Team Nike Beaver Creek claim victory at Adventure Sports Week!

Team Nike-Beaver Creek Newsroom / 19.06.2009

Team Nike-Beaver Creek, comprised of Jay Henry, Gretchen Reeves and AR legend Mike Kloser claimed the overall co-ed "Crux and Crucible" title at Adventure Sports Week at Farragut State Park, just north of Coeur d' Alene, Idaho, June 13—14. The north Idaho wilderness created a race venue and backdrop as spectacular as any in the world, and was unanimously praised by the racers for its sheer beauty and the challenges it provided for the teams. "An amazing venue," said Kloser, veteran of over a hundred races from all over the world. "This was an awesome course—the views from some of the mountain summits, as well as those from on the lake were stunning." Added Henry, one of the top mountain bike professionals in the US, "the singletrack to finish up the second day was one of the best tracks ever. In Adventure Racing, we don't usually get such a great amount of top quality single track, so to have over 15 miles of outstanding trail (7 mixed the first day, and a solid 8 down the mountain the second) in a single adventure race was pretty special."

The Crux and the Crucible was a points-style race that kept the top teams racing full speed and out on the course for as close to the cutoff time as possible, in order to collect the largest number of points from the many mandatory and optional checkpoints along the challenging route.

Saturday dawned clear and hot, and at 7:00, the teams received their maps and got to work plotting out the many controls of the first day. At 8:00 a.m., the shotgun fired, and the race was on. The "warm-up" challenge was a 2 mile "locate and run" around a distant water tower before hitting the bikes for one of the most challenging tests around; over the next several hours, the teams made their way north over multiple mountain peaks bordering Lake Pend Oreille. Teams would navigate, bike, trek and kayak their way through some of Northern Idaho's most rugged terrain.

Along the way, they had to take multiple bearings, and plot additional UTMs as they earned more clues. Despite a slow start while taking time to make sure their maps were plotted properly, team Nike made up time on the bike and was the first to reach the manned bike waypoint.

The next challenge was a 13 mile kayak down the lake, made more challenging by the fact that a thunder storm was approaching from the east, and would catch some of the later teams, forcing them onto the support boats in the midst of golf ball sized hail and lightning. The kayakers had to stop in the small town of Bayview to complete a mind puzzle before making their way to idyllic Buttonhook Bay, where they had to portage their kayaks up a 200 meter hill before completing a 4 mile orienteering task on foot. Many of the teams were using their headlamps as they approached the 14 hour cutoff of day one.

After Day one, Nike had a slim 5 point lead over True Grit, meaning the race would come down to the second day. With a short night's rest, the surviving teams gathered at 5:00am for the Crucible briefing and maps, and at 6:00 a.m., they headed out on foot long the technical lake shore trail. Day 2 commenced in a slight mist, and with definitely cooler temperatures, which would help the racers later in the day.

After a 2 mile run, the teams had a 250 meter swim with their gear in dry bags, and hiked over the peninsula before retrieving their kayaks and beginning a 7 mile kayak east along Idylwilde Bay toward Lakeview.