XPD Australia
The Final Challenge
Geoff Hunt (AR World Series Director) / 27.05.2010
The finish sits below by the pool empty of people - the office is locked and no racers have been seen in hours'It's All good' (Vic Australia) the 6th team across the finish line arrived to the comfort of the loungers at 05.52 this morning. 6th across the line and 5th coed team to finish. Na Rakau (NZ) are now shown to be in the outskirts of Carins - by my reckoning about 50 minutes from the comfort of the finish. (12.43 Thursday)
Along the ridge top still trekking towards home are 13 different teams who made the cut-off at Kariri Creek Campground this morning at 06.00. Of these we would expect to see during the daylight hours today Aberdeen Australia, Dancing Pandas, Race the Rockies and Wenger-Nam-Easy Implant (France), Osprey-packs/nitelights.co.nz, and the Dirty Avocados Adventure.
The commentary for this leg is not that descriptive - "Trekking over the Lamb Range and down to the ocean. This is some of Australia's unspoiled country; teams will trek past Aboriginal rock art paintings and through eucalyptus forests on this final stretch of the race."
What it fails to portray is that this 60km leg is only being traveled at less than two kilometers per hour. This figure best portrays the difficult country and navigation problems that the racers are encountering.
Blackheart.co.au set the 3rd fastest time so far along here - it took them 30 hours, 6 minutes. The average time is 32 hrs and Merrell/Akali took 37 hrs plus (which they say included 12hours of sleeping). They stopped because they fell off the ridge line and it was simply too impossible to try and navigate their way back into the correct position.
McCain also commented on the difficulty of navigation. With no reference points it was extremely difficult to know exactly where you were on the convoluted ridge. The deep tropical jungle making any outside reference impossible and they proceeded until some small clearing enabled limited view, and even then this did not necessarily help, as it was impossible to determine which piece of the river or coast they could see.
Craig's warning hint for this stage: "Stay on the the high ground or you may never make it out!"'
From the booklet" The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing .." Steven CoveySee All Event Posts
