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Dodging venomous snakes while searching for team BCR.

Jacqueline WIndh / 14.03.2007

I woke up on Day 3 in Los Angeles, and there was still no sign of team BCR. With the lack of any phone communication, we had no idea if they were coming slowly, if they had quit, or if they had run into trouble. Thule had seen them the day before at PC2 and said they were backtracking then to catch a Waypoint box that they had missed.

We managed to call the office around noon, and they also had no information, so Gregg, race organizer Carr, and I headed out southward looking for them. Carr had set out a lot of the WP boxes, and knew the routes well. BCR should be descending from PC2, located at a remote farm at 1400 m elevation, so we set off at a fast pace, first rising slowly on a gravel road following the river valley and then cutting directly upwards on a steep jungle path.

Half an hour up the hill, suddenly Carr screamed in front of me and started running backwards downhill – incredibly not tripping on any of the roots. He had seen a ferdelance, one of the world’s most dangerous snakes, coiled up on the middle of the trail and had stopped short about a metre from it. A second later it struck at him and as he stepped back it struck again at his other foot – that’s when I heard the scream. Fortunately I was a good 5 or 10 m behind him – if I had been closer he would not have been able to run back, and I hate to think of what the outcome would have been.

A little further up we found the team – Andrés moving slowly due to blisters but, other than that, in good shape. They had caught the missing WP mid-morning. This race has no time cut-offs at PCs – organizer Mike Lapcevic wants to avoid disqualifying any team if at all possible – but that lack of cut-offs has made for a huge spread in the teams this year. As of right now, the morning of Day 3, leaders Bones are a full 36 hours ahead of BCR.

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