2015 The Equinox Traverse 48Hour Race

Equinox Traverse

48 hour Adventure Race

Start:  Ohiopyle, PA

Finish:  Ohiopyle, PA

Team:  Todd Copley, Kim Owens, Jon Gamm, Scott Mead

In hour 42 around 2am of the Equinox Traverse the bottom of my feet were causing me so much pain. We were doing a 2,000 foot decent after a foot orienteering section to pick up our bikes for the ride back to the finish. In the darkness walking ahead of my teammates, I clenched my fists and prayed that God would give me the strength to endure the pain and just get me to the finish. For the first time In my life I experienced a hallucination where my friends in this picture and others were walking behind me cheering me on and saying over and over "I will help you, you can do this!" It was the most mysterious thing I have ever experienced. A moment where I saw God's face in some of my beautiful friends!

Kim Owens

Team Commie Bar

	Start Kilometer	End Km	Total Cumulative	Discipline	From	To
	0	33.15	33.15	Bike	Ohiopyle	Mill Run Junction/TA1
	33.15	24.48	57.63	Trek	Mill Run Junction TA1	State Game Lands 51
	57.63	53.07	110.7	Bike	Mill Run Junction TA2	TA3 - COGOs/Bakersville
	110.7	51	161.7	Bike	TA3 - COGOs/Bakersville	TA4 - Bear Run
	161.7	30.45	192.15	Bike	TA5 - Bear Run	Ram Cat Paddle Put In
	192.15	14.93	207.08	Paddle	Ram Cat Paddle Put In	Ohiopyle Take Out
	207.08	19.5	226.58	Trek	Ohiopyle Take Out	Ram Cat Paddle Put In
	226.58	14.35	240.93	Bike	Ram Cat Paddle Put In	Ohiopyle/Race Finish
	Km	Miles
Total Race	240.93	149.3766
Bike	182.02	112.8524
Trek	43.98	27.2676
Paddle	14.93	9.2566

The Equinox Traverse was a delve back into multi day expedition style racing for Team Commie Bar.  We were using this race as a training race for Raid in France and to see how the team did with multi day races.  Guillaume Calais was unable to come to the U.S. for this race and Scott Mead, who is the 1^st alternate for Raid in France, filled in for him in grand style!

The team drove/flew into Deep Creek on Thursday and that evening we had a BBQ at my house and had good fun.  Friday was dedicated to race prep and bike building.  We spent the good part of the day getting our gear (and with adventure racing there is a ton!)  We prepped climbing gear and our paddling equipment.  Our packs were stuffed with extra clothes, mandatory gear, and enough food for 48 hours.  Our bikes were tuned up and loaded down with bike lights, spare batteries, repair gear, map boards and tow ropes to help tow tired teammates. 

 

That evening (Friday) we went to Mt State Brewing and had pizza and some beers.  Then back to get the last bit of sleep we would have until Monday afternoon.

Saturday morning we met up at 0500 and made the trek to Ohiopyle and race start.  It would be an absolute frenetic pace of race prep since we weren’t getting the maps until 0700 and race brief was at 0830.  1.5 hours to readjust packing lists, distribute gear and food bags and plan an over 150 mile race course!! 

When we got the maps we transposed the Checkpoints and moved back to the vehicles to get the gear ready.  The start to the race had been changed because of air temperature and the fact that originally we would start in the kayaks and paddle the Class IV lower Yough.  It was simply just too cold at 38 degrees to start that epic paddle that would certainly have us very, very, very wet going into a 2 day race. 

Now the race would start on bike.  They led us out of town and at the turn onto a gravel road going uphill for close to 2 miles the race began and the elite teams moved out quick. 

Team Commie Bar knew it would be a long haul and we settled into a steady pace.  We screamed thru Checkpoint 1 and then another long downhill into CP2.  The move from CP2 to CP3 leveled out and we crossed the river at Roger’s Mill and picked up a semi-rail trail that took us into the first transition area.  This race would be unique in that the entire race would be on bike with trekking and paddling section sprinkled in.  We were in for a very long time in the saddle.

At Transition Area 1, we transitioned to foot and planned for an attack on at least 2 or maybe up to 4 Optional points in the wilderness north of the Yough river.  We shuffle ran with our pack down another abandoned rail line to a bridge over the Yough and the confluence of Indian Creek.  We crossed the abandoned rail bridge which was scary.  Stepping on the ties and looking thru the gaps down 60 feet or so to the river.  Kim was really nervous about this and quite frankly I wasn’t too enthused either! 

We got across the bridge and picked a drainage taking us up to the mountain top.  Sometimes gentle sometimes steep we followed a ravine up and nailed optional point 13.  From there we made our way thru a saddle and picked up OP 7.  We then made a decision to go for OP4 which would lead  us out a ridge line and then down a very, very steep section.  We underestimated the steepness and also how far down the point would be.  After we got that point, we had a difficult navigation decision to make.  Should we parallel the contour lines of this straight up and down mountain and hope it comes out somewhere or simply retreat the way we came back UP, UP, UP.  We chose to parallel the mountain but eventually after trekking sideways on this steep monster we buckled and headed straight back up to hit the trail.  We jogged back down the fireroad to the bridge and crossed a second time then walked back to our bikes at the transition knowing there was a cut off at 6pm. 

At the bikes we prepared for a long all night bike segment that would take us north east and into the Laurel Highlands.  We saddled up and retraced the route back to Roger’s mill then plotted a course that stretched west to east up to Seven Springs resort.  We picked up CP EOO and then dealt with the only true navigational error that was made during this segment.  Instead of paralleling down into Laurel Hill State Park we missed the turnoff and instead wound up actually in Seven Springs resort.  We passed a restaurant and the smells were very tempting as we tried to figure out where we were.  We soon got back on track and made our way to CP CC and then turned north to get SE1 and even further to TR1.  We tried to attack TR1 from the road via an azimuth bearing but were unsuccessful and retried on bike and got it that time.  All of us were now beginning to experience fatigue as we had been on the bikes (despite a 5hour trekking section) since 9am and now it was midnight on Saturday.  From TR1 it was clear that the best way to go was to continue up to CP NC1 and make our way to NC5 and start a very long downhill to Transition Area 3 which was a 24 hour convenience store that served hot food!!.

When we got there we were ravenous.  The store looked like a looter’s prison as the 16 teams racing had either already been there or were camped out in the aisles sleeping or with maps spread out planning the next segments!  It was hilarious.  I ordered two strombolis, two pieces of pizza, a ham and cheese bagel and a quart of chocolate milk and a coke…..  wish they had beer….  We pondered over the map and how to get to the Transition Area 4.  To be honest it looked like retracing a lot of our previous route would be the easiest.  We set out and left the comfort of the store at 3:30am and it was very cold.  We bundled up and I was burping Stromboli….  The epic bike ride began.  At this point we had been on the bikes for 18plus hours… 

The bike segment to TA4 was uneventful in the night other than it was cold and now I was vomiting Stromboli and pizza.  We moved pretty strong all the way thru to a massive uphill between BP2 and the entrance to Bear Creek that would lead us down to the transition area.  We ended up pushing the bikes for around 2 miles up the road and to the trails of Bear Creek. 

In  Bear Creek a devious plot from the race organizer was played out.  The trail down to the TA was marked with construction tape at the onset of the entrance into the area.  We violated rule #1 of adventure racing which is always know where you are on the map.  We lapsed into the security of having a trail mapped out with flags leading us down.  Then………………………………….  The flags/construction tape ended…..  which way to go?  Right or left?  We had no idea where we were on the map as we had been following the generous markings from the organizers….  Well, it took a while to get our bearings but we eventually found our way down to the Transition. 

At the transition we were given optional points to seek but it was now almost 10am on Sunday and we knew we still had a lot of racing to do.  We took the time to regroup, change clothes and eat before pushing our bikes back UP the entrance to Bear Creek.  It was a painful decision to blow off some points on the Optional Orienteering course and even more painful to know we were just getting back on the bikes for what we knew would be an epic hike a bike back up to the road. 

That said we took the challenge and after the misery of the push we hit the road and then plotted our descent back to Ohiopyle.

In Ohiopyle we knew what we had to do.  We still had an 8 mile bike segment to get to Confluence for the paddle put in.  Despite being on the bikes for 27 hours we hammered out the rail trail to Ram Cat put in.  Kim and I piloted one kayak and Scott and Jon the other.  The water was running low and we got hung up several times on the Middle Yough but at about 2 hours hit our take out back in Ohiopyle. 

We were soaked.  It was almost dark and the sun was going down.  We dropped the kayaks off and made our way on foot back to the transition area where we had our gear and changed clothes and got ready for night #2. 

At the transition we were given our options.  It included 4 optional check points high in Ohiopyle State Park.  Since I have been familiar with the park we elected to go after 2 CPs and then begin a excruciating long descent down a fire tower road back to the bikes at the paddle put in. 

I led the trek up the Baughman trail which is merciless in gaining elevation and length.  All of us began suffering and we made it up and down to the first OP at a spring.  From there it seemed like forever to make our way over the Sugarloaf mountain and cross the road to the Firetower. 

We slowly advanced up Firetower road and got a final optional point before the murderous descent.

The plan had been to jog and run the 5 mile descent back to the bikes but that plan evaporated in a cloud of fatigue and feet that were hurting.  The team performed brilliantly but we were all falling asleep as we walked down this steep, rocky corridor.  We took several rest stops to stop the burning of the feet and the burning of the muscles.  The night sounds only broken up by our slippery feet on the rocks.  Not many words were spoken.  We knew what we had to do. 

Back at the bikes we had sufficient time to make the peddle from Ram Cat back to Ohiopyle.  In the dark at 2:30 or so am the bike path looked like it was going uphill.  That said we hammered the 8 miles.  Jon and I created a draft line and Scott had a tow rope hooked up to Kim that allowed us to average almost 16 miles per hour on mountain bikes at the end of a 48 hour race…..  We cruised back into the finish at 3:38am…  We had covered 150 miles. 

This was Team Commie Bar’s first foray into the coed elite division.  If we had had Scott and Jon race as 2 person all male and me and Kim race as 2 person coed we would have won both divisions.  

We’re psyched to be racing together and can’t wait till Raid in France….

TCOPE