USS Calleva.

USS Calleva sailboat is ready to leave the anchorage at National Harbor and sail down the Lower Potomac River. 5 days of fun learning about the riggings, charts, plotting, and sailing a big boat all the way to the Chesapeake Bay.
Team Calleva is jealous and wish a good luck to young sailors!

The Longest Day

After Rev3 Epic success Michelle and I decided to try another tough race – the Longest Day. I did two NYARA races in 2008 and 2009, but for Michelle it was the first race in Catskill Mountains. To go north we borrow big Suburban from Calleva and picked up Brain from team SOG Friday around 1 pm. Traditionally for NYARA races there was no Friday check-in and we spent the night in a very old, but stylish hotel 3 miles from the race start. Check in started at 5 am and was fast and very efficient. The race started at 7 am with o-course prologue where each team member had to find 4-5 check points at the slopes of the Belleayre Mountain ski resort. I manage to get lost near one of CPs and we left prologue within last 10 teams.
Next stage was long biking to the top of the mountain and down to the Ecopus creek, where we started the first hiking section. Rodney and Amy, the race directors promised 20,000+ feet of the total elevation gain and that’s where we got 2000+ of it. We bushwhacked to the mandatory CP at the top of the mountain, got one optional CP in the saddle and decided to skip two other optional CPs of this section. This race was all about navigation and strategy. Navigation was very tricky, but modified ROGAIN format of the race allowed us to choose the best set of CPs we could get.
After the O-course we descended to Ecopus creek downstream of the water releasing aqueduct and transitioned into whitewater raft. The raft was huge and it took us 30 minutes to learn how to control it with only 2 paddlers. When we came to the whitewater slalom site, we hit almost all gates, but judges were not impressed with our performance, as we couldn’t fit the raft into narrow gates -:).
From the raft we transitioned back onto bikes and started the longest and the steepest ascent of the race. It took us a couple of hours to get to the top, to Firewood tower from where you can see New York City (I guess). Downhill from the top was very rocky and technical single track, like our Gambrill, but 10 times longer. We managed to get both optional CPs of this section right before the dark and arrived to transition with all our lights on.
Next section was “The whole night O-Course”. That’s where we got the most of our optional points. We bushwhacked through the forest so thick that you cannot see the ground without touching it with your hands. It was very difficult navigation, as in most cases you cannot go straight line and have to detour around cliffs. We got the most possible number of point with the minimal elevation change (just about 4000 feet or so) and arrived to the Hunter Mountain right after Sunrise. Here was the rope course and the biggest surprise of the race.
It’s very hard to impress me with ropes after 20 years of vertical caving experience, but Hunter Mountain Zip Line was amazing. We did in total 4+ MILES of zip lines at up to 600 feet high wire stretched above the tree tops. That’s was the only point of the race I regret I don’t have my camera with me. If you have an opportunity, try it: the highest and the longest zip line in North America!
From the bottom of the zip line we hiked back up (+1000 feet) and then down (-1000 feet) to our bikes and ride straight to the finish. Straight line on the map was going through the last optional CP on the top of twelve hundreds feet mountain and we made it to the finish right before the race cut-off time of 1 pm.
We finished the race 1st in our category of coed-2 and 7th overall (out of 30 teams). 48 hours of Equinox Traverse is going to be our next race. See you Pennsylvania in one month.
Dima

Adventure Racing Astronomy and Botany

This Saturday is The Longest Day... and it will follow by the Longest Night... If you think it's wrong, you are an astronomer. If you think it's right, you are an adventure racer.

Here is report from a team of adventure racing biologists, local to The Longest Day area:

"We have started to scout the Longest Day area and have come upon two new (and little known) forms of plant life in the area....Rodney-dendron* and Amy-ryllis*.

Rodney-dendron (from Ancient Greek rhód "problematic", and déndron "tree")^[1][2] is a genus of over 1000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers. It includes the plants known to gardeners as azaleas.

The Rodney-dendron is a genus characterized by gnarly branches that are difficult to navigate and even harder to see through. The largest, R. giganteum, is reported to over 30 meters tall.^[3] The leaves are spirally arranged; and often contain a hidden check point (CP).  In some species the underside of the leaves is covered with scales (lepidote) or hairs (indumentum) and articles of clothing left by frustrated adventure racers.  They tend to come to full bloom between the hours of 1:00am to 4:00am.

Amy-ryllis (pronounced /ˌæmiˈrɪləs/)^[1] is also known as the belladonna lily. It is highly likely to find Rodneydendron and Amyryllis to be found growing in close proximity.

The genus has two species and the more famous of the two, Amaryllis belladonna, is a native of New York City and New Paltz, particularly the rocky southwest region near the Gunks.

Each plant is small but assertive. The plant is similar to stinging nettles if rubbed the wrong way."

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* Rodney and Amy are The Longest Day race directors and Course designers :-)

We are going north tomorrow, the 30 hours race starts 7 am Saturday. Team Calleva/HalfWayThere.com Michelle and Dima are ready for this astro-biological event. Looks like there is no life coverage for the race, but check CPT website, may be they will have something.