Peterisoba

My schedule finally aligned itself with the annual race known as the Peterisoba...which follows suit with the Colinoba as an underground adventure race which costs nothing and gets you racing in un-permittable areas in our backyard (follow tie in with Trioba). Peteris out did himself with a 12 hour Creekteering, challenging Mountain Bike, rapel, ridge running and boulder hopping course followed by a 12 hour rogaine.

23 hours later my trusty team mate Aaron and I found ourselves in a baja rally car with Peteris behind the wheel. He exclaimed in his Latvian English that he could drive this road blindfolded and that if he had a real rally car we would have a better excuse for holding onto the Oh Shit handle. We also got the details of the traffic patterns on the North Fork road and that we could be assured that cornering on the inside of a blind turn at 45 mph was ok because in the last year only 3 cars had been seen between 4 and 5 am...did you know Peteris knows how to drift on washboarded logging roads?

In the end we climbed, ran, walked, slept and boulder hopped our way through the course and got to see a bunch of friends out there doing the same thing. I wrote another report here for our teams PQ training, check it out if you want more...big THANKS to Peteris and other volunteers for including us and having a well planned course. I am now considering PQ training for next years Peterisoba.

Pics and other reports:

Peteris' Pictures

Colin and Connies Pictures

Verve's Race Report

Whats next? Big Blue Lake Tahoe as team Trioba.com then taper for PQ. Getting excited about racing in SD and checking out the Badlands and the Black Hills.

-Photo credit to Colin Ness, love that picture!

Mt Garfield, round and round

We spent the weekend in the mountains near Snoqualmie Pass and running around the Alpine Lakes region. There is still plenty of snow above 3600 feet, especially on the North facing slopes.

Two years ago I ran an out and back that consisted of the first 6 miles of the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River trail followed up by 3 miles of the Dingford Creek trail. The entire run we had the awe inspiring Mt. Garfield to our East and North. After studying my Green Trails map for a while I brainstormed up the idea that we could circumnavigate Garfield and connect the Dingford Creek trail to the Taylor Creek trail with a small 2 mile bush whack and a little billy goating.

With the right timing and conditions we finally made it happen. Four weeks ago we ran the Midle Middle and got a mile or two up the Dingford creek portion before we called it a day due to the amount of snow accumulation. This time we came more prepared with gaitors, 10 essentials and a light weight ice axe. We were going to pick up where we left off and try and do the rest of the loop.

Our crew consisted of JVG, Rinn and Matzke. The first 5.5 miles of the trail took us to Myrtle lake for some well deserved photos, big sandwiches and snowball fights. From there we climbed another 1000 feet up to Little Myrtle lake and the trail was lost beneath the snow. JVG and Matzke headed back to the car and Rinn and I forged onward to connect the trails. Once we hit the high point (4300 ft) the views opened up and we had shots out into some sreiously remote wilderness. No tracks, nothing to follow but our bearings and we were loving it.

We did come accross a series of cliffs but navigated our way around the hazards and worked our way down to Bear Lake. Next we hit Deer Lake and then Snoqualmie lake where we picked up the trail which would eventually turn into our ticket out of the wilderness. This was a truely awesome day in the hills and I felt like we were without boundaries. I imagine that the terrain we were in is very similar to what we will be in soon at Raid the North Extreme and this was a great pre-race training to get Rinn and I primed to get after it in Prince Rupert.

It's nice to know you have the skills to get where you want to go...so while we did not do the circumnavigation in one fell swoop we did finally link the trails and now know it is easily done. We did 18 miles, the whole thing would be somewhere between 23-25 miles with the middle middle trail thrown in on the end. Good times.

Women's Navigation Clinic...Adventure Racing focus

This weekend Erik and I hosted an all womens navigation clinic. The class consisted of two parts, the first being a three hour classroom session on Friday and the second was 5 hours out in the field Saturday night. Since Erik and I have no social life we had to coax the women into a weekend of fun filled with bushwhacking, route finding, map reading and overall data gathering in the great out doors.

Overall I think class was successful and I believe the students walked away with more knowledge than they come to class with. Of course there are things we could have added to the class to make it better, here are a couple of them:

• A laid out course with orienteering flags.
• less bushwhacking, but still included it.
• more daytime navigation.

We hope to improve on the class over time and to get more people educated on how to move fast and confidently through an adventure race or just while playing in the mountains. It was great to see everyone excited about being out there and navigating through the bush and the dark as well!

See you on and off the trails-RVG