The Wilderness ARC
The Last Teams In
Rob Howard / 03.06.2006
In the early morning hours of Saturday the last teams began to come over the finish line, footsore from their long trek to the finish, but delighted to have reached the finish line at last. These are the teams who have shown the greatest resolve and determination to complete the course.And it hadn’t been an easy finish as some teams struggled to find checkpoint 34, placed in a cave above Glen Nevis. Two of the team had been there already, on the first day of the race, but in the dark, exhausted, and after 5 days of racing, finding it again was proving exceptionally difficult.
“We had a great trek along the ridge,� said Piers Constable, “the conditions were perfect and it was a fantastic finish … then we couldn’t find the cave. It took us something like 3 hours to find it and when I pointed out to Jonathan he’d been there before at 2.30am it didn’t go down too well!�
As he remembered those difficult hours he was sitting in HQ with his feet in a large bucket and said cheerily; “I’ve got some infection, but it’s nothing some iodine won’t sort out!�
North Downs Mountain Rescue had the same problems. A husky voiced Steve Bush said, “We just couldn’t find it, and we’d even seen Dynamic Adventure Racing come out of it, we just never realised. We messed up our sleep, stopping too long in the middle of the race and then not sleeping the last two days. So, we had a tough time on the last trek and in the pitch dark we just were not thinking straight.�
Tea and Medals who had finished earlier had some good fortune on their final stage. They lost their map coming down into Glen Nevis, and could have been in some difficulty ... but found another dropped by an earlier team! They were met on the line by Jonathan James of Accelerate (originally their team reserve) who had a tray of tea for them, and some medals he’d made of cardboard.See All Event Posts
