A Monster Rush
Rob / 07.02.2003
It won’t just be the sleepmonsters racers at this year’s Adrenalin Rush will have to watch out for – they may have an encounter with The Loch Ness Monster as the race is being staged in Scotland, with Inverness, the ‘Capital of the Highlands’, as the host city.Race organisers Adventure Sports One have announced that The Highland Council and Inverness & Nairn Enterprises have agreed to support Europe\'s Premier Adventure Race and teams will have the opportunity to race through the remotest wilderness to be found anywhere in the British Isles.
Race Director Brian Elliott said \" I\'m delighted at the prospect of putting together what will be the most spectacular Adrenalin Rush yet. The North of Scotland offers an unrivalled opportunity for me to realise my dream of a totally remote race where the teams will have to plan very carefully. This will be a true expeditionary style adventure race over a course that will exceed 300 miles in length and careful preparation will be crucial\".
Which way will it go?
Course details are naturally being kept secret, but a course that long in the Highlands could take teams to some very spectacular and truly remote places. To the north is the Easter Ross region, a vast area of mountain and forest with no roads. To the west are the mighty coastal peaks of Wester Ross, Liathach, Beinn Eighe and An Teallach, some of the most dramatic and difficult of Scottish mountains. To the South East are the mighty Cairngorms and running south is Loch Ness itself.
The Loch is big, very big. It’s 22 miles long, up to one and a half miles wide, and 754 feet deep with a bottom as flat as a bowling green. It’s said there is more water in it than all the other lakes in England, Scotland and Wales put together and the mountainous catchment area is so big just a quarter of an inch of rain add 11.000.000 tons of water to the loch. Strong winds can whip down the Great Glen and change direction rapidly - something paddlers found out when an international X-adventure put them out on the loch a few years ago.
The weather prospects are not all so bad though, the coastline of the Moray Firth near Inverness has some of the highest sunshine levels in the UK. Mind you that is because all the rain fall on the nearby mountains …
Get in Quick
It’s going to be an amazing and difficult course whichever direction it goes and entries are already filling up fast. Elliott is anticipating the biggest field to date with a total of 11 countries already represented including USA, Canada, South America, Poland, South Africa, Denmark, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Wales and of course Scotland.
Teams in the UK who want to plan ahead can do their rope skills training for the race as early as March 29/30th. Dynamic Adventure are running a training/racing weekend in the New Forest that weekend and James Thurlow will be instructing and testing on ascending and descending skills. Teams completing the course successfully can be ‘signed off’ for Adrenalin Rush. Details are here and all the information you’ll need on Adrenalin Rush is here.
[Rumours that the kit list includes an underwater camera and the race disclaimer form signs over any Nessie pictures to Brian Elliot are entirely untrue. We’ll be the only monsters there, and you’ll see all the pictures right here.]
