X-adventure Raid Series
Saab Salomon Shunted Down the Leaderboard
Rob / 10.05.2003
After the long kayak on Loch Ness came the ropes section at Foyers Waterfall, and it was probably the most spectacular ever seen at a race in Britain. After a short trek teams arrived at the edge of a cliff top overlooking the falls. There are two tiers, the falls which tumble into a deep basin, and then another set of cliffs overlooking the falls..It was the top of these where the stage began.After clipping on the first part was a high wire traverse right above the falls to cross the gorge. Then came a flying fox between the top cliffs but the racers didn’t go all the way across, they stopped half way and abseiled directly down into the waterfall pool below. A spectacular drop. Then, after a short swim, they had to climb back up the cliff to where they had started from.
After the paddling the top 3 were all within 45 seconds of each other, with Ertips in the lead (thanks in part to having an Olympic canoeist on the team). Saab Salomon were third but there was drama where Helen Jackson got stuck at the top of the abseil rope. She was suspended hundreds of feet up and quite unable to move! She was struggling furiously trying to get going and Ben Bardsley was shouting up frustrated and anxious advice from below as the minutes ticked by. But all to no effect.
Eventually she was pulled back to the cliff edge and ended up perched on a tree on a broad branch but still unable to sort out the problem. Next she scrambled back up the cliff to the rope safety marshals, and this was where tragedy nearly struck. The face was loose and large boulders clattered down, nearly hitting a female racer at the foot of the cliff. It was a close call.
The marshal undid and resecured her shunt, which had been wrongly set up in the first place. This is done by the marshals – the racers are not allowed to do it – and she then descended instantly with no difficulty at all. However, the team had lost at least 20 minutes, a huge disadvantage in such a close race. After the ropes stage they were 5th, some 27 minutes down on the leaders. They’ve put in a protest and will have to await the outcome.
Partly due to this there was a huge queue of racers waiting to start the ropes stage and it’s not clear if a timeout was allowed, though it seems likely. The last teams to come off the water to start the stage were one of the Brazilian teams and Lapin Kulta of Finland, who have only 3 racers so each must do every stage. They promptly set off up hill in the wrong direction, losing a few minutes. See All Event Posts
