Adventure Racing World Championship 2016
Tales at Tallowa Dam
Rob Howard / 14.11.2016
I caught with some teams today at Tallowa Dam, the point on the Shoalhaven River where teams transition from pack-rafting to kayaking to continue down river to Nowra.
The first team I saw paddle out of the river gorge into the reservoir were PowerBar Swiss Explorers and they exchanged hi-5’s all round as they stumbled out of the rafts. They were all pleased to have had a chance to complete a pack rafting stage as well. “That was great fun,” said Oliver Gyger, “I’ve never done pack rafting before and going down the rapids was fantastic. There was enough water and no portaging in the canyon.” He was looking forward to taking his new toy home as well. “We can have fun with this in Switzerland,” he added with a smile.
As they pulled the rafts up the ramp and into the car park and picnic area serving as transition Susan Tschäppät said, “No restaurant here?” The answer came back no and she shook her head. “We’ve not seen a café anywhere,” she said sadly. They were unlucky enough to pass through the Nerriga Pub transition in the middle of the night, so got no hot food there. It was to be Pringles and freeze dried packet meals again. (As they have at many transitions the marshals had hot water ready for teams.)
Francky David went off to look at the timing sheet and came back with the news, “We’re 45th.” When I asked if that was good news he said, “Not really, but we had a bad start losing 10 to 12 hours with a big mistake on the first bike ride, so now we just hope to get into the top half.”
This team were one of those who made the big descent to get CP’s 35 and 36 in the Bungonia Slot Canyon prior to the pack rafting, and then climbed back up to transition to rest some more. “We were hit by the hail storm there,” said Tschäppät, “so we stayed longer and went back to sleep.”
Not every team was so lucky. The PNG Reunion team followed them into transition and told me. “We were about to start rafting when the storm hit us and we messaged Craig for instructions as you are not supposed to paddle with carbon-fiber paddles in lightning. He told us to wait and we spent a miserable time at the riverside, standing and shivering, and holding the kayaks over our heads to keep the rain off.”
They were in transition when Uruguay Natural Ultra Sports arrived and luckily one of the PNG team spoke Spanish and heard they were short of food. A couple of meal packets were soon shared with the grateful and now smiling Uruguayan team.
Ruben Mandure repeated the stories of a fun pack raft in the rapids, but added. “The last 12km were flat water and quite boring. It’s a long way in pack-rafts, but then it’s a long race for us!”
Like many others this team will remember the caving at Bungonia for as long as they live. “We spent 8 hours caving!” He told me. “We couldn’t find the caves as the map was very bad and we didn’t like the narrow caves.” His team mate Frederica Frontini added, “They are freaky!” This team too had stopped in Bungonia longer when the overnight storm hit.
Cosmo Richards from Team Juggernaut told me. “I was down a cave for an hour, and it was only when I met some cavers coming up that I got turned around!” He’d passed the checkpoint and kept on going and it was the team’s biggest member, Sakkie Meyer who managed to find it. On that particular stage being taller and broader was not an advantage!
On arrival the teams had to pack up their rafts and when they left it was on foot carrying the kayaks as they had to portage around the dam onto the lower river. It was quite a walk, especially with the heavy sit-on-tops, and once down the teams found themselves back on a much narrower river channel. This will carry them back towards the coast and the final stages of the race.
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