Posts Tagged ‘kayaking’

All eyes will be on the Patagonia Adventure Race that begins today. Adventure racing had a difficult year last year as the economic crisis that hit the world made sponsorship difficult to find, but this year things are looking better and the season is getting off to a good start with the wildest of all the races starting any minute.

The Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race (jcarterhatch) was formally opened last night in a spectacular ceremony that seemed a world away from the wilderness of Patagonia. The elite team Helly Hansen-Prunesco returned the winner’s trophy at the ceremony. All eyes will be watching them this year…

56 competitors from 14 international teams  gathered with the attending media to see race organizer Stjepan  Pavicic  unveil his carefully planned route for the 2010 race.

This will be one of the toughest tests in the race’s history – with the course traveling almost the length of Chilean Tierra del Fuego before heading south beyond the world’s most southerly community on the Isla Navarino. There are two major mountain bike sections and more than 200km of trekking this year through unpredictable peat bog.

The bog, or Turba as it is known in Spanish, will take some getting used to for the challengers. It often looks solid, but it absorbs so much water it can suck you in to your waist in an instant.

Chris Lomas, of Team Fast and Light, summed up the fears for many of the racers: “My biggest fear is getting lost. This place is so vast. Anywhere in the UK, and most places in Europe, you can get lost, but if you keep going, you’ll hit civilization after a day or two of walking. Out there (Patagonia), you can go for weeks without seeing anyone. It is a true wilderness.”

Trekking is historically the most challenging – and spectacular – part of the course and this year will be no different as the route travels past some of the best peaks in the notorious Darwin Range.

Pavicic, who has explored the Patagonian mountains for more than 20 years, explained: “The trekking in Chilean Patagonia is phenomenal but it is extremely wild. There are plenty of routes to enjoy for tourists, but where we go there’s nothing – just an extreme wild land of bush, bog, forest and mountains.”

The rough waters of the Beagle Channel will also prove a challenge for even the most professional kayaker.

Bernard Hug from the Swiss Team summed up the spirit of adventure racing: “We love to travel and to see something of the world. And we love extreme sports. In Patagonia we’re able to see beautiful landscape and compete at the same time with so many athletes from all over the world, so that’s perfect.”

Dennis Piretra, Chief Communications Officer for race sponsor, Wenger, described the essence of adventure racing in a nutshell: “The purity of the challenge that lies before the teams is very special and in today’s day and age, very unique,” he said. “The prize is not monetary, the prize is pride and glory. This spirit of this race hearkens back to times that were very different and people sought adventure not for financial gain, but to feed a primal need for discovering the unknown and finding our personal limits.”

The race will begin on the Straist of Magellan at 10:30am this morning, Patagonia time.

Good luck to everyone.

The system of terraces around our house are not meant to be waterfalls, but with the endless rain of the last few days they bare a strange resemblance! Although certainly not navigable, I couldn’t resist comparing them to these falls and screening this great kayaking video to brighten up a very dull day… Thanks avavidaloca

Flowing 700 miles east across the Tibetan Plateau, the Tsangpo (called the Yarlung in Chinese) drains the north slope of the Himalayas before plunging into the gorge. Here it flows between two massive 23,000 foot-plus peaks, Namcha Barwa and Gyala Pelri, before hanging a sharp right and diving south through a corridor of almost vertical rock, eventually emerging onto the jungled plains of India as the Brahmaputra. From the plateau, the river loses 9,000 feet of altitude in 150 miles.

In February 2002, Scott Lindgren and six colleagues, powered their kayaks into a maelstrom of enormous boulders and deafening whitewater.

The Tsangpo was at its deep-winter low ebb. Still, the kayakers immediately felt the power of the biggest, most continuously fearsome water they had ever paddled—15,000 cubic feet per second, dropping 100 to 200 feet per mile in some sections.

Fourteen days after launch, when the seven kayakers eddied out just above the unrunnable torrents of Rainbow Falls, they had made history.

Extreme kayakers have developed new techniques to control their descents over massive falls. Boaters tuck forward like high divers, laying flat across the bow and angling their boats nose first, which reduces the surface area hitting the water and softens the impact. Some even attach fins to the back of the boats so that they drop straight down, like a dart. The most common injury, kayakers say, is a broken nose.

Sturdier equipment has spurred advances in the sport. Brittle fiberglass kayaks have been replaced by tougher, molded plastic boats that can absorb big impacts. Unlike their cigar-shaped predecessors, newer kayaks have flat bottoms like surf boards, allowing boaters to skip off crests of waves and bounce off rocks in a move kayakers call a “boof.”

It all sounds possible – but as you will see in the video below from EditorJud this is a terrifying and extreme journey that some will not come back from – in the video which was released earlier this year the story of Doug Gordon who was killed kayaking on the Tsangpo is retold. With respect.

59 teams coming from 26 countries including New Zealand, South Africa, France, Russia, Brazil and the United States are competing in the Adventure Racing World Championships in Portugal.

The XPD Portugal race began on the 8th November and will finish on the 13th. Prize giving will be the morning of Saturday, 14th November.

The total estimated distance for this extreme race is 910 kms and each team have approximately 127 hours to complete the race which consists of 5 stages and 21 sections.

Another year (2007), but the same race, this video from ScorpionArt will give you an understanding of the ultimate challenge that these athletes have given themselves.

It is compulsory that each team has at least one female member in their total of 4 or all-women teams are allowed too. Entrants have their own support teams, but those who don’t (and there are 12 teams that don’t) will have support provided by the organisers. The winning team will be ‘the Adventure Race World Champions 2009′.

There are 5 mountain bike shortcuts in this race which will allow any team in difficulty to easily reach the finish line. These shortcuts can cut off a total of 136 km and will, on many occasions, allow the slower teams to recover the pace and come forward.

Organized by APCA – the Portuguese Association of Adventure Racing – and supervised by the Portuguese Orienteering Federation, this competition will visit some of the most beautiful and little known ecological reserves in Portugal including the magnificent Schist Villages giving the competitors a vision of a bygone era. Many of these schist villages are uninhabited and in ruins, but some have been renovated and repopulated.

The first stage, which started in showery weather, sett off from the Escoril and finished in Cascais. It was a total of 60.3 kms  with a total elevation of 1,689 m and included trekking, roller (or the use of trikke’s if you preferred) and mountain biking through a region known as the western tip of Europe wit its stunning views – if you had the time to appreciate them!

By the end of the first day the teams had realised that they were in for a gruelling race. Already teams were making strategic decisions to cut out the first stage in the hopes of leapfrogging time.

Stage 2 was a total length of 171.8 kms, total ascent of 10,821 m, total descent of 9,604 m beginning at Castelo da Lousa and finishing at Hotel Serra da Estrela. This section had the competitors trekking, mountain biking, canyoning and abseiling through lost villages, forests and up and over big hills.

There had been a few misunderstandings at the end of the first stage, with people beginning the second stage a bit unsure of how the point system worked. It was also becoming apparent that the trick now would be to work out how much of the route not to do. Both the canyoning and abseiling were avoidable, for example, although bonus CP’s were available on the abseiling section. It is a risky tactic to miss a CP as it is the number of CP’s which decide the winners, with the bonuses and time only coming into play if teams are tied on CP’s.

After the canyoning it was a short trek to the next transition to prepare for the long mountain bike section through the night. Some teams were worried about the weather conditions for this as there had been a strong wind blowing all day and the biking route was along ridge tops for much of the way, but as it turned out fog and low cloud were as much of a problem as the wind. By the time teams were up on the ridge-line the visibility was only a few metres.

The teams were headed for Assistance Point two at Penhas da Saude where the leaders arrived around dawn yesterday, and from there on they resumed trekking across Portugal’s highest peaks, which already have a thin covering of fresh snow!

Nike/Beaver Creek and Orion Health, are leading the pack at the moment and have so far attempted the whole course.

The weather conditions in the early part of Monday night were harsh, with the dense fog lingering over the hills and the wind increasing in strength to gale force. The wind chill temperatures were around freezing and there was little shelter.

This is turning out to be one helluva race…

At 45km the full trekking stage across the mountains was longer than originally stated, and it was taking even the fastest teams more time to complete than they anticipated.

In any normal adventure race Nike/Beaver Creek and Team Orionhealth.com would be favourites and their battle so far in this race is no different. But it’s this race which is a bit different…

While they decided on their route Mike Kloser of Nike was heard to say, “I’m worried about the cut offs.” A strange thing to say, you might think, by an experienced adventure racer. However, it’s not strange at all and he’s right to be concerned as this race requires the fastest teams to make choices they are not used to or comfortable with, i.e. to miss checkpoints. Last year all the fastest teams at the start of the race tried to get all the CP’s … and they all missed a cut-off and were out of the running.

There is still a long time to the first cut off late tomorrow night, but for now all that can be said is that Nike and OrionHealth are the teams with most CP’s and moving the fastest … but nobody will know for some time yet if they are winning!

Stage 3, today, is 214.6 km long with a 3,441 m ascent and a 4,633 m descent through a deserted but beautiful and challenging landscape on mountain bikes, kayaks and rollers….

Good luck to all…

NEWS ALERT (7.30 p.m. Wednesday, 11th November):

The harshness of the mountains at the end of the 3rd day of the competition   have caused the first casualties in the Estoril Portugal XPD Race: 7 teams have reluctantly withdrawn – out of the 59 that started.

The title holders – New Zealand’s “Orion Health” – are still well placed in front, closely followed by the North-American “Nike/Beaver Creek”.

Some time ago, we did an article on the Borneo Eco-Challenge adventure race. This was in the early days when we were just discovering adventure racing as an extreme sport. The Borneo eco-challenge was obviously a popular event as we have subsequently received many requests for further information.

This event has not had a recent re-run. However,  ESPN STAR Sport Event Management and associates have come up with a new event:  the Perak Amanjaya Eco Race 2009.

This is rather a last minute alert, but the whole race is a little bit last-minute anyway, which is why this year it is invitation only. However, the organisers intend this to be an annual event so bookmark it now for next year…

The race is due to begin on the 2nd December, completing by the 6th December, 2009 and promises to be an adventure race classic. It will include such disciplines as Trail Running, Kayaking, Mountain Biking, In-line Skating, Abseiling, Canyoning, Rapelling and Swimming… and the state government of Parak, Malaysia, will be hosting the event.

Location, location, location. Don’t we hear that so often? Well, this event is definitely in a beautiful location. It begins in the Royal Belum State Park (rainforest) which is the largest continuous forest complex in Peninsular Malaysia and which crosses into Southern Thailand. It is estimated to be as old as 130 million years, making it older than the jungle of the Amazon or Congo – sorry, I can never resist a little history! Needless to say, some areas of this magnificent forest are being plundered by loggers… when will we ever learn?

This region receives about 2,200 cm of rain per annum – so expect it to be wet! It also has its fair share of big cats, venomous snakes, elephant, Sumatran rhino’s plus a whole host of other bird and wildlife.

Banding Island as seen from Tower House

The race starts at Banding Bridge which is the gateway to Royal Belum Rainforest. A quick run across the bridge and then an abseil down to the lake sets the event off to an exciting start. You then swim to a pontoon, get a kayak and paddle across to the lake shore where you will have to carry your kayak along a jungle trail to the next stretch of water where you will kayak back to the island, leave the kayak and run back to the bridge. An in-line skate across the bridge will bring the first day to a close.

Day 2 starts at the foot hill of Taiping Hill where there will be a trail run to a waterfall. After canyoning down the waterfall competitors will run to Taiping Lake Garden (the first public garden established during the British rule in Malaysia), and in-line skate under the Golden Raintrees. From here there will be a mountain bike ride to the Kampung river mouth for another kayak to Kuala Sepetang and final run on the boardwalk to finish at the jetty of Kuala Sepetang.

Day 3 will be a rest day but also a transfer from Taiping to Pasir Salak where the race will continue.

Pasir Salak is the place where modern Malaysia took shape. It is where the independence movement against the British began and where the first British  resident of Perak, James W.W. Birch, was murdered on 2nd November, 1875. The rebellion of 1875 in Pasir Salak sowed the seeds of nationalism, which manifested itself in the form of opposition to colonialism, and to the formation of a Malayan Union, which ignited the flame of independence.

Today Pasir Salak is an historical site whose purpose is to remind the younger generation of the events there and the fight against colonialism in Perak, and also to remember the struggle and the sacrifice of the warriors to uphold the dignity of the race and country.

So, after yet another history lesson from me, I shall continue with the matter at hand – the eco-challenge adventure race:

Day 4 kicks off with a mountain bike ride up to the beautiful Ulu Geruntum, which is the raft starting point. From here you white water raft down to Kampung Jahang…

run to the cave entrance to start the caving section…

and finish with a run to the finish line at Kampung Tengah.

Day 5, the final day, starts at Pasir Salak with a mountain bike ride to Teluk Batik, kayak to Teluk Segadas at Pangkor Island, rapel down the rock, run to Teluk Dalam beach, swim in the sea in front of Teluk Dalam and finally finish at the beach of Teluk Dalam.

For 2009 this event is open to teams of 2 persons only – male, female or co-ed; only 20 teams are invited and again, for this year, it is an ‘invitation only’ event. Teams are coming from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, USA and Finland.

For those of you who would like to enter but wonder what on earth your better half (!) is going to do whilst you’re battling your way through the jungle (if your better half isn’t battling through it with you) … remember that glancing reference I made above to the type of fauna to be found in the Royal Belum National Park?  Well, I then came across this little list – and please bear in mind it is not a final list, of what sort of flora and fauna can be seen and enjoyed in the Royal Belum Rainforest:

247 species of birds
100 species of mammals
170 species of butterflies
251 species of moths
51 species of land snails
36 species of aquatic and semi aquatic bugs
25 species of cicadas
24 species of amphibians
21 species of lizards
23 species of snakes
23 speices of freshwater fish
7 species of freshwater and land turtles
62 species of moss
64 species of ferns
46 species of palms
30 species of gingers
3000 species of flower plants
3 species of freshwater decapod
44 species of wild fruit trees

Apart from that there is the Taiping Lake Garden which, at 222 acres, is the biggest urban parkland in Malaysia, designed and built about 130 years ago in the remains of an old tin mine. It has beautifully laid out ponds, lakes, and reputably, the best zoological gardens in the whole region. And then there’s the spectacular beach of Teluk Dalam and the beautiful island of Pangkor. Just a few of things one might see and do out there. No-one could possibly be bored…

It’s Saturday again, and, not having much time on my hands, I surfed the Net to see what I could find to amuse and entertain you. I came up with Felix Lammler’s (studyaker)  freefall down the Leuenfall (Switzerland) on 2nd January 2007. The Leuenfall  waterfall is 34 m high. You can’t even see the pool he is going to drop into!

Despite his excellent cliff diving and kayaking skills, the descent was only a partial success. Felix survived the impact with a lot of luck and, unfortunately, a few injuries. His perfectionism, pride and not least the controversial discussions that followed persuaded him to make a second attempt. In the presence of two eyewitnesses and a notary, he repeated the descent on the 20th of January 2007. The second descent as well as the raw material for the film are legally attested.

This  winter-kayaking video from Brookaitken might give you some ideas of what else you can do this winter when the snow lies heavily all around! A new snow kayaking speed record was set here …