Feb 27, 2009

Media about team Calleva and Patagonian race.

U.S. Team Calleva members (L-R) Sara Percy, Druce Finlay, Valentin Chapa and Mark Lattanzi sit together at the opening ceremony of the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race in Punta Arenas February 9, 2009. The annual event, regarded as the wildest and toughest adventure race in the world, was won this year by Helly Hansen Prunesco in six days after an epic 600kms course of mountain biking, kayaking and spectacular wilderness trekking, and some of the worst weather conditions in its history. Calleva lost their way after deciding to take a short cut because they had run out of food and had to feed off the land to stay alive. Picture taken February 9, 2009.

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (Reuters) - Four American adventurers had to live on berries during three days lost in the wilderness, a Briton and the French defending champion suffered hypothermia, the Canadian team fell into an icy river with their equipment and a Spaniard got attacked by mosquitoes.

Feb 26, 2009

Detailed race report of the 2009 Patagonian Expedition Race

Here's my more detailed race report of the 2009 Patagonia Expedition Race.  There aren't any pictures as Patagonia ate my race camera.  :-( 

I am collecting some pics from the other teams and some of the race photographers and I'll post them when I can.

As for me, I am healing quickly though my feet are still a bit swollen and my fingers and toes still tingle on the ends.
My appetite has returned in full force and I've put back on the 15 pounds that I lost!

Cheers!
Mark

Feb 25, 2009

Patagonian race... The highlights from Mark.


I am back home from Patagonia - tired but very happy.

Thanks to everyone who followed Team Calleva online and kept us in their
thoughts as we struggled during the last stage of the race.

Patagonia vastly exceeded my imagination of what it would be. The legendary
wind was ever-present. We saw a 200 foot waterfall coming off a cliff and
never reach the ground. The wind turned the water into mist about halfway
down the cliff. The forests were dense and moss-covered - pinks and
purples, black and white and an assortments of greens. Sometimes the moss
was several feet thick. They were also a variety of textures from hard (the
bright green ones with the small white five-petaled flowers) to the huge
puffy red ones that sunk up to a foot when stepped upon only to rebound as
if no one had passed. I imagined the Mirkwood of Middle Earth to be like
this. I half-expected Tom Bombadil to appear in one of the stands of trees.
The river valleys were mazes of bogs, ponds, small lakes and muddy
expanses. Some of the bog holes were easily over 6 feet deep (i know I fell
in one while portaging our kayak). The craggy peaks and cliffs seemed to
rise up from everywhere.

Here are some highlights of the trip/race... (I'll be sending out a detailed
race report in the coming days.):

  • We kayaked with humpback whales in the Straits of Magellan.



  • We startled a huge sea lion on a remote beach (and vice versa).



  • We communed with a green-eyed fox one morning just before dawn.



  • We laughed at the antics of penguins on shore and in the water.



  • We dug tunnels through underbrush so dense, it appeared to be an
    impenetrable living wall of leaves, trunks and thorns.



  • We camped above a glacier one night and listened to four inches of snow
    accumulate outside the tent.



  • We paddled our kayaks across open water and up a fjord defying the
    Patagonian wind - if only briefly.



  • We kayaked down a glacial stream from an iceberg-filled lake to the Strait
    of Magellan.



  • We biked 80 kilometers into the Patagonia wind. It seemed to take forever.



  • We walked for days and days and every time we felt we had seen all their was
    to see, Patagonia came up with a new sort of terrain or puzzle for us to
    solve.



  • I ever-scanned the skies for an albatross to no avail. I though I saw one,
    but he was too far away to be sure.



  • And lastly, we got our first helicopter ride (medivac from the finish to the
    hospital). 3 days with no food and one day with no water and hypothermia
    sets in pretty fast.



  • More soon,
    Mark

    Feb 24, 2009

    Team Calleva in Patagonia... First story.

    It seems team Calleva was destined to have a staggering amount of adversity, and through it the adventure of a lifetime.

    Every time we used our tent we were rained on and it was very cold, except once when it sleeted on us.

    It started off with me heading to Patagonia sick as a dog and getting team Captain Mark Lattanzi sick for the first 5 days of the race.

    Sec. 1: The Paddle
    Up in Torres Del Paines, the world famous rock climbers getaway, Grey Glacier forms Grey Lake which are the head waters to the beautiful Grey River where the paddle started. 20 miles downstream in merges the Rio Serrano (aptly named and a beautiful clear green serrano chili pepper color), the 2 rivers mix and a fantastic color is the result, Patagonia has met our expectations as one of the most pristine and unimaginably beautiful places on earth. Throughout the race I kept calling it the "land of the lost". We headed downstream towards a large ocean bay and ended up getting ferried by the race org. due to 100-140 km winds out on the bay.


    Sec. 2: The Bike
    Wenger the makers of the Swiss Army knife were wonderful sponsors and payed the local tavern for a mass buffet after the ferry so teams could head off with a fresh start, a very nice touch. We then mounted our bikes and cranked out an absolutely marvelous 60 miler......it was just sweet riding and as the night set in the full moon was fun to use for a while instead of lights. As navigation became imperative we busted out the lights, Val and I riding with AYUP and in the process lighting up the entire road. We finished strong.

    Sec. 3: The Trek
    Things started off well with our team being only 1 hour behind the leaders after 2 sections, when we headed off into the first trek.....(Let me just say Patagonian mountains have a very daunting look to them, especially when imminent weather is at hand). Night was approaching and we had been getting rained on for 12 hours as we crossed the bogs/wetlands and headed towards the first mountain crossing. The crest of the mountains was very craggy, limiting where a team could find passage, and we had no visibility due to heavy rain clouds and the rapidly approaching night.......perhaps we would have braved it if Mark wasn't sick as a dog. We hunkered down for 10 hours and waited for light, everyone being mildly disappointed knowing that it was lost time. We continued on the next morning making great time and to our surprise finishing the trek in 5th with team 4 still in the TA.

    Sec. 4: The Bike
    As we headed off on the bikes at 11:00 pm we thought it would be a nasty ride with 4 days of rain turning the local roads into a mud fest, however to our surprise the mud was not thick and as we headed out of the mountains it disappeared altogether, we continued making our way to a ferry crossing and a 2 hour nap ( waiting for the ferriers to wake up). Let me just mention now that this race had the best mountain biking and some of the most scenic riding I've experienced in an Expedition Race......no hike-a-bike and wonderful roads. We pushed hard on the rest of this ride which was battling the roaring 40's for 30 miles on an ocean road, trying to get to the next TA by 4:00 pm which we thought was a kayak dark zone. It turns out there was only one launching per day at 7:00 am so the Navy could send safety boats along with the paddlers who had to cross the Straights of Magellan. We reorganized our gear, ate heartily, and caught up on some rest.

    Sec. 5: The Paddle and Portage (90 km sec.)
    Teams had to cross the Straights of Magellan then paddle up a very scenic fjord (the most scenic paddling I have ever seen) and make their way to a 17 km portage, which was really 7 km of portaging then 10 km of lakes and fast moving rivers in between the lakes. Val and I had the bad luck first as we made our way precariously down a fast moving section full of brambles we got dumped and lost 2 headlamps, 1/2 a paddle, a fleece, and some food. The situation cost us 1 hour and we headed out again a little rattled (the conditions were life threatening). After crossing another small lake it was Mark and Sara's turn for a little adventure and they were dumped in an even more dangerous position with no possible way of getting the boat pulled out and portaged beyond the danger zone. Val and I lashed our boat to some trees and headed over to aid in the rescue which included using our 50 ft. tow line and all team members staging along the brambles to ease the Necky Amaruk through the rapids and dangerous brambles. It cost us another hour and we reached the final 10 km ocean section just in time for another Dark Zone.....up with the tent and 10 more hours lost that put us in a position of fighting the clock for the next few days.

    Sec. 6: The Epic Trek
    We pull in early with our boats and had only expectations of a smart clean TA. We needed a little recovery time to dry out gear, get well fed and plan out the supplies for a 125 km trek through extremely dense forests and wetlands. Since we arrived late with the previous days bad luck we were hours behind where we wanted to be and heading out on this trek early in the morning would have been extremely beneficial, we didn't head out until noon.
    We headed out at a warm up pace and within hours were pushing hard again (this team was very fit and with better luck could easily have gotten 3rd) when we reached a high saddle where we could see the next mountain crossing and plan our route. We knew it was hours away and didn't want to sleep again so we agreed to go for it.....a bad idea as we entered the mountains at night into a full on snow storm with zero visibility and dangerous cliffs everywhere. We had to pitch the tent again and wait for light.....it would have made a great film shot for a tent company as we were placed on a little tiny ledge of rock surrounded by steep snowfields and jagged cliff bans, throughout the night we snuggled and made hot soup to survive the cold. In the morning none of us could believe the position we had unwittingly camped in.
    That night we veered off course and had to take the long way around to get back on, which was hell. When we were 7 km from being back on course we had to go up a river valley and could see the original canyon where we should have come out. The bush was so thick it took us 12 hours to do the 7 km.....just a little aggravating, and let me mention we were going like animals to get through that stuff and get back on course.
    The next 2 days were our best, everything went well, we made great time, at night when Mark was breaking trail I would let him use my AYUP headlamp and he would say "Wow, I gotta get me one of these!" The entire team loved the fact that I had brought the AYUP headlamp kit, whenever we needed light for spotting or even just wanted a lot of light to pick the better of two bushwacks the AYUP lights reigned supreme! And to my surprise I got 12 hours of light out of a 6 hour battery! Although hours 6-12 were not as bright, they were still brighter than my black diamond headlamp.
    Because of adversity on the first portion of this trek we were waaay behind and ran out of food and still had 40 km to go. We did a major river crossing and inspected the map. The recommended route was much longer than a mountain option that the team agreed would be a good shortcut due to the absence of food.
    The plan was simple, get above the bush on the ridges and drop down onto the Cross at the End of the World. I guess it wasn't meant to be. Horrendous weather dropped in on us and we bailed from the mountains at high speed down a canyon that proved to be truly epic, from here we should have been able to coasteer over to the Cross trailhead.......ummmm no! For 2 days we tried to coasteer but would become hypothermic almost instantly because of the freezing water and cold conditions upon leaving the water. 3 times we tried to go back up and over the mountains but would get cliffed out.....Let me mention this was a brave team that would not just turn around and we would spend hours trying to contour around the cliffs through the thickest jungle/bush you've ever seen. When all seemed lost we finally cracked through to the trail and found some of the remaining personnel who helicoptered us to the hospital and then rushed us to the closing ceremonies for a well earned meal and a bottle of wine.

    Those last couple of days were hard and I'm sure we made a few bad decisions because of a lack of good rest and food. I learned that everyone on this team has true strength and internal fortitude and would not quit no matter how hard or how bad the situation had become. Instead of turning on each other we just kept getting stronger as a team and kept going for it, knowing that we had to make it. Team Calleva you are true champions that I'm humbled and honored to have raced with.

    P.S. Although out of food we had NUUN, and boy oh boy those were sweet to have. We ended up eating them whole like candies and I'm fairly certain they worked better than ever as the only source of nutrition for 3 days.....we never cramped.

    The Patagonia Expedition was the most adventerous course I've done and I will go back. I highly recommend it for any adventure racer seeking a good race.

    Druce Finlay
    Kayak Lake Mead

    Feb 20, 2009

    Good news (almost).

    The team is OK! No injuries and they will make it on time for tomorrow flight.
    Now the part of story I know:
    They've been evacuated by the military Chilean helicopter from the mountains close to the finish area. It happened just today. Druce and Sara are totally fine, Val and Mark were taken to the hospital in Punta Arenas with hypothermia, but should be released in one hour.
    They are coming to the Dulles airport (IAD) 11:51pm Sunday, flight COPA-488 from Panama City. I will be there to pick them up. 
    I hope next post will be a story they will write themselves.

    More good news, thanks to Jen for the link:


    Feb 19, 2009

    Waiting...

    There are no tracking updates since yesterday 17:52. British, French and Canadian teams finished at 02/16 22:36, 02/17 17:24 and 02/18 07:16 correspondently. Calleva is expected to finish... now. No other teams continue the race.
    The team spent one more night in mountains:

    It would be easier to go around through the valley, to the east coast, where is the trail to Cabo Froward. Instead, they decided to shortcut through the mountains. Yes, I know, I have a better navigation tool with my computer here. I will publish one more post as soon as get any final news.

    Feb 18, 2009

    They are going to make it !!!

    As of today 11:33 am team Calleva is just 10 miles from the finish line. For the last 75 hours they've been trekking through the most southern continental mountains of Patagonia. I hope they will finish tonight. Follow the team approaches the finish line at life tracking.

    There is nice slide show at the race website.

    Feb 17, 2009

    Winners, Photos and no news from Calleva...

    English team Helly Hansen-Prunesco crossed the finish line at Cape Froward on February 16, 22:36. French team Easy Implant was in second and it's unclear, if they've finished or still on the course.
    Canadians lost their tracking device before PC4, last signal from Calleva was today at 08:55. There are no other teams in the race, only these 4 left.
    SleepMonsters got first photos uploaded. I will put here only this one of Sara:  
    Believe me, this kayak is VERY heavy !!! Come on guys! Push it hard, tomorrow is the last full day!

    Feb 16, 2009

    6th night... The coldest one.

    I am back at my computer... Team Calleva is one of the 5 survived teams of the race. Guys are doing slow progress towards the finish and I hope they will make it on time, at least for the flight, as I plan to meet them at the airport on Sunday... So far their tracking device is the most active compare to all other teams.
     I don't know, if it was a navigation mistake, or they got tired to bushwalk through the forest, or Mark just wanted to take a nice photo of sunset, but last nigh they decided to get to the top. They actually climb the tallest mountain around and spent whole night there:

    I just hope there is no snow this time of year. Google Earth satellite images show this area in white, but are more likely to be taken during Patagonia winter (there are less clouds). Right now team Calleva is back on low ground and I hope they will finish in the next 2 days.

    Feb 14, 2009

    The latest news.

    This is long weekend and I am out for long training as my knee gets better and better. I will be unable to post updates so often.
    According to the last SleepMonsters report Calleva is in the water at 6:35 today, 20 minutes behind Canadian team that spent almost 24 hours at PC4. They have to cover 88 km of rough water, portage they kayaks 15 km through the Patagonian forest and paddle Magellan Strait to the PC5, where the last and most difficult part of the race starts.
    So far Calleva is in the 4th position and only 7 teams are still in competition.

    Feb 13, 2009

    Team Calleva... broken bike?

    According to the Sleepmonsters report the paddling is on and 2 or 3 teams are in the water. Calleva is very close to PC4, but their pace is about 10 km/h that is too slow for the biking leg they doing right now. Looks like somebody has a problem with bike. The white line on the image is 10 miles long. Times are stamped near circles with number 2.

    The second paddling is canceled.

    Teams are going to use ferry to get to the Riesco Island. English and French teams are already there, Canadians are waiting the ferry for the last 4 hours. Ferry is scheduled every hour, but the word schedule is not in Patagonian dictionary.

    Calleva made it through the PC3 and now is about 10 miles from the ferry. I hope they will catch up with the Canadian team. Looks like these are the only two teams that know how to use the Spot device. Most other teams have no tracking for last two days.

    Feb 12, 2009

    Sleepmonsters report and first photos from the race.

    Finally, some good and detailed reports about every day and stage of the race:
    Thanks to Rob Harvard reporting directly from the race.
    First photos are uploaded on the race website:
    Trekking is going very slow and it's the first one. The second one is expected to take 4 (!!!) days to finish. Team Calleva is in the middle of the pack so far. The weather in Patagonia is terrible.
    Go Calleva, GO!!!

    Feb 11, 2009

    Patagonian expedition. The first news from the website...

    It's very hard to navigate through the race website, but I found it:
    http://www.patagonianexpeditionrace.com/en/index.php
    That's the page they publish the race news. Team page is here:
    http://www.patagonianexpeditionrace.com/en/races_2009_teams.php
    And the first photo 20 minutes before the race start:

    Patagonian expedition. Day 2.

    Tracking was down at night, but it's back up now. Spot is very "spotty" and some teams are still displayed at the start. Team Calleva finished paddling and mountain biking and started the first trekking at sun rise (no sleep first night). Here is Google earth view of the mountains they have to cross between PC2 and PC3 (apparently PC is CP in Spanish). Click the image to get more details.

    I will try to update the race progress every day. I am relay impressed how many people are following the race. 

    Feb 10, 2009

    Patagonian expedition. The life tracking is ON!

    http://www.patagonianexpeditionrace.com/tracking/
    The race starts in 15  minutes with long paddling on river and open water. After that about 100+ km of mountain bike and rough trekking, another bike for 150 km and about 90 km of open water. The final trekking of 120 km through mountains will determine the winner. Now in Punta Arenas 8 degrees C, wind NW 35 km/h, some chance of rain.
    Our team is Calleva, our number is 2.

    Feb 9, 2009

    Patagonian expedition starts in less than 24 hours.

    Val managed to send a message to facebook before leaving to the race briefing:
    "Hey everyone...HELLO FROM PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE!! Everyone arrived well and this is the first-only available attempt at correspondence before we leave... I am leaving for the race briefing, you all take care and i will enjoy the high winds and cold temps... "

    Team Calleva will fight against very strong international teams:
    "Team Buff  (Spain) and Team Easy Implant MT Compagnie.com (France) are previous Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race champions. This years racers have stood on the podiums of X-terra Brazil, EcoChallenge Australia, Primal Quest U.S.A., RAID North America, RAID Gauloises, Salomon X and the Adventure Racing World Championships. With this unprecedented racing pedigree, every minute and decision will be crucial in order to be a top finisher."

    Life tracking of the teams must be available tomorrow form the race website.

    Feb 5, 2009

    Team Calleva on the way to Patagonia!

    Today at 5 am team Calleva departed to Punta Arenas, Patagonia. I drove Mark, Sara, Val and Druce to the airport. It's me on the photo, staying on crutches in front of the guys. My big dream of the Patagonia Expedition Race is postponed by one year due to a knee injury. Fortunately, we had backups and the team is big and dynamic enough to deal with any troubles.
    I will keep the online coverage of the race from this blog. The website of the race is here. The race starts 8:00 am, February 10th.
    Team Calleva is sponsored by Calleva Outdoor Adventure.