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May 25, 2006
Kernville 2006 - Skins
| Event Details | |
| Date: | Saturday February 13, 2006 |
| Location: | Kernville California - Google Map |
| Disciplines: | Kayak, Mountain Bike, Trekking , Short O Course |
| Time Length: | 24 Hr. |
| Format(s): | 4 Person Co-Ed |
| Price: | $225.00 p/p |
| Web Site: | CSM Events |
| SWAG: | Subaru Water bottle and Subaru duffel bag. |
| Race Results: | http://csmevents.com/results/Kernville06_results.xls |
| MotionBased.com Digest: | Click Here for MotionBased digest. Click here for Google Eath map of our route. |
| Reporting Racer(s): | by: Adam Doti of Dirty Avocados Skins and edited by Adam "A-Bomb" Armijo. |
| Race Report |
The next installment of the Cal Eco series takes us to beautiful,
and a bit strange, Kernville California. Kernville has been the host
of past Cal-Eco finals, the annual Fat Tire Mountain Bike festival,
and is now the home of the first race tracked by the Dirty Avocados
with an event approved GPS device. Prior to the race, we received Dan's
blessing to track AR races with an approved device that meet his requirements
of no visible information screen that could assist us in navigating.
The Avocados are currently testing a variety of approachs and looking
to set the standard in independent team tracing of races with GPS.
More on how we did this and what you need to do this coming to this
site soon.
For this race the Skins come together as a complete team with no substitutes for the first time this season. The Dirty Avocados Skins consisted of Linda McLean, Adam "A-Bomb" Armijo, Donato "Endo" Polignone and Adam Doti. We arrived in Kernville the night before the race and camped at the start line, Frandy Campground.
Saturday morning was spent organizing our gear and preparing for the 1:30pm start. We were a frisbee throw away from securing our spot at the start, which was determined by how close your team could land a frisbee next to a post. We were kind of glad to be positioned to see some teams enter the swift moving Kern river ahead of us. We ended up around 11th into the water. One at a time, and 30 seconds apart, each team launched themselves into the class 1+ (2+ if you ask us!) rapids.
As if entering these rapids in 2 person kayaks wasn’t enough of a rush, the experience was intensified as we were discovering too little, too late. At the start, race director Maria was yelling "GO! GO! GO!..." to keep people moving, and it worked!. We paddled like mad to stay in the groove of the swift moving water and rapids. It wasn’t until after Adam Doti was upright and speeding down the river when he realized he had lost his sunglasses! Of course, being blinded from the suns reflection against the water soon became the least of his worries when Adam realized that neiter him or Donato had their strap skirts in tact! (I can hear Waylon Jennings now…“Them Avacado boys got themselves in a whole mess a trouble.”)
Meanwhile, A-bomb and Linda were in the second kayak and virtually owning the rapids. They made it through the first few set of rapids with the help of the advice of the race directors at the pre race meeting. Unfortunately, they fell victim to the start line push (Go! Go! Go!) and started the rapids sans skirts as well. Needless to say, they took on boat load of water which made it harder to keep balanced, and eventually the river knocked them out. They cruised in the river with the kayak until they were able to make it to the side to re-embark and finish the moving section and begin the pleasantries of kayaking upwind across the lake.
Doti and Donato made their way down the river passing the competition
that had rolled, or had taken on too much water.. They were doing pretty
darn well, until they themselves took on a significant amount that
resulted in their kayak completely under water. They paddled their
brains out hoping to reach the mouth of the lake before they were forced
to dump the boat to clear the water. It must have looked pretty funny
from the shore to see two guys padding down the river in an upright
position with no kayak to be seen!
Luckily, they were able to reel the kayak back to shore with the tow
line. It took a dead lifted between the both of them to empty the kayak
clearing about 90% of the water, before they hopped back in and continued
down the river into Lake Isabella.
Once on the lake our team was reunited within earshot of each other. The high winds were coming at us head on. So, for the next hour we fought the high winds and huge swells with white caps (huge for a lake!) all the way across the lake to the CP just east of the dam. Some teams opted for the wide approach by arcing to the south west, and a few teams made a line for the south east shore and main camp grounds to complete the remainder of this 8 mile paddle. We were part of to the group that decided to make the straight shot right down the middle. No one route seemed better than the other. We had a visual on CP2/TA1 and passed a couple teams while dodging windserfers on the way in.
We had a great transition from the kayak to bike. One of our goals this race was to reduce our transition times which we did pretty well at throughout the entire race. Our other team, the Dirty Avocados "Pits", pulled out of the TA just ahead of us.
During the next leg, we made our way across the dam and over a few hills, to a short segment of road called Keysville Road and Black Gulch Road. An access/fire road took us up west, traversing a series of rims above the highway. This paved road dropped us back down towards the highway to a single track trail. The single track was a blast! This trail wasn’t originally on our maps. It was suggested that we copy it off of the master map during our pre-race planning.
Within the first few hours of the bike leg, Doti started to have a few issues with his stomach. He had taken a Hammer Electrolyte cap that made him feel kinda sick, sorta like it was burning a hole in his stomach. In hind sight, he probably didn’t wash that thing down well enough.
CP3 was a blast! We dropped our bikes at the top of the trail and ran down 400 vertical feet to Greenhorn Cave. In the pre-race meeting, Dan told us that there was going to be one CP that had a disposable camera where we would have to take a picture of our team. This, we now know, was to prove that we all ran down this wonderful hill, and didn't send proxies. After cracking a few jokes about taking pictures of our butts, we followed the instructions and climbed back up to our bikes. Good times!
And for our next trick, a hike a bike up 1500 vertical feet to Freeman Creek. Fotunately, we were playing leap frog with team Well Oiled, which proved to be quite entertaining. They were a great team to see out there on the course. Our intended trail was supposed to take us counter clockwise around Rough and Ready Mountain. However, our trail landed us down in a canyon just north of the trail that should have taken us up through Greenhorn and west of Quartz Mountain. We ran into the DA-Pits again, and rode together for a bit, chatting about the race so far. We eventually found Rancheria Road, which took us straight down to CP4 and the next TA. At this point, the Skins and Pits were mere minutes apart! The DA’s were having a great race all around!
The leg that would lead us to CP6/TA3 would be all on foot, clear up into the town of Fairview. Along the way, we would have to enter an orienteering course and get at least one of three points. On our way to Bull Run Basin, where the O course was located, team Police Defenders caught up with us. We ran along with them and chatted until we reached the first O point, which was luckily easy to find. The second O point was easy enough as well, located on the top of a knoll right off the trail. The rules were that for every point that you missed, you would get a 30 minute penalty added to your time. Since we were feeling pretty good, we decided to make an attempt for the third O point. On the O map, it was slightly west of due North from where we were. We made the mistake of taking too long to find this point. After not seeing team Police Defenders for at least 30 – 45 minutes, we ran into them again, and found that they were also unlucky in locating it. (After the race at a post race dinner, Dan tried to describe to us where it was located. Even with his description, and swearing we were all over that area, we had no luck piecing tgether what had happened.) While we were looking for the point, Will from the Pits was trying to get our attention with his headlamp and calling out for Doti, without being too loud of course. Apparently we were so engrossed in finding the point that we didn't hear him. They continued on course just in front of us. Eventually we left along with the Police Defenders and climbed out of the Basin back up to the road and Dry Meadow.
We switched off between running and a fast walk from the Dry Meadow, past Dunlap Meadow, to Tobias Meadow. We came across a solo racer that looked pretty beat up. He had a nasty cut on his leg probably, from a Manzanita tree, and looked like he was disoriented and confused. No doubt due to lack of sleep. He had told us he went down the ridge trail that we were coming up on, but that it ended and he had to start bushwhacking. At this point in the race for him, bushwhacking became too much and he headed back out on to the road that we had just come down. His amended quest was to find a ride back to the race start. We wished him luck, and decided to give it a shot ourselves.
Here is where our main mistake of the race took place, and unfortunately, it was a big mistake. We descended down the old overgrown fire road as the trail shows on the map, following a few switchbacks etc... But at some point, we wound up dropping too low on a trail down the south side of the ridge instead of staying on the very top of the ridge spine where we should have been, which would have taken us to the river intersections. For the next 4+ hours, we bushwhacked and fought our way through the valley between the two ridges, canioneering at times, and traveling directly in the stream. Running through the river sometimes made for faster travel, but the slick moss covered rocks were treacherous. At times we'd find our selves cliffed out and had to climb back up and over more ridges to get further down. It was very slow moving to say the least! Eventually, we made our way to the Tobias Creek intersection and picked up our intended trail which took us all the way into Fairview and to the campground where Lori, our crew, was waiting at the last TA. We hopefully didn’t worry her too much, considering that the last time we saw her was almost 12 hours prior!
When we approached the TA, we thought for sure that the race was over for us. We were stoked to hear that Dan was letting teams ride directly down the road next the Kern river back to the Start/Finish line! Hearing this lit a fire under our butts and gave us our, er, 15th wind, and we transitioned in mere minutes. We took off on our final bike leg for a 15 mile mostly downhill (yeah right) ride to the finish.
We heard the Pits came into TA 3 about 3 hours before us, and that
they navigated the ridge in about 2 hours, finding the trail off and
on. So, assuming that we'd not taken the scenic route, it would have
been an exciting race to the finish! Congrats to the Pits, and to the
entire Dirty Avocado team and crew for a great race! And special thanks
to the Cal Eco Adventure Series directors and volunteers for setting
a challenging course in such a beautiful area.
Dirty Avocado - Skins
| Images and Pictures |
| - Course Route. |
| Summary Data : TrackStick | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Ratings *Ratings are the usually the sole opinion of the reporting team member and in no way reflect the entire teams opinion on the race. | |
| Fun Factor Overall excitement and fun. |
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| Value Bang for the buck! |
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| Racer Relations Liaisonship, treatment and communications with racers. |
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| SWAG The good stuff! |
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| Scenic Race location and area traveled. |
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| Overall Difficulty | |
| Skill Level Required | |
| Navigation Difficulty | |
Posted by adoti at May 25, 2006 01:06 PM
