Raid the North Extreme
On the path of the voyageurs (and that includes all their portages)
Susan McKenzie in Atikokan / 16.08.2003
The theme of this year’s Raid the North Extreme through the Atikokan region of north-western Ontario is “on the path of the voyageurs.� Race director and course designer, Dave Zietsma took that theme in its most literal sense.
During a test run of the section, Zietsma counted some 42 portages between CP14 and CP16. Some are short, only a few hundred metres. Others are ten times as long, through brush and scrub and who knows what (plenty of mosquitoes, to be sure.) They have cute names like the Yum Yum Portage, Have a Smoke Portage, and more ominous titles Portage des Morts (portage of the dead) and Death March Portage. Between 15 and 16, teams have a number of route options, including a shorter paddle that would take them along the three kilometre Death March Portage.
It’s an inaccessible, wild section of Quetico Provincial Park, where motorized boats are prohibited. For security reasons, teams have to tell race organizers in advance what their route choice will be.
It won’t be enough to be good on the water in this race: being great between the waters will be crucial.
“If you can be efficient in your portage, you can probably save three or four minutes each portage,� says Anton Stranc of Team Taiga, a team strong on paddling skills. “Over forty portages, those add up.�
“And on top of this, we’ll be doing these portages four or five days into the race,� laughs Red Rock Raiders’ Paul O’Connor.
Portaging won’t be much of a problem for GearsRacing.com’s Marnie McBean, a Canadian Olympic-medal winning rower competing in her third expedition-length adventure race.
“I can carry my own boat on my head,� says McBean. “It’s not a canoe, but still, the portage isn’t a worry.�
Even the rookies will have some help: the majority of the canoes are lightweight Kevlar, and weigh in at around forty pounds.
“One person can carry a canoe, easily,� Garth Stromberg told the racers late Saturday afternoon during the team briefing. Stromberg’s canoe outfitting company provided the canoes the teams will use throughout the race.
“I’d rather carry the canoe than a pack,� Stromberg added. “It’s a lot lighter.�
Light or not, some of the portages will be just a bit tricky. The Sauvage Portage, at 1680 metres, lives up to its savage title.
“We were portaging it, and I slid off the log and fell in up to my waist in this swamp. It was awful,� says race director Zietsma. (And just a note on pronunciation: up here, a paddler does a “pour-tahj�, not a “port-udge.� French pronunciation seems appropriate on the path of the voyageurs.)
As if portaging during the paddling section weren’t enough, the teams also have the choice of pack rafting during the trek.
“There are spots where a quick swim across a lake, with our gear in pack rafts (small rafts that fit gear only) could shave hours of hiking off the trek,� says Chan, an experienced racer who worked the zip line as a volunteer at last year’s Extreme in the Yukon. “But we also have to inflate the rafts, then deflate them, so we’ll have to decide what we think will be the most efficient. We’re looking at a 24 hour trek, and a lot of night navigation, so every little bit will help.�
Unlike so many other adventure races where the navigation is almost secondary and routes are virtually mapped out, Raid the North Extreme is about navigation, and choice.
“That’s such an important part of adventure racing,� says Zietsma. “It’s much more challenging to give the teams choice, to make them plot their own routes.�
Teams will spend the rest of Saturday and Sunday morning plotting those routes, and packing their gear before boarding the bus tomorrow at 4am local time to head to the start of the race, which begins at 8am Sunday with a mountain bike section.
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