When we got word last year that USARA Nationals were nearby this year, we knew we had to get there somehow. The race was being held in the gorgeous northern Green Mountains of Vermont and organized by our long time friends Green Mountain Adventure Racing Association (GMARA). The open registration portion of the race sold out almost immediately, but we were thankfully able to wriggle our way in off of the waitlist, after a few tense weeks of waiting.
The race was based out of Smugglers' Notch Ski Resort, which is where we would be finishing. We spent the night before the race there, after dropping off our bikes and getting some rudimentary instructions for the next morning (we would be getting up at 4:30 AM so that we could be bussed to the unknown start location)
After getting our gear in order, we turned in for a night of truncated sleep and were boarded on the buses by 7:00. We had gotten the maps at 5:30, so we now had a good idea of what the next 30 hours were going to look like. We were told that it was a BIG course with LOTS of elevation and to choose wisely how much of the course we were going to take on, so that we did not risk missing a mid-race time cutoff or finishing over time (3:00 PM tomorrow).
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We hopped off the buses onto an old logging road with a charismatic red sugar shack, a bit south of the town of Hardwick. Here we would begin the first leg of the race: an off-trail orienteering loop to find 10 checkpoints (CPs) in the surrounding woods.
After a sweet Rib Mtn. rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, we were off, trotting down a short stretch of dirt road before disappearing into the thick woods. We spent the next 3 hours or so finding these points while ascending, descending and getting a bit wet. The navigation here was fairly straightforward. We found them all without major issue. We lost a couple minutes finding the correct logging trail at CP9 and we should have grabbed CP5 on the way to CP2 (instead of after). CP10, which we initially whiffed on (that's a knoll?) was an easy grab on the way back to where we began, and where our bikes awaited us.
We spent the next 3 hours riding on smooth pavement, smooth dirt, un-smooth dirt and some really rough stuff which was beyond anyone's ability or desire to ride - necessitating a lengthy hike-a-bike or two. There was lots of mud too. After this, we cruised on roads toward the canoe put-in on the Lamoille River. We stopped at a convenience store along the way for some drinks and shared a ham & swiss sub.
At the canoe put-in, we had access to our staged gear/supplies. This included an improvised middle seat (short milk crate plus Crazy Creek seat) that we squeezed into our little 2-man canoe, along with 3 backpacks and our bulky paddle bag. We had to tote all of this during a 1/2 km portage to get to the put-in from the TA and there were 2 other lengthy portages downriver. Luckily, the race organizers let us know this (a week) before the race, so we were able to source a small set of portage wheels. This meant that we did not have to laboriously heft all this stuff, but rather roll it along the roads. We still had to to maneuver rough trails by hand, but having the portage wheels really eased things. At the beginning of the second portage, we had to lift the canoe up an 8 foot bank to reach the road. Nick and I carried some stuff up first and turned around to see Rob, in beast mode, singlehandedly throwing the boat atop the slope.
We covered about 25 miles on the river, including two portages (around rapids). This took approximately 5 hours. For us, paddling tends to gets pretty old after the 3-hour mark. This was no exception but there was a lot to like about the leg - a nice, flowing, winding river with some interesting turns and light rapids, good temperatures and pretty nice scenery. The sun set about 30 minutes before we exited the river and so we paddled the last, seemingly never-ending, portion in increasing darkness.
We got to the TA and we were very cold and wet, especially Nick, and quickly put on as many dry layers as we had prior to eating and packing up food and and water (this was the last time we would have access to our gear). Rick of team Chaos Required made our day by dropping off some leftover warm jalapeno poppers and chicken tenders (from a nearby store, which we would soon also visit for coffee and food).
A lot of teams came off the river right after us, but, despite a fairly long TA and visit to the store, we left the TA ahead of them, riding on some river trails and up a hill toward a trail system where we'd find the next 2 CPs. About halfway up this hill, we hear Nick yell an expletive. That rarely means anything good.
"I left the tracker at the TA."
Since the tracker is mandatory gear, we definitely had to turn around and fetch it. Nick felt bad about this, obviously, but it could have easily been any one of us. I've forgotten my camera on my PFD at the end of many a paddle section. I forgot to even bring it to this race at all (hence the dearth of photos).
Ultimately, it took less than 30 minutes to get back to where we had been when we turned around. But...as I noted above, there was a big pack of teams right behind us. They all passed us as we were riding back to the TA, which was definitely frustrating.
We re-climbed the hill and headed into the trail system which held the next 2 CPs. There were a lot of teams here sliding around on the peanut-buttery wet trails. One funny moment occurred when I hadn't noticed Nick punching a trailside CP and Rob was confused why, afterward, I kept directing us back toward it rather than onward to the next target.
We soon descended onto the singletrack Brewer trail, which roughly paralleled the Brewster River, leading us back toward Smuggler's Notch resort. This part was...interesting. It consisted of fairly flat and rideable trails interrupted by ridiculously steep and unwieldy hike-a-bike sections which crossed river tributaries/reentrants. Consequently these trails were pretty slow going, but we passed through them and found the needed connections and CPs without much issue. We then emerged onto paved road (briefly) before returning to dirt trails on the wide bike/hike trails of Smuggler's Notch Resort. Here, we navigated accurately to 4 of the 6 available CPs, which were located on doubletrack and singletrack. We spent much of the time here riding near or with team Electric Mayhem.
Here we decided, for the first time in the race, to skip some checkpoints - there were 2 more distant CPs which would require additional ascending. We had had some delays and there was plenty of race to bite off, as needed, in subsequent stages.
Next we sped downhill out of the resort toward our next target. We had covered about 17 miles on this leg, mostly on trails. It was a little after midnight. Our next job was to bike up toward the lofty heights of Smugglers' Notch toward the next TA, which was about 1/3 of the way up the climb.
During the climb, I was closely watching the map, the terrain and my compass. The TA was not on the road and I was worried it might not be obvious from the road. We were following Electric Mayhem up the climb and Nick had started to gap us all, cruising up the hill with his excellent bike strength. We passed a few side roads which seemed like they could lead to the TA, but I wasn't 100% sure. Electric Mayhem was just cruising along like we weren't anywhere close. Very soon after, the road changed direction and then I was convinced that we had passed the turnoff. I stopped and expressed my concerns to the other team and Rob but by this point Nick had blithely ridden ahead out of eyeshot and earshot. I rode up the road aways but still no sign of Nick, so I went back to where the others were waiting and we sat there, chilling on the roadside for 10 minutes or so, until Nick returned to us and we could backtrack to the TA.
Here, at TA 4, we had a lovely surprise - pancakes, sausage and maple syrup shooters, courtesy of the VT Board of Tourism. These were delicious and definitely bumped the team morale up a couple notches. This TA was manned (is "personed" more inclusive?) by veteran AR volunteer couple Scott and Marlana, with whom I had spent several volunteer days during Untamed NE 2014, with my son Reed. We had seen them countless times since, volunteering at various races throughout the Northeast.
Here we got ready for a night trekking leg. There were 8 possible CPs here. We hatched a conservative plan of only getting 3 of them. The thinking was that we were not going to come close to clearing this epic course and that we should focus on making all the time cutoffs. From what we had learned, the final trek leg was really big and we could use that to burn through any excess time which we had, after skipping these points. Off-trail trekking at night (i.e., here) is not typically where one can accumulate a bunch of easy CPs in a short period of time.
We found our 3 flags without much delay here. We (like a lot of teams I saw) went down a too-early reentrant to get to CP33 but we quickly corrected. We scooped up the next 2 without issue and then attempted to beeline uphill back to the TA. I led us a little off-target (too far left) which cost a couple minutes. We were trekking with the Nicki-led Rootstock team here.
Now it was back on bikes to climb over the notch, followed by a lengthy road descent in the wee hours of the AM to reach TA 6. This was a trekking leg with 9 available CPs mapped on 3 maps of 3 CPs each. The wrinkle here was that you could split the team up and work simultaneously - a potentially big time saver. The CPs here were also fairly close together - a good chance to scoop up some easier points.
We each grabbed a map and set off. My intent was to grab the most difficult map but, in retrospect, it was not. I was back in just under an hour. Rob returned after another 20 mins and Nick after another 20 mins. One of Nick's target CPs (C3) had given him some trouble. I grabbed his map to run off and find it quickly while he transitioned, but, attacking from the main trail, the terrain did not line up at all with the map. I was almost immediately lost and decided to just return to the TA emptyhanded, after wasting 20 minutes. Despite this minor setback, we had gained 8 CPs in about 2 hours - not bad.
As we headed back onto the local roads on bike, the sun was finally starting to brighten the eastern sky. This is always a welcome change in an overnight race, nudging your brain into a happier, more alert place. The next, penultimate leg was a long bike leg. There was an embedded optional trail section with a couple CPs which involved a lot of climbing and trails of unknown quality. We had already elected to bypass this and focus on getting to big final trek. So, we rode the scenic, hilly backroads of VT for the next 2 to 2.5 hours, slowly covering about 16 miles. I love AR sections where you can bike-tour the area on rural roads. They are typically comfortable and low-stress, compared to, say, trying to navigate off-trail in the dark.
We rolled into the final TA right at the 24-hour mark - 9:00 AM. This gave us 6 hours to complete the final trek - a big, off-trail hike over a ridge of the Green Mountains which would lead us to the finish line, back at Smugglers' Notch Resort. At this point, our friend and race maestro Chris Yager gave us the advice that we should probably focus on getting the 3 mandatory CPs for the leg, and not so much on the optionals, as time was starting to run a little short. He also reiterated that, as a local team, we needed to "Represent!"
With this in mind, I hatched a route plan to reach the first CP (nearby) and subsequently to surmount the ridge and approach the 2 other mandatory CPs near the top. We would pass near some optionals along the way, and so we hoped to grab those, if we could without spending too much extra time.
After the short on-trail section to the first mandatory CP, we were off into the woods again. We would parallel a deep gorge uphill, reach a predetermined elevation and then strike due north, over a small saddle. This all went according to plan. It was tough climb at times but we made steady progress. At the top of the saddle we made a short brushy side jaunt to get optional CP40. This was followed by a brushy descent, which soon flattened out into brushy level ground. We would pass close to optional CP44, so we were keeping an eye out for the small stream it would be on; we found this without too much trouble.
We were feeling really good at this point - we had found the first mandatory CP and scored 2 optionals and we had only used up 2 of our 6 hours. We were nearing the top of the ridge and still had 4 hours left to get to finish line - solid.
We continued on our compass bearing to where the Long Trail traversed a soft ridge and where we would find the next 2 CPs - both mandatory. It took a lot longer to hit the trail than I was expecting and I was also distractedly inspecting the terrain a lot in case we stumbled across the "reentrant" which held our next target. When we finally hit the trail, therefore, I hadn't been rigorously keeping us on our bearing. We also hadn't passed the flag or any nearby teams. The terrain at the top was lumpy and didn't have any obvious features. There were also reentrants everywhere, which made the clue for this CP (47) fairly useless. We were also not allowed to hike along the trail for any significant distance.
We began to poke around in various reentrants south of the trail, finding no flag and also no evidence of recent foot traffic. Most of the teams were ahead of us on the course and this was a mandatory CP - the ground should be well-trodden around it. Eventually we ran into team BRF Barf here, who had also been looking for a while, with no success.
This went on for a disconcerting amount of time. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place; this was a mandatory CP (we would be "unofficial" if we didn't find it) but, on the other hand, the race time clock was ticking away - we definitely didn't want to go overtime futilely searching for the CP.
After about 50 minutes and no good leads, we had arrived at the conclusion that we needed to move on and hustle to the finish without having found this CP. Before we departed I decided to pay closer attention to the terrain on both sides of the trail one more time, to try to see if I could figure out where we were. Wondrously, the terrain started to line up fairly convincingly with the map, and suggested that we needed to look further east for the flag. While approaching it, we saw another team for the first time in a while, who confirmed that it was indeed right here. Whew! - A huge relief. We had burned over an hour on one CP, but if we could still get to finish line on time, we'd be good.
The next CP was close by and was an easy find (once you had found CP47). Now we had only 2 hours to cover the remainder of the course - about 5km (3mi). It seemed doable...until we started doing it. After CP48, the vegetation took a real turn for the worse - very slow and brushy with very little open terrain. The primary culprit was an old friend from many Vermont races - hobblebush. This member of the witch hazel family grows from about knee-high to shoulder-high and, at its worst, creates dense thickets of grabby, intertwined branches. This was the worst of it that I had seen. As we contoured along (bypassing a hilltop optional CP) west toward the finish, we were nearly constantly fighting through some level of hobblebush thicket. This plus the uneven terrain was really slowing our progress. I knew that we were averaging less than 2 mph - not necessarily fast enough to finish on time.
As we continued grinding (now uphill) through this slow terrain, I was keeping an eye on the map and realized that we were pointing ourselves directly at an optional CP (50). While our focus at this point was simply finishing on time, we would certainly not pass up a free CP along the way. After a quick punch of this knoll-top CP, we reassessed. We were on track and knew exactly where we were (thanks to the fortuitous CP) but we had averaged just over 1 mph to get here - there were 2 miles left to cover and only 68 minutes of race clock left.
We quickly pointed ourselves downhill, continuing west, and discovered that, miraculously, the hobblebush and all other significant underbrush had virtually disappeared! We began eagerly running downhill though the open woods. I kept expecting the underbrush to reappear, but after several more minutes of running downhill, it hadn't. I knew now that we would make it.
As a bonus, as we were zooming west through the woods, there was a flag just ahead of us to the left (CP52). Another lucky score! We encountered team Strong Machine in the woods here, briefly, and continued west until we started to hit the resort trails, on which we trotted easily downhill to cover the last mile.
Because of the unexpected massive improvement in ground speed, we actually hit the finish line with 25 minutes to spare. In retrospect, we could have gone after another CP or two (as Strong Machine had, we found out later) but after stressing so hard about just finishing on time for the last 3 hours, the thought never crossed our minds.
At the finish line, we were greeted by the GMARA crew and volunteers, feeling fulfilled with our race and so pleased to sit down with a beer for a minute and take our shoes off. We chatted with the other teams about their races and enjoyed not racing. We then headed inside for a satisfying meal and the awards announcements. Amazingly, 3 teams had cleared the entire course. We ended up 28th out of 60 teams - a satisfactory result. In all, we covered about 110 miles and climbed nearly 14000 ft, over 30 hours of racing.
The competition at this race was really stiff - definitely the toughest field of participants we had encountered. There were many teams who regularly win 24-hour races who finished well off the podium. The mid-pack was also stacked with quality teams young and old. It was nice to see so many women at the race - definitely a rising demographic in AR thanks to the inclusive efforts of many race directors and officials.
This was a really tough, big course. Three off-trail treks, including the epic finale, a sizeable physical paddle, and the punishing bike terrain really combined to make a wonderful beast of a proving ground for all of us - perfect for a national championship. Hats off to GMARA and USARA for making it happen.
All race photos courtesy of USARA.
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