Ultra Fiord
Racing in Virgin Territory
Anne-Marie Dunhill / 12.04.2015
The first edition of the Ultra Fiord race is set to start next week in Chilean Patagonia. Organized by NIGSA, this new race will be truly unique. SleepMonsters has spoken to the race director, Stjepan Pavicic, several times over the last few months to get an idea of how the race has been taking form.
When Stjepan originally spoke about the new trail race last October he said, “I want the race to be completely different from the Ultra Trail Torres del Paine and so with my team we are exploring a new race route. I have an idea in mind, part of the location is like a fortress, I mean really like a fortress. We are looking for a crack to penetrate through this area...”
Several photos have been published on social media showing the potential race route that Stjepan and his team have been exploring since October and the scenery has been stunning. They have had to clear over forty kilometers of the trail that he found. His team has been working hard to open up this route, in fact he said that “25% of the route has taken up 80% of our time.”
When asked about his vision for the race, he said, “I want this race to be more of an expedition than a trail race, much like the spirit of the Patagonian Expedition Race (PER), if you finish, no matter what time it took, you’ve reached your goal; but it is not certain that you will finish. It will be like an initiation.”
“The new race route will be like a big treasure in Patagonia, from a well-known place to unknown fiords. Most of the fiords in the world are located in Patagonia but no one knows this fact, not even Chilean people, which is one of the reasons that we put ‘Fiord’ in the name of the race. We are also clearing the trail because we feel that it has the potential to be as famous as the W trail in Torres del Paine.”
In December, coming back from an expedition to trace the route, Stjepan reported on what he’d found; “It’s a hard place, the pass that we found through the ‘fortress’ that I spoke about earlier is very challenging with steep verticals. We saw puma tracks in the snow and it was like exploring a new kingdom; I did not expect to find such a beautiful place and it made me deeply happy. It feels so far away from civilization. There is a combination of mountains and deep green forests.”
“We walked through deep rivers, through a closed valley and than the mountain just opened up in front of us and we could see four frontal moraines which is very uncommon.” He added that they hoped to return the following week as the weather had been atrocious and there would be a window of opportunity to continue the work.
New interns arrived in January and they were immediately drafted to continue working on clearing the route. Everyone has been out of office and in the field, including Max Triantafylou who is in charge of marketing and communications. What a fantastic experience for any young intern to be involved in!
When he picked this SleepMonsters journalist up from the airport in Punta Arenas, Max said that they’ve been working seven days a week and he confirmed that the runners will be going through truly virgin territory. He went on to say that the team had come across wild cows who had never seen a human before and were very curious. He was leaving the next day to continue marking the trail.
So saying that the race will be a truly unique experience is perhaps an understatement. It will be a once in a lifetime experience.The 117 runners registered who will begin arriving from around the world on April 14th will be taking a leap into the unknown. The weather is notoriously fickle and proper packing will be essential. As they explore the “magical world” of the fiords, their footsteps will trace a route that no human has raced before. The challenge will be as much mental as it will be physical.
An experienced race organizer, Stjepan Pavicic is not on his first rodeo but these runners are in for the ride of their lives!
SleepMonsters
