"To the Xstream" - Adventure Xstream Expedition, Moab, UT

Boy, just when that last toenail grows back...

Yep, you head off to Moab, Utah and engage yourself in a 225 mile overland (and over-water) extravaganza called the Adventure Xstream Expedition Race. Yeah, notice the X in Xstream. There should probably be a few more lined up next to it. These things can get pretty "adult" rated.



Flashback to three days before the race: Dr. Jason and I somehow drew the short straws for this trip as we got the X-citement of shoe horning five bikes and enough gear and supplies to invade a medium sized country into a station wagon and driving the 15 hours from San Francisco to Moab. Our contemporaries and teammates for this race -- John and Jen -- would get the luxury of flying to Salt Lake City and renting a soccer mom van due to work schedules. They still had a four hour drive to Moab, but they had XM Radio, fresh butts, and a total of a half-day of travel. Jason and I had... 400 miles of Nevada high desert which included a fuel up at what the Washington Post has called the "armpit of America", Battle Mountain, NV. Yes, they actually have a billboard along the highway that touts this claim.

Jason and I were thankfully still talking to each other after arriving in Moab, though he wasn't a fan of the great music I had loaded on my iPod (his loss), and I wasn't a fan of his -- breath (kidding). Thus, on Thursday (Oct 5), we, Team Silly Rabbits, America's Adventure Racing Team (TM), found ourselves pulling into the beautiful Red Bluff Inn nestled in the heart of Utah's breathtaking canyon country. This would be the site of race HQ was and the site where the race would start the next morning.

We pulled everything out of the car in order to get it all ready for the race and for our poor, unsuspecting (and fantastic) crew guy, Dave. Dave came to us via teammate Jen. He's a hard core outdoorsy guy, perfect for this line of work... however we didn't exactly tell him that it would take about 3-4 of his twin brothers to make it all silky smooth.

We consolidated and consolidated and stood staring sideways at the car for long periods of time in order to figure the best and easiest way to get the stuff back inside so that Dave could get it back outside (and then back inside again) in some semblance of order and without too much trouble whenever he would meet us at a designated transition area throughout the course. We then headed off for a pasta dinner and the pre-race meeting where we would receive instructions and maps for a little over half the race. We'd have to make it about 175 miles to receive the instructions for the last few sections.

And so, we hunkered down for the night in the well-appointed rooms of the Inn in order to awaken at 5:30 a.m. to drag our bodies a few hundred cold yards to the banks of the Colorado River in order to start at 7:30 a.m. We got news that the official start would entail one member of your team having to run about 3-4 miles to a checkpoint before returning to the starting area to meet up with your team for a 22-mile river paddle.

Now, John is 'technically' the fastest person on our team. Technically if you put him on a track and we lined up next to him, he'd run a whole lot faster. Well, there ended up being two 'technical' reasons why he didn't do the first run of the race -- and why I did. First, we found out literally 20 seconds before they said "Go!" that the run would require picking a up a small map in order to find the checkpoint -- something that John handles about as well as W handles the presidency. Second, he was in the bathroom when the gun went off...

And thus, I made a mad dash for the map table and then scrambled up some stairs, over a concrete wall, through some boulders, over 2 wooden fences, across the road, and up into a canyon -- at about the pace most people would run the 100 yard dash. That's just the way ALL these races start, no matter how long they are. Us runners didn't really have time to study the map and it's difficult at best to decipher while running up a trail (imagine Carl Lewis reading "War and Peace" as he sprints down the track), so the pack of us cruised hellbent up the canyon until we got to an area that kinda matched what we could decipher. A few deep breaths, some basic map reading, and the pack eventually zeroed in on the right spot... and then it was a mad dash back to the boats.

And thus, after hauling ass for 3+ miles, expending some good energy... I then met up with the gang to tackle... the final 222 miles. We were forced to paddle race-provided boats -- these slow moving, inflatable two-person kayaks that thankfully had drain holes. The down river paddle went through a few minor rapids which added a little fun and adventure. At the first rapid a team that had gotten in right ahead of us flipped. That was only 200 yards into the paddle. 99% of the paddle ended up being relatively harmless and if not for the beautiful scenery on both sides, it could have turned out to be a lot more painful due to our slow speed.

Well, the Rabbits have been paddling a lot lately and we quickly got out to a small lead. In these boats, however, the miniscule difference in speed that a good paddling team and a bad paddling team can achieve doesn't lend well to amassing huge leads. We were shadowed the whole way by our good friends and usual rivals from Team Balance Bar (sometimes players from Wellsport). A French two person duo paddled near us for most of this section as well. A few other teams started slipping back hour by hour.

Four hours and roughly 22 miles later, we came out of a huge bend (it seemed like the river wound up on itself a few times as we kept paddling around this bend for nearly an hour) and raced for the Transition Area with a 3-4 minute lead on our rivals. The next short section would be one of the coolest sections not only of this race, but of most I can remember right now. We grabbed our climbing harnesses and helmets and headed off on a short 4-mile round-trip foot section up into some amazing slick rock. As we rounded a last corner to where we were to perform our rappel, we came upon an amazing site. We were rappeling off of an incredible 200-foot high rock arch! Teams had to scramble up the side of the canyon (attaching ourselves to safety ropes) and then walk out onto the top of the arch where the ropes crew had set up shop.

We zipped out into thin air and spiraled down to the canyon floor. I actually snapped a picture or two as I was rappeling. With teams on our butts, we raced back out of the canyon and back to the Transition Area where we hopped aboard our mountain bikes for a wild 35-mile section on some of Moab's most famous trails (including one call the "Poison Spider"). If you're really into mountain biking, you've heard the lore of Moab's incredible riding. Well, after many, many hours riding some of these "famous" digs, I came away scratching my head at all the fuss. There's lots of very technical stuff and some beautiful scenery and a few nice spots to ride, but there's also a lot of sand and plenty of spots with huge steps in the rock that you can't ride.

This all plays into the fact that it took us until nearly nightfall -- about 7 hours -- to complete this section. It felt like we kept going up and up along the moonscape of slickrock. We were constantly passing 4-Wheel drive vehicles doing things that I don't think Physics professors would approve of. Moab is also a mecca of 4-wheeling, and we saw some insane stuff from numerous Frankenstein-like trucks. The sun was out and we were starting to feel like lizards on the baked rocks. For much of the afternoon we had to follow the painted markers on the rock that we rode over. We pushed our bikes up and over 3-foot high rock "steps", through some sand, and put a few checkpoints under our belt before topping out at a highway for our descent back to the Transition.

We crossed the highway and then after 6 1/2 hours of uphill grinding, we had an awful, teeth-rattling downhill which didn't nearly make up for our riding all day. In less than 15 minutes we had lost all the elevation we gained all day. But, hey, we were in the lead!!

We took a little extra time in the Transition because the next section would be a doozy. We were faced with a 30-plus mile trek, and nearly all of it would be at night. We powered down some food, changed out of biking gear, grabbed our headlamps, and headed out for the evening in only our finest Salomon race formal wear. We started by running (yes, after 12 hours of exercise, we start running up a road) a few miles along the river. We passed Balance Bar who were riding in the opposite direction, having just come off the big downhill. We figured to have about 45 minutes on them at this point. As darkness descended upon us, we found ourselves at an adventurous little river crossing. We would paddle two kayaks a few hundred yards across the river and then we'd have to bushwhack through some very thick vegetation for about 500 yards. The race management was responsible for getting the boats back to the other side while we were responsible for hacking through jungle-like undergrowth in an attempt to maintain a certain compass bearing through the bramble.

Eventually, we squirted out the other side onto some trails that would lead us into the meat of the trek. I had gotten a little behind nutritionally between my early run and the fact that some nutrition I had on the paddle spilled overboard. So, it was my turn to take it a little slow as we trudged up "Jacob's Ladder", another famous Moab trail. We were onto headlamp power by now and there was a slight moon to see by.

After an hour or so, I was able to eat and recover and we trekked on through the canyonlands. We came upon one checkpoint and then headed straight up some switchbacks into more 4-wheel drive terrain. After 40 minutes of trail finding, we looked back down to see that we were practically right above the checkpoint we had just acquired. Cool. And then, the midnight hour struck...

It's now around Halloween and you've all heard tales of ghouls and goblins and ghosts and such. Well, in adventure racing, out there in the wilderness, we get attacked by the Sleepmonsters! Yes, they creep up into your eyeballs and start pulling your eyelids together. I personally don't have many problems with them (must be all those garlic-flavored Powerbars), but we've got a few sleepyheads on the squad. And when you're out all night trekking through darkness, staring at the trail in front of you for hours on end... you become pretty vulnerable to attack.

This was only the first night of the race (only the first?!), and thus our immunity was still high, so we were able to fend them off with only one or two "Hey, now how did we get way over here... and where'd the trail go??" moments. At about 4 a.m. we found ourselves heading out of the "woods" and along a really long sandy road towards the next transition. Did I mention it was really long? We eventually came out to a highway, jogged two miles along it, and then crossed over towards a campgrounds where our soft, warm transition awaited us.

And so, the sun arose... and we checked into the transition and sat down to refuel. And so, you ask "What do adventure racers REALLY eat out there?" Well, I'd have to say that there's absolutely nothing like cold pizza and fried chicken for breakfast! We had asked Dave (nearly 12 hours ago at this point) to see if he could pick up some tasty morsels for us. As we had calculated that this trek would take several hours less than it did (hence the "cold") it made the food taste that much better when we sat down.

Twenty-four hours. People can get a lot done in that amount of time. For example, we'd just run, biked, hiked, and paddled nearly 100 miles! And so, you ask "Gee, weren't you guys beat?" And I'd have to say "Not even close!" (okay, this answer's been edited by our censors). Though, we still had lots of racing to do. So, after about 55 minutes of refueling and gearing back up -- c'mon, there's no sleeping in adventure racing! -- we headed out into the morning sunshine on our bikes... for a 20-mile, 5000 foot climb. Good morning!

I'll say this one was a grind. It happened to be mostly on a paved road, but 5000 vertical feet is still 5000 vertical feet. It didn't help that we happened to be sharing this road with a charity road ride to benefit Lance Armstrong's foundation. As we towed each other uphill at three miles per hour we were constantly being passed by spandex-clad, shaved-leg road bikers hauling ass at four times our speed. Long story, short, we topped out at the next transition about 3 1/2 hours later, and you guessed it, we only had uphill from here!

We were to drop our mountain bikes and complete a 10-mile trekking section that would take us up another 3000+ vertical feet to over 12,400 feet above sea level. We had all heard reports of rain storms moving into the area in the late afternoon on Saturday (exactly the date and a few hours before the time we started this section), and so with this in mind, we tromped off into the La Sal mountain range.

"The weather started getting rough, our tiny ship was tossed..." to quote Gilligan. As we scrambled and scratched our way straight up the last 1000 vertical feet of the exposed peak that held our next checkpoint, the winds started a-comin'. We literally couldn't hear each other talk. Thankfully, we were beating the storm at this point, though we could see it heading towards us. And thankfully, we had a big descent to the next checkpoint. And so, we lost a few thousand feet of elevation and arrived at a small lake to acquire the next checkpoint.

Jason was feeling pretty low at this point -- usually a product of expending thousands and thousands and thousands of calories and only putting in a few hundred at a time. We towed him back up another 900 vertical feet over one last ridge on our way to get back to our mountain bikes. As we climbed this last bit, the sky started talkin' to us. Boom! Shazam! Lightning and thunder began to shake the area. We were under tree cover, but it was exciting anyway (as you might imagine standing outside in such conditions would be). And to add to our racing pleasure, it started to hail as we reached the top of the last hill. Wasting little time, we ran downhill to the transition, passing a few teams heading out onto this section (several hours behind us now).

The weather eased temporarily -- it was only a preview of what was coming. We changed back into our biking shoes and gear, grabbed some food at the race-provided tent, and turned back down the mountain. And we were still in the lead!

We raced back down the dirt to the main paved road, which we would then ride for about 15 miles to get to our next trail. And so, as we rode, the storm that everyone knew was coming thus arrived...

Zap! Bam! Pow! Lightning and thunder shot off in pockets all around us. We caught a little rain and seemed to be dodging pools of electricity. It was about 6 p.m. and we had another hour or so of daylight with us. The road led through more beautiful country side. And inevitably, it led to another big climb. As darkness descended, we granny-geared up another hill towards the Kokopeli Trail (another famous one).

I can say that we thankfully had dodged a lot of the lightning and rain up to this point. We knew that the teams that were behind us heading up into the La Sal range on foot would be having a rough time way up in the exposed hills. But we kept right on going. We weren't out of the path of the weather, but we were at much lower elevation and surrounded by higher ground.

Now, the Kokopeli Trail is actually a 146-mile trail that snakes from Colorado into Utah. We would only be riding a 30-mile section of it ("only", he says). With nightfall aided by thick cloud cover, we dove off the main road and zipped onto the Kokopeli Trail. And we zipped right along... for about a quarter mile.

The rain had turned the dirt trail into what can only be described as wonderfully organic and natural wet cement! We felt like we'd ridden right into a trap set by a nefarious villain in a James Bond movie. Our bikes plowed into the cement-mud and stopped. Well, okay, I had actually been riding la-de-da right along until I noticed that my teammates weren't behind me anymore. Think "Scooby-Doo" where Fred, Shaggy and the gang are walking through a castle and then suddenly Fred is all alone because a ghostly suit of armor has grabbed the others from behind.

"Shaggy?... Scooby?... Velma?" All I could hear were cries from behind me. I turned to see my three headlamps - uh, teammates - at a dead standstill. I guess the tires I was using were a lot more immune to the mud (at this point) than the ones they were riding with. As I turned back, I was greeted with an amazing image. A crackle of lightning shot down behind them and backlit them in a beautiful tableau.

I couldn't waste any real time contemplating the beauty of nature's fury as I quickly backtracked to help unstick my companions. Their bikes were now cement statues. I had to trade bikes with Jen in order to carry her bike which now weighed about 60 pounds. We scraped and yanked mud clumps from every nook and cranny of our bikes, but somehow it still weighed them down. And then it really started to rain!

It was deep into the second act, and it looked like Dr. No's plans to take over the world were coming through. We looked at each other and gulped. Would we have to carry our mud-encrusted bikes for the next 30 miles?? We calculated that would take about 15 hours, maybe more. No way. We scraped off mud, put our bikes down, and pushed them. For five yards. They became statues again. We carried them. The cold rain beat down upon us.

Okay, we weren't freaking out yet... but we were close. This kinda sucked. In a strange reversal, the rain actually started to help our cause. Puddles and rivulets started forming along the trail and we could set our bikes down and "wash" them off. We also started pushing them through the long puddles which enabled us to keep them going. And eventually we got to some rocky spots where we could ride. Whew!

We were by no means "flying" along. A few times we were able to ride for a half-mile or so. The trail was becoming more rocky and less muddy, though we still had to push through some muddy spots. On top of this, we had some short little uphills which were too difficult to ride, and which forced us to hike-our-bikes. At our slow pace, we expected Team Balance Bar to come upon us at any second. We nearly got to the frustrating point where we expected every team to come upon us. And then we started getting hypothermic...

John and I only had wind-breakers on us, while Jason and Jen had waterproof jackets. John started shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, and while I've been in situations like this before, I wasn't far behind. We were soaked. And here's where and why we hump along a wealth of mandatory safety gear. I can say that we often question many of the items that race directors require us to carry, however one which I've never questioned -- and one which I've employed several times -- is the amazing space blanket. A paper-thin blanket of what is essentially a cross between tin foil and Saran Wrap, the space blanket does an incredible job of helping you retain body heat while being virtually waterproof.

John and I stripped off our clothes from the waist up. Yes, you read that right. At 10 p.m. in the middle of a lightning storm, we got half-naked. It was the only way. With a little help from our friends (thanks, Ringo, Jason and Jen), we unfurled our blankets and wrapped them around our skin. We then put back on our wet shirts and jacket. Ahhhh. It allowed us to continue.

Funny I should mention Ringo? Well, to us it was more creepy than funny. At the end of the trekking leg after the previous night, all four of us had the same experience. We all had the sensation that there was someone else trekking with us. Sleepmonsters? You decide...

Back to the Kokopeli Trail and our intrepid racers. Round about midnight, we came to a major junction. A few hours earlier, Jason, the man with the maps, had informed us that we had about 21 miles to go. That was hours ago. After being able to ride some of the trail and figuring that we'd gone at least 15+ miles, John and I guessed that we were near the end. So when Jason looks up from the map and says "We've got about 19 miles left", John and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We thought he was crazy. We knew where we were. We knew how far we had to go... even if we didn't have the map (or any idea of where we were).

He was serious. We had gone about 12 miles. He had said the wrong thing earlier and had recalculated. John and I weren't laughing anymore. Nineteen more miles? The first twelve had taken us about 4 hours.

And so, we rode on. Things were pretty silent for awhile. You can get into a zone out there. At one point, somewhere around 40 hours into the race, without a wink of sleep, Jen turned to Dr. Jason and told him she was feeling a little weird. She was having some odd sensations in her body and she wasn't sure if she was feeling "right". Welcome to expedition-style adventure racing, Jen! If you're NOT feeling "weird", then something's wrong for sure. It's like the whole "going into the light" experience -- something's wrong if you feel totally at peace out there.

By now, we were so incredibly sure that Balance Bar, at least, would be screaming around a corner any minute and go zooming by us. We were literally moving at about 2-3 miles per hour. And then John broke his derailleur...

Yes, once again, that's the thing that allows your bike to shift gears. No derailleur, no gears. And we couldn't make his bike into a single speed at this point either. So he was forced to walk his bike the rest of the way. And we had ten more miles to go...

The rain was intermittent at this point. The rivulets were running. The rocky trail felt like it kept going up instead of down. And it seemed like we kept coming back to the same spot over and over and over again. When you're on a twisty trail at night, you get this sensation.

Pre-dawn. We figured to finally have one last big downhill to the next transition. Though if you take one thing away from all these reports over the past three years, you know that there is NO downhill in adventure racing! The last "downhill" to the transition somehow entailed riding up a zillion tiny, maddening hills. Or for John, pushing up. I was able to relieve him of his bike a few times while the Sleepmonsters attacked him from all sides. John and Jen are our resident coffee drinkers, so 45 hours without sleeping and no coffee kinda get them tweaking out a bit.

By now, our bikes were almost toast. We had nearly worn out our brake pads due to all the grit, dirt, and mud rubbing on them. Our gears were hardly working, even on the bikes with derailleurs. The one bright headlamp that we had had run out of batteries several hours ago. Yes, in our haste to race fast and light, we had calculated that we might be finished with this section around zero-dark-hundred hours the night before. So, we didn't take our big, giant, bright night biking lights. And so, we were out there navigating by little headlamps while trying to ride. It resulted in a few face plants. I'll leave it at that...

The dawn hour. We dragged ourselves to the end of this section of the Kokopeli Trail. The storm had passed. All was quiet. We towed John into the transition area. All was still quiet. Our crew guy Dave sauntered up to us. He was quiet. We found a member of the race staff who was being exceedingly quiet as he addressed us. And after biking, slogging, pushing, shivering, and stumbling literally all night through lightning, thunder, rain, mud and rocks, here's what he told us: "Uh, guys, we stopped the race 11 hours ago."

Excuse me, I know I've been riding my bike all night and I haven't slept for 48 hours now, but could you repeat that?

With the gnarly storm that passed over the race leaving two feet of snow on top of the exposed mountain where the high checkpoint on the previous trekking section was, the race director had decided to pull the racers off the course. He told them that there may be a restart in the morning and that there would be a meeting at the Red Cliff Lodge to discuss this with the teams. They just hadn't gotten ALL the teams to inform them of this. By this, I mean that we were the only team they hadn't been able to tell.

So, we put in an extra 11 hours of racing while everyone else was tucked up tidily in their beds. Balance Bar had been about to pull out of the race several hours before. They had used their mandatory cell phone to call the race director to tell him that they were at a bed and breakfast while the storm raged. The race director said "stay there, we're calling the race." They stayed. We didn't get the memo.

The member of the race staff that was manning this transition specifically to await our arrival further informed us that we were thus the winners of the race. Excuse me, I know I've been riding my bike all night and....

Yes, the race director crowned us the winners because we were not only so far ahead of any other team when they called the race but because we happened to be leading when they called the race. We accepted it.

In hindsight, I believe the race should not have been stopped. Usually, in a case like this, it wouldn't have been. What normally happens is that teams that are caught in or before a section that is deemed too dangerous (etc) are shuttled forward to the next passable section of the course. They are unfortunately disqualified from being in contention to "win" the race since they haven't done the whole course, however the race continues on. If no team gets to the unsafe section, the whole section can be bypassed without problem and all teams are still on equal terms. If, as in our case, one or two teams get through, then they are the only teams in official contention.

Anyway, we accepted the decision and were happy on one hand that we didn't have to torture ourselves with the final 50 or so miles of the race. But on the other hand, it just wasn't a fulfilling end to the race story. It still officially feels like we won because we sure as heck put in the effort. But you never know how things turn out until the very end, now do you?

It'll go down in the history books and it adds another notch to our belt. And so, we won the 2005 Adventure Xstream expedition race!!

~Rick Baraff
Web Site: Rick Tales of Adventure

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