Raid the North Extreme
Spirit takes second
Susan McKenzie / 22.08.2003
Roughly nine hours after Team EADS won the 2003 Raid the North Extreme Atikokan, Canada’s Team Spirit crossed the finish line in second place.
If it were any other team, there might have been doubts that it could even finish the race. On the first day, on the first trek, team captain Hitchon fell ill. Within hours, he was shivering, cold and vomiting, even in the thirty-degree weather. They spent five hours at CP5 (White Otter Castle) to allow Hitchon to recuperate. By the time the team reached the third Transition Area, Hitchon was recovered.
The team took advantage of the heavy rain to make up some time on the water. While others took shelter, Spirit paddled through the rain and lightning and thunder.
“Well, what else can you do?� queries Popik. “In a lightning storm, you’re not supposed to seek shelter under a tree and you’re not supposed to be on open water. We were canoeing open water, and the shore was full of trees.�
Ninety minutes before the storm, when the heat was still overpowering, Hitchon had jokingly asked for some ice for his lukewarm water. With the rain, came hail
“Big golf balls of ice just came bucketing down,� says Mike Popik. “One hit my paddle and shattered and bits of ice hit my face. It was crazy.�
“One thing I’ve learned is, if you ask for ice in Atikokan, you get ice,� jokes Hitchon.
Spirit passed Phoenix on the paddle,, then raced in tandem with Gearsracing.com before finally pulling ahead somewhere on Pickerel Lake between CP15 and CP16. Both teams had elected to go the route that included the Sauvage Portage (Wild Portage). Only Spirit was able to find it.
“There was a little error in the offset printing on the map,� says Chris Koch. “The portage put in was actually around 250 metres away from where it says it is on the map.�
Aside from the long sleeps they took while Hitchon was sick, Team Spirit also took smaller naps throughout the remainder of the race.
“We got really goofy on the paddle,� says Hitchon. “We kept seeing people that weren’t there, and we were just really out of it.�
“We split it up so that one person would paddle, one would sleep, then we would switch,� says Popik.
“Yeah, we even slept this morning,� says Hitchon.
“Overslept, you mean,� says Elsa Dahlie.
“Yeah, we meant to nap just for fifteen minutes, but we ended up sleeping an hour and a half,� says Koch.
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