Ultra Fiord
The Denouement
Anne-Marie Dunhill / 22.04.2015
Waking up with a jolt around 08:30 in the main room of the Estancia Perales, I looked behind me and saw that Max the intern was snoring on another chair. That gave me the first bit of information that I needed to answer the desperate question that had flashed through my mind in that state between dreaming and being awake; was anyone hurt, missing or even dead?
Max had spent months clearing the passage through the fortress and he had also marked all of this passage so if anyone was out on a search and rescue mission, he would be in that group.
The lawn in front of the food and gear tents was calm, with none of the frenetic activity associated with a rescue. Asking if all the runners had come off the mountain, a member of the organizing team replied that all but two had. When asked bluntly how he knew that, he replied, “Because near 07:00 we got a message from further up in the mountain saying that all runners had passed through except one and that they needed horses for the extraction of a runner.” (That runner was Sofi Cantilo who had withdrawn from the race after the rockfall.)
When asked how they had received that message, he replied that it was via InReach (In Reach is a two way satellite communication system that the Patagonian Expedition Race (PER) also uses.)
At 03:54 when Max had been conveying Nikki’s message to the rest of staff, he had wanted to head directly out back into the ‘fortress’ to search for injured runners. O’car Campo, the NIGSA worker who was implicitly in charge of this transition area in the absence of the Race Director, dissuaded him.
When SleepMonsters asked him about his decision making process he explained how he had made that difficult decision, “I can tell you why I took the decison of not sending people up there after talking to Nikki and talking to other runners that got to Estancia Perales. It was 4 am and we had taken a nap after 48 or so hours, all the people in the team were tired and it was the most sane thing to do.
"I got woken up by Janaina who told me Nikki Kimball was mad and wanted to stop the race because runners were dying up there. As she was talking too fast and most of the guys didn't speak English I went to talk to her. For me this person (I had no idea who she was) was clearly in shock and out of her mind probably with a panic attack and with hypothermia as she was shivering and wanted a soup. She said it several times despite knowing I was already boiling water and getting things done for her soup.
"After hearing all she had to say and after giving her the soup she immediately changed her mood and I left to talk to my people, already knowing she was in shock and with hypothermia and an altered level of consciousness. No way I was going to send anyone up there because the rescuers could have become victims. I have training in mountain rescue and we had 2 commandos from the Chilean Army in our team who supported my decision. Sadly we can't do anything for anyone at night; our best shot was to wait till dawn to send someone.
"Still i was quite not sure of the speech of Nikki taking in mind her state of consciousness, I talked to the commandos and they said they could leave in the morning at first light. We knew we would have communication with Balmaceda at 8 am via radio so we also had to wait for that and get confirmation on how many people did cross the mountain. Had we called a helicopter from the army or navy nothing would have been done till first light as it was 4 am and nobody would send people at that time.
"Some runners started to show up and we asked them how they were. They said they were fine, they were having fun but that they were cold and wanted something warm. We insisted to make sure they were fine and we asked about other people and they told us that everyone was coming down. They had a delay because they got kind of lost with the marks and that made people start grouping; there was a group of 15 coming down the mountain. It was quite a big contrast with what Nikki said and we saw some more lights on the distance so we waited for the others.
"The next runners showed up and were the same, really happy about the race, having fun
saying it was hard as hell and that they would have loved something warm after the glacier. We asked again if they were fine, if anything bad had happened and if they had seen something in the camps like people freezing and suffering. They were like, no no, there is nothing warm to eat up there, we want something warm.
"That confirmed what I thought about Nikki; her mind tricked her badly, otherwise people would have said the same story as she said and then we would have to had to moblise some bigger rescue teams, and call a helicopter and zodiacs to the zone to start a big operation. We wouldn't have sent anyone up there before dawn as it puts rescuers in danger. That sounds bad but that is how things work. I mean, before I took this WFR (ed. Wilderness First Responder training course) I would have reacted like the guy in my team thinking only of saving the runners at whatever cost, forgetting about my own safety. There was nothing more we could do at that point but to wait. We are not playing some stupid game, there are persons with families involved and we must take care of everyone the best we can otherwise I don't know in what world we are living. It was pretty intense for all of us.”
At that moment in the morning on the lawns of the estancia, Leandro and I only knew that the energy had shifted and we wouldn’t be reporting on a major incident. So we caught the last van out, riding back to Puerto Natales with the crew who had been up on the mountain. This crew had spent three days up in the “fortress” and were oblivious to the drama that had unfolded here in the witching hours. We passed several bedraggled runners on the highway who were making their way in to the finish, some after more than 40 hours of racing.
Arriving at the finish line on the main square the atmosphere was calm and Camila Perez, the NIGSA staff member who had received the frantic witching hour text about the situation in Perales looked up at us and said, “What happened out there?”
All of the runners were accounted for and the prize giving ceremony was to take place at 21:00 in the Remota hotel; the feed back from the runners at the ceremony would be overwhelmingly positive. In the meantime we were off to collect our own impressions from the runners who had completed the race and those who had withdrawn.
In describing his vision back in October, Stjepan had explained that he wanted it to be “something totally new and different, something that’s never been done before. If you finish the race, no matter what time it takes you, you have reached your goal. But it is not sure that you will finish. It will be more like an initiation.”
The “magical world of the fjords” had been consistently used throughout the gestation and birth of his vision and Patagonia is a place of true magic. Those runners we spoke to were clearly still trying to process their experiences on the inaugural edition of the Ultra Fiord. The common thread was, “What was that?!”
While we are still in the realm of magic, perhaps Stjepan can be compared to a wizard. However, with such power also comes great responsibility towards those who trust in a vision. Here in Puerto Natales today the weather is truly terrible, even for Patagonia. The winds wailed last night and there has been torrential rain today. If the weather had been like this on the day of the race, it would have been an entirely different story.
All of those involved in this inaugural edition are still trying to process what “it” was. But whatever “it” was, it has been the stuff that legends are made of and will likely have a far reaching impact on the ultra running world.
SleepMonsters will be posting post-race comments from some of the ultra runners as well as the perspective of the Race Director.
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