The plan was to leave Pretoria about 14:00 in order to set up camp at Mnweni before dark, get our gear ready and study the maps that were to be handed out at 21:00 and get a few hours of sleep before our 3:00 am start. Running about 4 hours behind schedule however, we only arrived at Mnweni Cultural Centre after 23:00 and eventually gathered at the 2:30 race briefing with no sleep at all!
Hike 1
3am and we were off. Being an adventure racer, I should probably not worry too much about running through mud and water, but I prefer dry shoes. On all the Ystervark races however, we were in the water early on in the race and with the Amazing it was no different. Thanks Bruce for your strategic placement of the race passports…
CP1 was easy enough to find, but CP2 a bit more tricky. In the dark I mistook a smaller side stream (complete with its own double drop waterfall) for the main kloof and spent some time looking up and down this stream for CP2. Eventually it was Cobus and Chris who saw the bigger kloof around the corner. What an amazing sight! Fortunately we didn’t lose too much time and after clipping CP2 were soon on our way to CP3 in the kloof from where we saw the sunrise. There is just something special about starting to race in the dark and then seeing the day break while you are out there somewhere in the mountains. I have to admit that my night navigation with no moon to light up natural features leaves a lot of room for improvement, so to me the sunrise was a particular welcoming site!
The rest of hike 1 was pretty straight forward and CP’s 3 – 7 easy to find in the daylight. With the fantastic view from the cave at CP5, it was actually possible to scout ahead all the way to CP7 while we enjoyed a breakfast break (nothing like an energy bar for breakfast). I particularly enjoyed the hike from CP5 on the ridge to CP7 at the pools – cool in the shade of the mountain, and beautiful sights all the way with majestic cliffs begging to be climbed! Chris and Lowinda provided non-stop entertainment along the way, taking turns to disappear into some hidden hole.
Back at base all the good intentions about quick-quick 10 minute transitions went down the drain with the sight of the breakfast table, complete with weetbix, coffee and rusks. There was no real rush in any case, since Chris had to take care of a nasty cut he obtained during one of his disappearing acts just before CP6, so there we were eating and chatting for about 30 minutes before we were on the road again.
MTB 1
My usual reply when asked “full suspension or hard tail?” is that a hard tail is the weapon of choice when racing marathon distances and that I’ll save the full sus option for when I’m an old toppie. Well, I was eyeing Lowinda’s full sus with a lot of jealousy. When your body is tired from hours of AR, every bit of luxury becomes essential! Maybe I’ll become an ‘old toppie’ much sooner than originally anticipated.
This leg provided some pretty touch cycling with the monster climb before CP9 breaking a few backs. Some local boys helped us with the river crossing, showing us where to cross and even carrying some of our bikes across. One little chap almost got washed away but managed to regain his footing while holding on to Lowinda. I wonder if they can swim?
At CP10, Cobus somehow didn’t see us turning off the main gravel road to the Telkom tower and raced straight past. Being under the impression that we were still ahead of him, he did his best to try and catch up while we tried our best to catch up with him! The locals along the way telling both him and us “yes he/they went this way” didn’t help much. Luckily he was racing in the right direction and we managed to catch up with him at last at the turnoff to the Woodstock Dam transition, both parties being pretty relieved to see each other.
Our bike-to-paddle transition was not much faster than T1 and it took us 30 minutes to share with our seconds all our mtb stories, relax a bit under the gazebo, kit up and devour plate fulls of delicious pasta, baby potatoes and many other lovely snacks! Thanks Albert and Celeste, you guys were the best!
PADDLE
Nothing much to report on this leg with plain sailing all the way. I must say though that I was seriously missing the action of Wilge River. 2.5 hours of flat water paddling in the scorching sun together with the humidity just before the rain came, makes you wanting to capsize your boat on purpose just to take a swim. Back at the transition, this is exactly what I did – leke refreshing swim!
MTB 2
Straight forward cycling all the way back to base with one broken chain being our only mechanical incident for the entire race. We caught up with team For the Love as they were fixing their 3rd or 4th flat tire since leaving the dam and cycled with them back to the cultural centre. It is amazing how adventure racing never really feels like ‘racing’ at all! Well, at least not at the level were are doing it. There is always time to share a joke or have a chat with your opponents.
HIKE 2
With our tummies full of pasta and snacks, we waved our goodbyes to our seconds just as the sun started to set. Once again the luxury of dry shoes was not meant to be as we crossed the river 5 minutes into the hike. It probably would have been possible to cross individually, but we thought we would try out the ‘group hug technique’ which worked exceptionally well!
The hike up to CP16 on the ridge in the fading light was really enjoyable and straightforward, since we could see the ridge and supposed position of CP16 from the river and therefore easily plan what route to take. I can imagine though that the teams searching for this CP in the dark could have struggled.
At CP16 we met up with For the Love again and hiked with them towards CP17. Now, I was sure that locating CP17 would be a piece of cake – just follow the contour from CP16 for +/- 3km, cross the kloofie and there it should be! Not at all. If only we had spent 5 minutes less at each transition!! With that extra 20 minutes of daylight we would probably have been able to see and plan the entire route all the way to CP19 from CP16 (or at least en route to CP17). Once again I realised just how different and challenging navigation at night can be when you can’t see any natural features, not even the cliffs right next to you! Our two teams ended up spending more than 2 hours searching for CP17 and eventually decided to skip 17, search for 18 instead and from there work our way back to 17.
From CP17 we followed a track that was supposed to go down to the river. In hindsight I should have taken a compass bearing from 17 to 19 and followed that instead of following tracks in the dark, because that track ended up traversing back to CP16. By the time I decided to leave it and go straight down to the river, we didn’t have the benefit of an accurate known position on the map anymore. As we were hiking down a ridge, we saw For the Love’s lights a couple 100m below us by the river, going upstream! They obviously mistook the first smaller stream we had to cross for the main river and were heading in completely the wrong direction in their hunt for CP19. If we ever had an opportunity to overtake them (they were physically quite a bit stronger than us), this was it. Soon after reaching the valley bottom, however, the dark buggered things up again. We crossed more streams than what I was expecting (more than shown on the 1:50 000) and eventually came to what seemed to be a much higher embankment/hill/mountain than expected on the other side. We followed the river along the foot of this mountain towards the confluence with the main river up to a point where we were cornered by the river on the left and cliffs on the right.. Hey, this isn’t supposed to be here, unless I’ve got our location completely wrong!! Where the heck are we?!
After studying the map and our surroundings (as far as our torches threw light) for a while, I had to admit that I wasn’t sure where we were anymore. A minute ago I was just a little uncertain, but now these ‘cliffs’ threw me off completely! Eventually Cobus suggested that we take a short power nap while we wait for the moon to rise to hopefully throw some light on our predicament. Everybody was pretty knackered anyway and could do with a rest, so with Cobus’s suggestion still echoing in the dark, the backpacks were cast aside, the sleeping bag, space blankets and shelter rolled open and we settled for the what turned out to be a 5 hour ‘power nap’ on some farmer’s mielie land. About an hour after we settled down, For the Love came past and we shared a few ideas on where we thought we were. As they were leaving, I heard them saying that they are also going to look for a spot to sleep a bit further downstream.
Waking up to a brilliant daybreak around 5am the next morning was a great feeling. We were all rested and it turned out that we were exactly where I thought we were! The ‘cliffs’ of the previous night were not really cliffs at all and the ‘mountain’ on our right were only a little hill. It’s amazing how different things look in the dark. So over the hill we went straight to CP19. Shortly after CP19 we passed a team that slipped past us sometime during the night and less than an hour after we woke up, we walked into the cultural village, all smiles, well rested and ready for breakfast!
Thanks Hardy and Bruce for putting together such a memorable event and Brendon for sponsoring the club team. Great event!! And thanks to my team mates and our great seconds – wouldn’t have been as much fun without you. Allie and Celeste, next time I’ll help to second to that you can take part in the race 
- Nicol Jordaan
3rd Place Tshwane AR Club (27:57) - 2x Seconds, Lowinda Jaquire, Nicol Jordaan (CPT), Cobus Stals and Chris Pretorius
