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GUATS Adventure Take the Win

Rob Howard / 15.08.2010

The race was so much fun for some teams they got to finish twice! After racing through the second half of the course much faster than the first half, teams arrived at the Balsams Wilderness Ski Lodge to reach the finish at the end of stage 5 … but the race wasn’t necessarily over and some of them set off into the wilderness again!

The second half of the course had more extensive sections of mountain biking in the Great Cohos Wilderness and the Crystal Mountains and Balsams trail networks, and there was also a swimming stage and a waterfall climb, just to ensure teams never dried out! The final cycling stage took them to the finish site, and that was enough for many teams, especially as most had already been short coursed. For the leaders however, there was a stage 6.

This was a bonus orienteering course through the Dixville Notch Mountains which teams could opt to do if they had time before the course closure at 10.00am next day. With additional checkpoints valued at 4 hours and the leaders left with 11 hours for this stage ‘orienteering’ may not be the best description – it sounds more like rogaining, but whatever it was called the winning team would be decided on this final stage.

Of the leaders the first to arrive at the finish (for the first time) were Team GUATS of Canada, who came in at 10.46pm, with the chasing Danish Team of Skandia/Key Experience arriving some 3 hours later. (Team Granite were a further 2.5 hours behind, followed by Running Free.)

The Danes had lead much of the race but the experienced Canadians were finishing strongly. Nevertheless with the final CP’s valued at 4 hours and the knowledge the biggest mistakes are made in the final stages of races the Danes were still in with a chance as both teams overcame the emotional trauma of arriving at the finish, then heading out onto the course again. That’s a cruel twist of course planning.

GUATS made no mistakes however and used their trekking and navigational strength to push on to a comprehensive victory, collecting an impressive 24 hours worth of bonus CP’s against 12 hours for the Danes, Granite and Running Free, with the teams finishing in that order. When the final count was made only 8 teams had completed the full course of the 41 starting teams, while 9 recorded a DNF and two finished unranked.

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