Rajd Beskidy

Day Two Takes Teams on the Rajd Beskidy into Country Number Two

Rob Howard / 20.06.2023

The challenges have kept coming through the first night of Rajd Beskidy and into day 2, and it’s another very hot day for the teams to cope with.

After the long trekking stage yesterday the two leading teams Snowdog Trail Team and Nonstop Aventura were in TA1 together just before midnight, and they were fortunate to have completed the 3 final cps on the LIDAR map before it got dark.  Despite the tracking map seeming to show otherwise they’d not missed any checkpoints on day one.  It would be surprising if they had as they are such experienced teams.

The only team who really had problems with the LIDAR map were backmarkers OMM Nordisk Germany who took a frustrating 2 hours finding the final trekking checkpoint.  Neil McQueen said, “There was really no information to go on from the LIDAR map and we’d never used one before. In the end we descended a long way to approach it from below.”

They were the only team to complete the following rope bridge and climbing stage in daylight, arriving in the early hours of the morning.  After this there were 4 checkpoints at an industrial and folk heritage museum, and the leaders were held up here when they key holder wasn’t available as planned (it was 3am in the morning).  Teams had to leave their bikes at the gate and once inside they had to find checkpoints on a waterwheel, which they had to turn to reveal it, in a well and in one of the building basements.

Andrzej from Nonstop Aventura said, “We had to stop and sleep when we were held up, and although the night was warm we were still chilled and a little shivery while laying down in just our silver foil blankets.” His team lost their lead waiting and the referees will need to make some time adjustments.

Stage 4 was the first kayak section of the race and it was 15km circuit to find 6 checkpoints around the shore Jezioro Zywieckie, starting and finishing at a small marina and cafe by the dam. All of the teams had difficulty with some of the checkpoints and OMM Nordisk Germany spent a long term searching for them and are finding the CP descriptions difficult to interpret.  Along with the delightfully named team “We love the smell of flags in the morning” they were on the water in the middle of day and feeling the heat, which is pushing 30C.

The stage 5 ride is a long one and crosses the border into Slovakia.  It began with an orienteering stage in a large park in Zywiec where teams had to make sure to find the correct checkpoint as there were some ‘fake CP’s’ placed.  These match the control description but are not in the correct place and there is a 30 minute penalty for punching one (even if you subsequently go to the correctly places one).  For example one description was ‘bench’ and there was a fake on another nearby bench.

The park was busy, full of mature trees and meadows, and has lots of features, buildings and attractions, including a small zoo.  The checkpoint here on a ‘cage of parrots’ was taken off the course, so teams didn’t get to visit it as they rode through. The course on Rajd Beskidy does not shy away from visiting towns and uses urban attractions and facilities as part of the route.

Before pushing on towards the border teams had one final challenge checkpoint – archery. This was set up by the LKS Lucznik club, which is one of the largest in Europe. There was a coach there to advise the teams but the challenge was more for fun as the target for two of the team to score 2OO points within 20 minutes was easy enough, even with some wayward shooting.

The ride to reach Slovakia is on a mandatory route, which ends on the border line and Snowdog Trail Team were first to cross.  They did lose some time on the ride however when they took a prohibited trail, but fortunately they realised and retraced their steps and won’t be penalised. 

It is a long ride at 160km and after reaching TA2 teams are back on the water for a rafting stage, followed by the big 33km trek which visits the high point of the course at 1709m in the Mala Fatra National Park. There is a dark zone on this trek from 9pm to 6am, which is imposed by the National Park, and teams caught by it will have to stop for the night.