ARWC 2015 Brazil - Pantanal
Mountain Design into AT4
Rob Howard / 17.11.2015
The Mountain Designs team arrived at AT4 this morning. They are
unranked and had rested well before taking on the high ridge trek and
the 3 team members were in good spirits when they arrived, having
spent the last "4 or 5 hours coming down" from the last mountain
checkpoint(CP12).
"They were heavily bitten and deeply scratched and when I chatted to
Theo he said, "There is some nasty bush up there and I am sure teams
are having problems. It is the hardest treks for underfoot conditions
I've been on, all loose angled rock and sharp grass, so you really
have to watch your feet all the time. The views are amazing but you
have to stop to take them in.
"Going up through the jungle was hard. We have dense bush at home and
I thought the machete was a joke, but we really needed it to get
through. We saw tarantula's and they are pretty scary – I'm a plumber
and am used to spiders, but seeing them here is different. I was
bitten by a fire ant and the pain was intense – so much so I was
looking for a snake or a spider, and after that was jumpy every time a
branch or one of the team touched me.
"The heat was so intense on top, and though there is water it can be
4km or more between stops, which takes hours up there, more for the
slower teams. We carried 5 litres each between water stops and it was
just enough. The other teams we saw are really dehydrated so moving
slowly – the heat just drains you all the time."
SleepMonsters
