SPQ Race Director Reveals Shorter Course, ‘Dark Zone’ For River Paddle
SPQ News Release / 23.09.2004
Organizers of the Subaru Primal Quest adventure race announced yesterday (PST time) that participants will complete an altered course following Nigel Aylott’s fatal accident on Tuesday. The new course started at 12:01am this morning at Howard Miller Park in Rockport (CP20/ACP6). The racers will proceed to CP24 by bike on the road, bypassing 21, 22 and 23. Then they continue onto CP28, bypassing checkpoints 25, 26 and 27.Once teams get to checkpoint 28, they drop their bikes; all remaining checkpoints and transition areas will then have to be reached in order as originally planned.
Start times were staggered by groupings of 10 teams and where that group was relative to each other.
Continuing rainstorms in the Northern Cascades have also led organizers to implement a “dark zone†on the river paddle section of the race. Teams that arrive at checkpoint 34 later than 4 p.m. over the next few days will not be allowed to begin the downriver paddling section. Instead, they will be required to wait until 6:30 the following morning to begin that part of the race.
From checkpoint 34, athletes will paddle down the Baker and Skagit rivers, nearly all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Near the beach, teams will carry their boats to the ocean. The athletes will paddle their way to one last checkpoint in the San Juan Islands before completing the race at the Rosario Resort on Orcas Island, Wash.
The revisions eliminate roughly one-and-a-half to three days of the race. The leaders are expected to arrive on Orcas Island as early as 7:00 p.m. PST on September 24th.
