Leg 0: Getting to the Start Line
Early in the year we decide as a team that we are going to do the Baja Travesia 2007. We aren’t sure how, but we know we have to. In September we’d had a taste of success with our first race together, the SoCal 24, followed by a lot of bad luck with the Gold Rush in November. So now it was our time to shine, and to really see what we could do by tackling our first expedition-length race.

They say that getting to the start line is the hardest part of a race, and this would have been true if it were any other race: Daniel’s bike frame snaps due to metal fatigue three weeks before the race, and he has to scramble to get a warrantee frame from Ellsworth in time to construct and test before he leaves UCSB. Getting the rest of the mandatory gear is also more troublesome than we’d hoped. We have to find waterproof strobes, as well as decent racing kayaks. This race is to have some epic paddling and the race directors cautioned not to bring bathtubs (canoes), which is what we have done at most races. Then we look high and low to get the some 70,000 calories that we calculate we’ll need for this adventure, coming just a few thousand short. We pack it all into our gear boxes and just as we are about ready to leave, our ride to the start-line (our old high school teacher) calls to say she can’t go anymore. Luckily our loving parents step in and manage to wrangle enough car space to transport our 3-man team with gear, boats and bikes down to Ensenada.

Once there, we go through the pre-race checks, having tremendous fun in the playful surf south of the harbor and remarking to each other that the paddling should be a blast. We have no idea what is in store for us.

Later that night we go down the street to the “Gigante” corner mart and buy ourselves some tostadas, refried beans, and a few mangoes. We eat, sleep, do tricks over the pool and joke about how stupid we are for being in this crazy sport.

When we get up Tuesday morning and put on the only clothes we have left. We portage our kayaks to the start line, where we check in and put in to the wonderfully sheltered Ensenada harbor. While waiting for Paul (the race director) to give us a final go-ahead, he asks us if our spray skirts are up to muster (they aren’t), and if we have strobes (we do). He didn’t have any extra skirts lying around, so we wondered why he even asked. Feeling a little worried about the purported perfect storm going on outside the shelter of the harbor, we wait at the start line for the race to begin.

Leg 1: 56k Paddle
We get the go-ahead and make our way out of the harbor. Erica and Daniel, in the double, put Paul on tow and we exit the harbor together. The initial waves tear the towing system to shreds so we give up immediately on that. Just a few feet out of the harbor, there are swells nearing 6 or 7 feet high, giving all of the racers a run for their money. “This is going to suck,” we tell each other as we begin the long paddle towards CP1, on Todos Santos island about 15k away.

The further we get away from the harbor, the stronger the waves and wind get, and the more and more we realize that we’re not moving very quickly. We have to spend as much time as we can facing into the wind so that we don’t capsize (like many of the other teams around us), and this doesn’t lead us directly to the island. It’s also tough just to keep the kayaks straight and upright, and we battle into the wind for about 4 hours, making painfully slow headway towards the island. At this point, we see Paul in the official checkpoint boat making his way towards us, gesticulating wildly in the direction of CP2. He tells us, “Go to CP2, I am CP1, you’ve made it.” Overjoyed and given a whole new lease on life, we turn our boats perpendicular to the waves and pass around the point in the direction of La Bufadora. But turning away from the wind and waves makes us an easy target for the swells, and our necks get sore from watching warily for large swells to our right. By now, there are some swells that are so large we are almost in freefall on the way down the backsides – they must be sixteen or seventeen feet.

We all swear to ourselves, “This is it, at CP2 we’re done.” There is no way we are letting this situation get out of hand to the point where we feel unsafe. Once in the protection of the little bay, we make our way to the checkpoint and land our boats. We dump them out, as several leaks have made them very difficult to maneuver. Several other teams have elected to drop out here, but many also chose to go on. Despite out previous thoughts, after some serious team discussion and some assurances from the race directors, we decide to press on through the ridiculous ocean conditions.

A few minutes later we are cursing ourselves (and the race directors) for making that call, but we don’t want to turn around back into CP2, so we push across the practically open ocean towards the next point along the shore. Watching both our progress by landmarks to our left, and the enormous swells to our right, Daniel tries to keep Erica looking dead ahead, because neither side is encouraging or comforting. The point steadily gets closer and closer, and as it does we realize that it is nothing but rocks and steep cliffs. There is no safety in the shoreline here, and offshore, massive 2-story-house-size waves are breaking against underwater reefs. We navigate between these two hazards, but in the middle of it Paul is capsized by a rogue whitecap. While furiously bailing Paul’s cockpit with a bailer that seems like a dixie cup, Daniel vomits all over himself, Paul, and Paul’s cockpit. Paul, however, sees this as a blessing because the vomit is warm and he is cold. With still quite a bit of water in Paul’s boat, we have to move on because we are drifting dangerously close to the waves and the rocks.

After watching the Mexican navy rescue a seemingly empty boat from the swells, we finish the paddle and land at La Bocana beach just as the sun dips below the horizon. We have spent an entire day battling fierce open-water conditions to arrive at the transition area as the only two-boat team that finished the entire paddle.

Leg 2: 50k Bike
After warming up, eating and switching gear, we start in on the first biking leg of the race. Happy to be on firm, dry ground, we navigate our way for a while, finally giving up on traditional navigation and going by instinct towards our goal, a waypoint, followed by a checkpoint in a ghost town. We push through the night to arrive in the early morning at TA2, where we banter with our friends in Team Equinox about how they beat us to TA2, got out of TA1 after us, and didn’t pass us. We will always be amazed at the clever stunts Barry and his gang pulls.

Leg 3: 18k Hike
Still excited from our success on the paddle, we bushwhack up a hillside for a few hours until we finally find a trail, which we follow to a cactus farm nestled between two valleys. We trek out, passing teams Venomous Ducks, Baja Total Fitness and Equinox, and finally reaching the transition area in a park in a dusty, out-of-the-way town called San Vicente.

Leg 4: 68k Bike
After a few confusing turns and some advice from locals, we make it to the pride of this particular leg: a 1km bushwhack up the side of a barbed wire fence. At the top, we stupidly follow a few teams down the wrong side of the mountain only to find ourselves in a land of strange cactuses and a complete absence of tracks. After realizing our error we remind ourselves to run our own race, and turn around to continue on to the long climb that will eventually take us to where the turn-off was supposed to be. After stopping for a much-appreciated 30-minute sunny afternoon nap, we continue up to where the checkpoint was supposed to be. There, a few support crews point us a few kilometers down the road, to where the new location is. So we depart again, and a few kilometers in to this final stretch, Daniel’s left crank falls off, because of a missing part. The rest of the team makes fun of his bike, but he pedals along just fine with one leg to the new TA. There Team Thin Air greets us as our new support crew and helps us get prepared for the next leg. They even managed to line up a new bike for Daniel.

Leg 5: 10k Hike
This peaceful night-hike is a lot of fun in the beginning, calmly trekking between endless fields of sand under the light of the moon, talking about the race, our lives, and how good it feels to be hiking again. By the end of it, though, we are so tired we can barely stand, and we head to bed as soon as we enter the TA. We set our alarms for an hour and a half nap and pass out, all under Daniel’s sleeping bag. Two hours later (alarms didn’t work), we are awoken by the sound of Paul vomiting.

Leg 5.5: Paul’s Journey
In the TA we try to get Paul to keep food and water down, but nothing sticks. So Erica and Daniel have a chance to sleep, while poor Paul endlessly tries every combination of foods and drinks he can imagine. In the morning, Team Equinox suggests an apple, which he manages to keep down for a pretty good amount of time, but he’s not feeling a whole lot better. More teams roll in and out we begin to talk about Erica and Daniel splitting off and continuing with another team. In the end, it’s not even a question though – we’re a team and we stick together. But we’re not calling it quits either. There’s still time, and we decided to wait out Paul’s illness. After the brilliant suggestion from Paul Romero to try dissolving Hammer Gel under his tongue, Paul begins to show marked improvement, and Antonio and Kat finally give us the O.K. to continue.

Leg 6: 28k Bike turned 40k Bike
We begin this leg well and make great time to the first intersection. Due to an absolutely idiotic map-management mistake, we find ourselves in the completely wrong place. We had taken the wrong turn, knowingly, and assumed we were on the right track. We consider a 3km bikewhack to the real trail but decide against it, because it would have been hell. Instead we enjoy the downhill back to where we started, and we take the correct turn now. After getting to Checkpoint 13 and almost reaching the TA as night falls, Paul begins throwing up again. But he’s a trooper and is willing to continue with very few breaks. Erica carries his pack, Daniel pushes his bike to the top of the hill, and we rolled into the TA around 10PM, a few hours later than they were expecting us, due to the navigation error and Paul’s sickness

Leg 7: 18K Mountaineering
Here we face the second-to-last cutoff for the race: we have to leave this TA by 6AM tomorrow morning. Erica and Daniel feel strong, but Paul still feels horrible, even after an hour nap. We decide to wait it out again, and end up leaving the TA early in the morning.

After scrambling up a few thousand feet to near where the “Top of the World” checkpoint should be we spot a column of smoke, which we assume is some sort of smoke signal from the checkpoint, since they are expecting us and we are late.

We follow the smoke and, after overshooting the actual checkpoint by nearly a kilometer, find ourselves in the middle of a forest fire. It is a small one, and we put it out as best we can, but we are a bit worried since we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere not sure how to proceed.

Daniel radios in the fact that there is a fire, and we return to where we know the checkpoint should be. There we find an abandoned tent with a note inside, telling us to go on down the canyon. So we radio in again to check that everything is OK in the canyon still, and then we start down.

Initially we drop elevation incredibly quickly, and we reach the first canyon checkpoint just as night falls. But we are still 1000m away from the checkpoint at the bottom and our pace has fallen to 50m/hr since nightfall, despite the bright moon and comparatively easy going thus far.We know that the rest of the canyon is supposed to be even more challenging than what we’ve done so far, and we also know that there is a cutoff at 7AM the tomorrow morning. We do the math and figure that it will take us more than the 10 hrs we have between now and the cutoff to get down. So we decide to camp instead and enjoy the canyon fully the next day. We know that we are giving up the finish, but we decide that this is a much better decision, especially since in the hour we traveled after dark each of us had an embarrassing accident or two that would never have happened in the light. Happy to be resting, we set up camp and tried to start a fire. Both of our lighters are busted (probably during the paddling leg), so Daniel tries to light the remaining butane with sparks from his shorted-out headlamp battery, to no avail unfortunately.

In the morning we finish the canyon, at first taking great lengths to stay dry but in the end settling in to the reality that there’s no way to avoid getting wet. We rappel, boulder-hop and down-climb the remaining 1000m by 1PM, and then we are whisked off to the race finish in San Felipe by Mexican Halcone Rescue guys. Not too sleepy, but totally sore and happy to be finished, we ride though the desert to the blasting tunes of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and other American classics. We arrive as the last team on the course at the finish, lick our wounds and call it a very long day…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.