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Tree Huggers Race report- Beat Hunger Adventure Challenge 05 Report by Cap'n Richard.We did this race as Team Treehuggers from FAR, with Jamie Follas and Geoff Langford, of FAR fame. It took place in Vaughan. We started on foot South of the Kortright centre, and Jamie took off like a rabbit, leaving the rest of the pack (and almost leaving his teammates) in the dust. We had to nav a bit offroad into Kortright, then had to do a water carry similar to what 3rd world people have to do- each of us had to fill a 5 gallon drum. We used drybags to carry water from a creek 200M away, and they worked well enough we did it in one trip. We had scouted this area a bit, so we had an idea where we were going and built up a good lead. I was navigating, but when we got back on trails after the water carry it was hard work for Geoff and me to keep up with Jamie. I'm not great at sprint starts, but once we TA'd to bikes near Kleinburg my heart rate slowed down a bit. We biked on some pretty gnarly trails and roads to the bike drop- which I might add had a particularly gorgeous volunteer Bash. We had taken a fairly direct route which involved lots of mucky descents with roots, and some hike-a-bike. Jamie had a feeling we'd messed up when we hit a good trail along the Humber, but it turned out Jamie's route was faster. After this section we had to pick up 50lbs of firewood and ride with it on and off road, much like they do in Africa. My new bike has a rack, and Jamie had added one with a milk crate which worked very well. We then did the advanced section which consisted of 20CPs of beginner orienteering on a permanent course. The format was points-orienteering, with all CPs the worth the same points. We hit them all OK, and headed back with a sizable lead. One team did 19 of them, but forgot one and decided it was too far to go back for, which moved them way down the rankings even though they finished second time-wise. Jamie did most of the nav here, and did a great job. We all contributed a bit where we could. Back on the bikes, we had a nice section of ATV-type trails, very much like that we find in RTNs.Geoff almost took a header when we went through a thick layer of apples on a downhill. We hit one descent that the race organizer described as 70 degrees, (Probably closer to 55) which I rode on my 'bent OK but the others had to navigate around. The rest of the race went well, Jamie's bike nav was great, and we crossed the finish about 45 minutes before the second place team. These guys were great teammates! Jamie is really fast on foot, and no slouch on the bike or with a compass. Geoff kept protesting about how he hasn't trained, but kept up well, and was super-cheerful about the whole thing, even a waist-deep river crossing. (I did a shin-deep one just downstream). His technical biking is really excellent. It was a well organized race, CPs all in the right place, started ahead of time, good prizing, great volunteers. The best part of the whole race- The event raised over $5500 for victims of the earthquake in Pakistan, which the goverment will match!
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