Maya Mountain Challenge
MMAC Teams Set to Explore Belize
Press Release / 25.02.2018
The start of the 2018 ARWS has arrived as racers gather at the Maya Mountain Adventure Challenge in Belize. In it’s sixth year and third edition, the course once again promises stunning landscape and natural features found in few other corners of the world. From towering waterfalls to underground rivers, the teams will experience beauty and adventure from start to finish.
This year’s race is welcoming 12 teams with racers from 8 different countries including some of the AR community’s most elite teams. The course itself is very different from years past. Previous years showcased the natural resources, steep topography, and narrow trails of the Chiquibul Jungle and the Mountain Pine Ridge (two contrasting areas of featuring dense, tropical canopy and high alpine-style ridges and a range of climates from humid rainforest to a drier alpine-style exposure).
This year’s course travels through some of the lowland savannah and coastal areas of Belize as well as the foothills of the Maya Mountains where it isn’t uncommon to travel between sudden Karst mounds that shoot up several hundred feet. This area will offer a flatter course than in past years, but it will eventually wind up into the mountains of the Mountain Pine Ridge before descending back into San Ignacio for the finish. The race is on!!
The weather has been clearing up lately, but the area has recently experienced record rainfall for this part of the season. Rivers are coming down from flood stage and roads are very wet. This will make the paddling much faster (and there’s a lot of paddling!) but it will also make the roads and trails a bit slower than the race staff anticipated. Yesterday was the first day of full sun since arrival, and everyone is hoping for that trend to continue so the course dries out a little.
The race will start with a long paddle on the broad Belize River followed by a bike around the village of Spanish Lookout – a Mennonite community that has experienced significant growth over the last few years. While most of this section is gravel road around the village, the racers will pass by a huge sink hole just a few kilometers outside the village!
After the bike, racers will return to complete the paddle on the Belize River and then bike through rolling farm land to the Caves Branch Jungle Lodge. From Caves Branch, racers will then rappel 400 feet down into a deep sink hole (dubbed “Black Hole Drop”) and visit petroglyph cave before re-emerging from the sink hole and continuing on to the entrance of the Caves Branch cave system.
The highlight of this year’s course is a 7-mile “cave swim” in which racers will float, swim and hike through a chain of several caves with crystal blue water. There are no rules on equipment for this section (except PFDs), so we might see a variety of options from everyone! Once they emerge from the caves, they will continue on foot to the Indian Creek Trail, a narrow footpath in dense jungle canopy through the 5 Blues Lake Wilderness Area. There will likely be some spider monkeys to keep the racers company!
The next few sections feature what will likely be a long, but quick bike ride along coastal roads, followed by a trek along a grassy savannah trail before crossing the Belize River and biking up into the Mountain Pine Ridge through local villages. Once into the Pine Ridge and after a dark zone at CPC 26, racers will pick up their pack rafts, trek to Privassion Creek, and “canyoneer pack raft” down a narrow, boulder strewn creek before descending a trail next to a waterfall and launching onto the beautiful Vaca Reservoir.
This area is one of the most beautiful in Belize with serene, green surroundings, quiet vistas, and more rare bird species than almost anywhere on earth. Below the reservoir, it’s a fun moving water paddle back to San Ignacio and the finish line!
It should be a very competitive race course! Make sure you’re keeping up with updates on the MMAC website and Facebook as well as SleepMonsters!
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