presidential Range we did were monstrous, each climbing to over 4000 feet when we started at 2000. We did the first up and down to Cannon Mountain in 3:15.  The 2nd climb to Greenleaf hut was longer in distance and elevation but a better trail in 2:45. You couldn’t even look up to see where you had to go, you would get too depressed. It was just one step at a time. There were minimal switchbacks. The trails went just about straight up and straight down the mountains. I wouldn’t even want to imagine doing this in the rain (which most teams had to do, since it started raining just as we were finishing the race). It end up that Summit Achievement matched our time on the trek and did the same route as us. Other teams were doing the trek loop the opposite way and we saw them as we trekked. It was 7:30pm Saturday night and we choose to do a 6km road hike into the finish instead of taking a trail. We ran about 2/3 of it and were welcomed by the first place team, race organizers, all the great volunteers and pizza and beer. What a great race and a great 2nd place standing. We won some packs / shoes / hot sauce and a 24 of Long Trail beer each. Not bad!

I would like to thank Grant and all his staff and volunteers for putting on a well run race and an extremely challenging course. Congrats to our friends at Team BreatheMag.ca Multisport Magazine, who also completed their first expedition-length adventure race.  I would also thank my teammates for as always sharing in a great adventure and good memories.

See ya out there!

John Ranson
Team Running Free