Eco-Challenge
Rivers to Run
Rob / 11.10.2002
Teams have been wrong footed from the start of this race, and it’s no surprise there are a few unexpected names at the top of the leaderboard. The top teams all there or thereabouts though, but the British and Irish teams are already well off the pace.
The ‘treasure map trail’ at the start obviously threw a few teams, as they were coming into CP1 from 3 points of the compass, and the other direction was a sheer cliff! Here they did finally get their maps and route books, but they also got a pile of 13 thick and 4 thin bamboo poles and used the machetes and cord they’d carried to construct a native style raft – a bilibili – their transport to CP2. (The thin ones were for propelling the raft.)
This was no great secret (it had even been mentioned in the in-flight magazine on the way to Fiji from LA) but it did give them a difficult choice as they didn’t know what the river ahead was like. Could they risk throwing something together quickly or would it be better to spend more time and produce a more sturdy raft? Inevitably the leaders took the quickest option, but it didn’t always pay off - there were lots of bamboo poles floating down stream.
The Team Spie raft was coming to pieces in no time and they took some local help to fix it up, and race favourites Golite/Balance Bar and Seagate.com NZ did a Schumacher and crashed into each other, then had to rebuild. Many teams took 30 minutes or more to build the raft, and Nokia Adventure were one of those using a minimum of bamboo for a light and easy to manoeuvre craft. They did have to carry the raft through some sand banks and gravel shallows on the 41km route to Viria village so this was a good move, but there were deep sections too. They also had to come ashore to find some ’tikis’ - traditional carved wooden totems - which had code numbers they would need to pass CP2.
One team didn’t even make it onto the river before dark. Team Forest Park, including Hayden Christiansen, (a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker of \"Attack of the Clones\") didn’t arrive at CP1 until well after sunset and planned to camp there instead of rafting in the dark. It’s a terrible start as they’ll be so far behind there is no realistic chance of making the first cut-off, wherever that might be.
As the leading teams came through CP2 it was the Australian team Pacific Air who had moved into a strong lead, It seems even on hand built rafts they have the edge when the competition is on the water. They were already 34 minutes up on Running Free of Canada, a surprise early contender, but as the race settles down Nokia Adventure, Golite/Balance Bar, Spie, and Seagate.com NZ are all in the top 10. The first of the UK teams is The North Face Kona in 23rd place and already 2 hours 47 minutes down on the leaders – a big gap to hope to make up, even though mistakes can cost hours in this sort of race. Bridgedale Ireland Salomon were in 35th and the other 2 UK teams look like they are settling in the last quarter of the field – but not so far back they are likely to be threatened by the first cut off time.
SleepMonsters
