XPD 2006 Tasmania

Journey to the End of the World

By Tim and Jerry

Team USN/Jabula: Tim, Jerry, Kerensa, and Shaun [Source XPD website]

Team USN / Jabula

• Jerry Argyriou
• Kerensa Argyriou
• Shaun Wright
• Tim Sindle

HOBART, TASMANIA – The setting for the second edition XPD, “As much an expedition as a race”. As Team USN / Jabula, the Sydney based South Africans, we jetted in to Hobart landing in the middle of an international Triathlon race, where our knobbly tyred bikes felt conspicuously out of place. We then spent the 3 days before the race buying food, last minute equipment, and packing our bike, paddle and individual boxes as these would be the only support we saw out on the course.

Team Briefings - a nervous affair.

The race effectively started a day before the starting gun. At 10am we were given around 20 maps and the “bible” (book of instructions). Based on this, we needed to plan and pack our boxes, ready to be loaded on trucks at 3pm that day. At 10pm we were to board busses and be driven to the starting point for a 7am start. We would be starting the race with little or no sleep.

As not all boxes would be available at all transitions, decisions made at this stage prior to the start, especially regarding food replenishment, would impact performance. Our paddle box proved critical especially for remote transitions at the end of trekking legs.

Me on my bike looking ready to go.

Tuesday evening, trucks and busses packed, the 43 teams set off at 10pm from Hobart - destination ‘The Nut’ a small piece of land near Stanley jutting out into the Southern Ocean in Tasmania’s remote North West. A tourist chairlift took us to the start at the top of the hill. Lining up next to AR great like Rebecca Rusch and Team AROC the excitement and nervous tension was palpable with the media chopper circling and Tim trying not to throw up in the bushes.

7am and we’re off with a course that would wind its way down the west coast then over the central mountain ranges ending up with an abseil down Mt Wellington and into Hobart. After running down the Nut, it was onto bikes for a fast 52km of tar and dirt making our way to the isolated Arthur River. Here we got to meet our boats the Sevylor K79 inflatables, a quick pump up and we were on the water ready for the 27km of grade 2 white-water. The water was a little low which made the rapids better but led to a bit of scraping and nervous searching for bubbles in the water. Five hours later we reached the takeout point lying mid-20^th , having lost a couple of places, yet not much time on the water. By this time team AROC were already pulling ahead of the field. A hilly 26km ride saw us recapture a couple of places, taking us to the start of the first mammoth trek leg.

As the sun was setting on the west coast we headed out on the 73km beach trek, which would take us almost 19 hours, including a two hour sleep. This was a leg that would hurt many teams later on the race, the frequent river crossings and sand causing havoc with racers feet. The route took us along the desolate unspoilt sandy beaches, going inland through grassy plains and amongst the rocky outcrops. We had great fun chasing some of the nocturnal Aussie marsupial wombats and wallabies that weren’t used to having to share their land with stumbling sleep deprived adventure racers. The bus trip of the previous night was taking its toll and a sleep was called for when we had some problems finding a checkpoint near a lighthouse. Evidently we were not the only ones as 5 teams came to try check in with us while we slept. As dawn broke, we quickly located the CP, surprisingly having lost only one place. We headed out again, overtaking a few more teams and reaching the end at the Pieman River after midday. Here, the transition was on the other side of the river. We crossed the river 3 times in order to return the shuttle boat to the original edge. The operation reminded us of those MENSA games where a goat and a lion have to be transported across a river without them eating each other. Luckily we had thought to put some extra food in our paddle crate, so we didn’t have this problem!

The next ‘short’ paddle got increasingly tough as the wind and tide turned against us, but buying out the stock of toasted sandwiches from the local store at the transition at the end of the paddle lifted our spirits. A 153km bike leg awaited us. Our strategy was to sleep as much as possible in transitions as we had luxuries like sleeping bags there. We slept for 2 hrs leaving at midnight, dropping from 13^th on arrival at the transition, to 20^th on departure. Yet we soon caught up most positions as teams were catching a bit of shut eye on the side of the road in the early hours. Sleep monsters attacked with Jerry pointing out cell phone towers and satellite dishes that weren’t there and Kerensa dipping in and out of microsleeps. A 10 minute power nap and some celebrity name games kept us (semi) sane and our minds ticking over. As day was breaking we crested a hill to descend along single track rivers into a disused magnet mine, where compasses no longer work. We found the CP and cycled back out of the area through dense rainforest on a narrow winding trail, once the site of the mine railway. The next CP was a novel idea, based at a payphone in Waratah, the first human habitation we had seen since starting two days prior. A quick call back to race HQ to check in and we were away…well not quite yet…we still had to eat some pies and bacon-egg rolls at the local store. This leg carried on winding through plantations, disused railway lines, up to awesome viewing points, stopping only to bypass a deadly Tiger snake. A nav mistake cost us some time in the last forest, but a local lumberjack set us right. I think he was more confused to see a map than we were. The leg ended with a short 3km hike-a-bike section (only one in the entire race!!), a long climb followed by a downhill run to the transition.

This was no ordinary transition, though. It was the compulsory mid-camp rest. Teams had to spend a minimum of 6 hours in transitions, with showers, beds and a meal provided. After 2 and half days of crate race food, this was huge. Here a little inexperience showed as we grabbed a good 5 hours of sleep and ended up leaving transition about 2 hours later than we should have. This freshness gave us renewed motivation as we sped along the next mountainous 23km trek over Mount Roland, recording one of the fastest leg times (even after a schoolboy navigation error at the start cost us the better part of an hour) After two days of amazingly good weather, things were changing as we headed off the mountain and back onto the bikes as interspersed squalls of rain hit us. The saying for Tassie weather is “If you don’t like it wait 5 minutes”, we literally spent the entire day taking off and putting on rain jackets. This 51km bike leg took us through more forests, past fast flowing rivers all part of Tassie’s numerous hydro schemes.

After disassembling and boxing our bikes the kind marshals at the end of the bike leg whished us well and warned us of leeches. We headed out onto the hike that would take us to the well known Overland track, up the highest mountain in Tasmania (Mount Ossa) and to the shores of Lake St Clair. Tim in all his wisdom, having never seen a leech before, headed off wearing shorts covered by rain pants. The first part of the trail was luckily done at dusk with just enough light to get us through the maze of paths on Lee’s Paddock Trail as we winded through the rainforests. As night wore on and the path twisted and turned, we were convinced that we were walking around in circles, but Jerry was watching the compass like a hawk keeping us on the straight and narrow. The leaches were terrible, for those of you who don’t know, a leach is a little thing the size of a needle – sent by the devil himself. It hangs on foliage near the path and jumps onto any exposed skin as you walk past. After what seemed like a eternity we reached Pellion hut and the well defined Overland track. Tim took a toilet break and almost fainted at the site of his legs, over 20 evil leaches, now swelled to the size of jelly babies, blood everywhere it was like a site from a horror movie. Luckily peanut salt is the equivalent garlic for these vampires.

The overland track near Lake St Clair.

It was around midnight. In our sleep deprived state, we decided to attack the teams ahead. The weather was clear and we were feeling relatively good. Mount Ossa beckoned. We headed out along the Overland Track which has long sections of narrow board walk about 20cm off the ground. It’s highly amusing watching people try balance on this while falling asleep - entertainment for hours. By the time we reached the base of Mount Ossa the weather had closed in and as we ascended the visibility was down to about 5m, with horizontal rain. We followed the reflective triangles that marked the trail winding along cliff edges, over jagged rocks. But with the markings 30m apart and 5m visibility this took some time and guess work. With none of us able to do much more than put one foot in front of the other we didn’t realise the implications that one slip on the wet rocks could have caused. CP checked off, we headed down at dawn to the next hut a couple of km down the track, for a much needed 1 ½ hour sleep. Arguably, we could have slept in the dark prior to summiting, but the weather and leaches militated against this option. Back on the trail we hot footed it to the shores of Lake St Clair.

While we pumped up the boats, the marshal read out our team messages posted on the website which was quite an emotional moment for us all. The paddle across the beautiful Lake was fast, fuelled by a viscous tail wind. We had lost our map, which fortunately ended at the next checkpoint. Luckily the “bible” had a picture of the old pump house, so we managed to locate it easily enough. As the sun was setting we hit the transition area, with a mean following swell and howling wind. Jerry who had been at the front, getting constantly sprayed, got some violent shivering shakes and mild hypothermia while packing away the boats. Luckily the transition marshals were used to this and soon had him sorted with some warm Milo, and a couple of down sleeping bags. We grabbed another 2 hours of sleep before heading out on the last 87km mtb at midnight.

The first part of this was along a rocky disused road through the forest. It was bitterly cold at 2 degrees, and going was slow. We had significant difficulty finding the dam wall or was it “that damn wall”? This was our last bike leg with Kerensa Jerry fighting off muscle strains and pains, and the cold, chilling our motivation.

By the time we reached the paddle transition we realised that we were going to get caught out on the river’s white water dark-zone [compulsory exit off the river]. The 67km paddle section consisted of a flat water dam paddle followed by a 3km portage to the 45km of dark-zoned white-water. Mindful of the previous night’s cold, we packed some extra sleeping bags, and shelter for our 9 hours on the river bank. The portage was a painful experience with the boats weighing in at over 30kg each – before our kit. We found a friendly land owner and had a great sleep on the grassy banks of the Derwent River. Tim set up his hammock and we locked in 8hrs sleep at a 5 star campsite. At this stage, having not seen a team for over a day, we were on more of an adventure than a race. Complacent, we started an hour late the next morning, not believing there were teams on our tail, and knowing we couldn’t catch the teams ahead of us that had probably made the end of the river by previous nightfall. We were in expedition mode. As we were about to put the boats in the water a team passed us on the water with two more in pursuit. Now the race was back on! Our sleep had allowed a batch of teams who had paddled the flat water at night and stated the white water fresh in the morning. Would our complacency and late water entry cost us? Overnight there had been a dam release and now the grade 2 rapids were pumping with duck billed platypuses swimming in the shallow waters. Shaun expertly guided Jerry down the rapids in his boat whilst Tim shouted incomprehensible commands including the words “paddle” as he and Kerensa bumped from rock to rock. We arrived at the transition full of adrenaline, with 3 teams ahead and two behind.

A super quick change onto the final hike leg saw us out on the 42km hiking leg trail up the back of Mount Wellington ahead of the pack. Constantly looking over our shoulders we made our way to the top of the mountain overlooking Hobart -what a welcome site- and down to the abseil point. For the first time in AR, the ropes section worked in our favour as our 10 minute lead over the following team was transformed into 40 minutes as we were at the head of the abseil queue. A 100m abseil with a view of the Hobart city nightlights was an experience to remember, but not to be savoured for too long as we bush bashed down the trails off the mountain. With Shaun nursing muscle strains and team Wildfire right behind us and in high spirits (they had overtaken 4 teams to the top of Mt Wellington) we knew they would be hot in pursuit as we had been racing them and trading places since day 1. A quick break for Jerry to make a deposit in the Hobart shopping centre gardens [he apologises, but he HAD to], and we were off to the final paddle – 3km under the magnificent bridge over the Derwent river to the finish line. We pumped up the boats for the final time in record speed and jumped onto the water paddling off a K1 race pace. No sign of Wildfire behind us.

All done - from here to there!

The finish came after 6 days 18 hours and 52 minutes – 11^th in the premier mixed category, and we were greeted by the organising officials, the famous finishing couch, pizza and champagne. What a race! What a finish! We were all amazed and would like to congratulate the organisers for pulling off such an ambitious awesome course with the scale of the logistics undertook by the organisers second to none. Thanks also to USN for the sponsorship of the nutritional supplements Cyto-Power, Muscle Fuel, and Carbo Fuel which were absolutely instrumental for a expedition race of this nature! Thank you to all the people that supported us. Having your comments read mid-race was both surreal and inspirational.

To any Seth Efricans looking at racing out this side of the world, let us know how we can help out.

Now time for some beer drinking - Cascade Brewery!

Some race stats….

We were placed 16^th overall of the 43 starters. 3 teams ahead of us were unranked, thus 13^th overall. Of that we were beaten by 2 all male teams making us 11^th in the premier mixed category of 30 teams. AROC won the event in 4 days 21 hours 55 minutes. One team retired and 10 teams finished unranked after losing team members. The race course was measured as 672km. In the 369km of biking we were placed 19^th, in the 182km of treks we placed 8^th, and in the 121kms of paddling 38^th. These positions are obviously skewed by where you choose to sleep and dark zones.