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