Patagonia Expedition Race
The Real Spirit of Adventure
Jacqueline Windh / 01.03.2005
It’s over: the teams have all gone home, and the organizers are doing the last collection and clean-up of gear. The silence and the peace have given me some time to reflect ...Patagonia Expedition Race really is a different experience, in many ways hard to put into words. Although there are many races that use the words “expedition� and “adventure�, in this race these words reflect the reality. The average distance between checkpoints was 66 km. Most teams were not only out of contact with anyone, but completely away from any sign at all of any human presence, for 2 to 3 days at a time. In this race, physical strength pales in importance to many other attributes.
Knowledge: Navigation ended up becoming an important issue in this race, mainly on the two long trekking sections. On the first section, several teams recounted tales of having been lost for 6 hours or more. On the second section, problems were even more critical – two teams ultimately had to drop out after having been lost for 24 hours. But navigation is just one of the fields of knowledge that each team must have. Others that proved important were kayak rescue skills (one team successfully self-rescued twice on the first day, after two separate capsizes in the river), and bike repair skills.
Experience: OK, you can get a lot of the knowledge from books, but some lessons you can only learn in the field – from experience. This was very obvious in the case of the winning team La Clusaz Raid Aventure, an “older� or “mature� team. The skills of team captain Jérome Daille (three-time world champion in down-river canoeing and an experienced sea-man to boot) made them the only team to successfully complete every section of the race. Their combined experience in navigation, in climbing, and in resolving personal problems within the group also served them well.
Communication and teamwork: With the intense challenges – physical, mental and emotional – that each team member faces over the seven or more days in the field, group dynamics become very important. Having clearly defined methods of decision-making, for resolving conflicts, and for helping individuals through low periods are crucial for a team to continue to function as a team.
Captain Artem Rostovtsev of Salomon Russia commented “Two of our team-mates are very emotional, but it is not a problem. We understand one another. There were not disagreements, just sometimes discussions.�See All Event Posts
