« I'm a Suunto t6 Test Pilot! | Main | BAOC Shell Ridge »
May 21, 2006
Cal Eco #2, Kernville, CA (The Pits)
Cal Eco #2
Kernville, CA
May 14-16, 2006
3rd Place Finish Coed 4 Person Team (5th overall)--The Pits
We arrived in Kernville to find the temperature at
90F+ , which was slightly higher that the 71F reported
by weather.com..
We started the race with a kayak down the swollen Kern
River. We had surveyed the river earlier in the
morning and the class II rapids looked doable, but we
were all secretly thinking that we were going for a
swim. Miraculously, we made it through the entire set
of rapids to the mouth of the river where the real fun
began with the 20-30 MPH wind gusts and the 2-3 foot
swells.
We crossed lake Isabella to the first TA to find that
we were in 5th place. We put on our bike gear and
headed southwest into the hills above the Kern River.
It was pretty blazing hot when we reach the booming
town of Keyesville, all one house and 2 pigs. We
continued up into the hills to the turnoff for CP 3
were we smiled big for our photo op.
On our way to TA2 we encountered a fence line with
several signs that said “PRIVATE PROPERTY” and “NO
TREASPASSING.” We arrived at this roadblock with
several other teams. We opted to just wing it and
take the unknown trail that wasn’t on the map but
headed roughly north. To our surprise several teams
followed us! Luckily the trails we took led us to
Rancheria Road and the straight shot to the TA.
We arrived at the TA with almost no food and water and
much later than our crew expected to see us. We
restocked and added on a couple of more layers of
clothes. We were all cozy and warm as we headed out
toward Bull Run, but then we started crossing the
swollen Cow Creek over and over and over again. So
much for warm and cozy!
Climbing back out of the canyon from the o-course just
after dawn gave us a great view of the canyon we had
just been through. We didn’t stay long because we
knew that we had only a few miles to our “easy”
descent down the ridge to TA3. On the map it was
marked as a fire road, but it really was a bushwack to
the bottom of the canyon. We reached the bottom and
jumped on our bikes for the quick spin back to
Kernville and the finish.
Kayak 8.8 miles
Bike 49.3 miles elevation gain 8,500 feet
Run 21.5 miles elevation gain 3,320 feet
Total miles 79.6 elevation gain 11,820 feet
Posted by Brian at May 21, 2006 12:46 AM
