Taken Away Camping

On the May long weekend, I was wisked away camping to somewhere that I'd never been before. I don't think anyone had ever done that before, even though I've gone on some great weekends with others. So this was a treat!!! Just to not make the plans and just to pack camping gear - which I did get in trouble for bringing too much stuff, but I'm a girl?!?! Mark is the current man who I did meet online. Actually, for the record, we had met years ago through mutual friends of ours, but I was with Sean and he was with someone else then. It was an interesting first date that's for sure. Back to camping - the weather was supposed to be really rainy here on the coast, so we went north of Whistler towards Lillooet and then another hour west of Lillooet towards Gold Bridge. Beautiful mountain country up there.

We got up there quite late on the Friday night and camped in a free BC Hydro site. There's quite a lot of them up there and are free!! In the morning we weren't woken up by anyone, but soon after there were a LOT of ATVs zipping around camp and the tunes from big trucks were fired up. Not exactly what we had in mind. We went out for a ride and quickly came across Mowson Pond where noone was camping so we headed back to move camp for some quiet.



Being "taken" camping also meant that I had to not do things the way that I'm used to doing them. That was good for me to let go of having my way, but put my foot down when it was important to me. Had to bring my cooler for car camping so I could have fresh veggies and fruit. Not used to letting someone else that I'm involved with take the lead in the wilderness, but again it's good for me. Mark has done more than I so I trust him that he knows what he's doing also. The next day we headed off towards Spruce Lake on our mountain bikes. We had to travel on some dirt and logging roads before we hit the single track. Most of it was ridable for me, but as we went on there were so many trees blown down along the trail that it was annoying so we didn't make the lake and just biked back around another way to camp. I have a couple of pics of me biking, but had problems uploading those so you don't get any - sorry. Here's a view of the valley that we were hanging out in.



We managed to escape most of the rain so Mark had picked a great location. It's also one of his favourite places. Apparantly, I need some lessons in being more gutsy on my mountain bike. I am a bit of a chicken, but I don't like wiping out and am also more hesitant since I don't want to get injured for my Ironman training. He was very patient in waiting for me, but he can't wait until Ironman is over so I can begin my biking lessons. He is that good of a mountain biker, and he also understands the desire to ride/hike for hours and has trained with me on the bike. That is certainly a selling feature of him. Anyways, the weekend was great and look forward to seeing where we head to next.

Momar

I just did this adventure race called the Momar (Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race) up in Squamish. They usually have this race series on Vancouver Island, but this was the first time on the mainland. You can do it solo, in pairs or in a team of 4. I chose to do it with my friend Colleen since she's lots of fun, we are pretty evenly matched in the disciplines and would have the same attitude towards it. We wanted to try to do well, but have fun and enjoy it too. It's hard to find someone who is so closely matched in the different sports and we were - she's a little better on the technical mountain biking though and was patient enough to wait for me at times especially when my bike was cooperating. In Squamish it's really, really windy - which is why there is good kite and windsurfing there - but there was no paddling for us. :( Sad for us as we are both good paddlers - her better than I - hence, our team name of "Where's the Paddling?".

We lucked out on having a warmer, sunny day for the race. We only knew that we were starting at Alice Lake and we going to be hiking, running, navigating, rappelling and mountain biking, in no particular order. An hour before the race started we were given the map of most of the course except for the first 7 checkpoints. These checkpoints are throughout the race to make sure you stay on course and you must stamp a passport given to you. We had some time to study the map since there are lots of trails in the area so we had to mark on the map key areas where it may have been easy to make a wrong turn and lose time and energy. We both knew some of the trails and were lucky enough to have had a training ride a couple weeks before on the first part of the bike course. So glad we did that!!!

Just before the race began, we were given another map in an envelope which we all opened at the start of the race together which had the first 6 checkpoints in it. It was a run and we could get the checkpoints for this map in any order we wanted. Colleen and I took our time at the beginning to make sure we had read all of the instructions and made a plan before running all over the place. We did lose a lot of time, but mentally we were good since we worked together as a team and felt good with what we were doing. My only beef was that the map showed a "paved" road at the beginning so we looked at little, but then there was only a gravel road in the area so we took it - losing more time!!! Here we are trying to find the "paved" road.(click for photo)

Here we are running on the "paved" road. (click for photo)

The route was a great trail run that I'd like to go back to. We had to cross an old wood bridge when one of the boards broke under Colleen and she was up to her hip on the bridge. Holy scary. Not that it was high, but that she could have seriously injured herself. Luckily all was good. There was one checkpoint that we could have bushwacked to and saved some time, but we took the safe way just in case we missed it, but bushwacked. Oh well. Live and learn.

We got back to the lake and had to get on our bikes for a good ride. Some technical and some not. Compared to the other gals, we certainly lost time on the technical parts, but oh well. I'm not up for riding down a black diamond yet. It was faster and safer for me to run down. We made one small navigational error, but not too bad. We kept leapfrogging the other team of two gals for first and second - depending on where the technical part of the bike was. We, then, got off our bikes and changed into our running shoes, but the other gals just had runners on so got ahead of us. It had looked like we might be stronger runners, but we didn't see them anywhere so we just did what we could. The Stairway to Heaven was great, but it just kept climbing and climbing. Who knew Heaven was so far up!! At least it felt like Heaven not to climb anymore. Would go back and do that hike again for sure as it's quiet with fantastic views!!! It was great to do some trails that I hadn't been on that also had great views for most of the race.

Back on our bikes we got and made it to the rappelling. It was a short rappel - 30m. Colleen had only rappelled for the first time a couple of weeks beforehand and did awesome!! I'm proud of her for overcoming her fear of heights for the race. Back on our bikes again into the town of Squamish. Here they gave us a map of the town and some clues about the last checkpoints. Some math and word scramble to figure out an address. We made the mistake of not reading through all of the clues, but a really nice man mentioned that there was a checkpoint that we almost ran by so that we wouldn't have had to come all the way back to there. How lucky were we?? There was another one about finding a bike shop near the Chubby Chicken. We didn't see a restaurant called that, but there was a guy who looked a little disgruntled running back towards us and he said that it was in the plaza we had just passed. Huh??? Anyways, we got the checkpoint and they told us that you could get Cubby Chicken at the A&W. Who knew?? I don't have cable or eat at A&W. We are adventurers and I don't need to adventure into Chubby Chicken.

We got the last couple of checkpoints and finally finished after about 5 1/2 hours!! Phew. It was fun, tiring and a great day overall. We still didn't know what happened to that other female team we had been racing with since they weren't at the finish. We hoped that they hadn't got injured, but finally came in 30 minutes later as they had taken a wrong turn on the Stairway to Heaven. Good for us, but thankfully they were ok. We were just lounging at the finish and a big gust of wind came up and blew the whole finish line down which was a pretty solid structure. Luckily no one was standing under it. After we had some food, we left and retrieved our bikes.

The post race dinner was a great buffet. The whole event is well worth the $$$ and is very well organized. Brian does a great job and the volunteers were friendly. They did have a band and slide show afterwards, but we were "lame" and tired so left before the party got going. This is certainly an event for all levels if you can go for a few hours. I would do one again, but not this year. It's all about Ironman and I can't afford to crash on my mountain bike too much and avoid injuries. Colleen had done a Momar last year solo and said she had much more fun doing it with someone else. So all you adventurers out there, check out the Momar site.