There will obviously be a lot of race reports to follow but in the mean time let me just say that this was the best adventure race that I have done in years! It will be difficult to rate all the ARs that I have done since 2001 in precise order but there were a couple that stand out and Expedition Africa 2013 now firmly forms part of those fond AR memories.
Why I liked it:
It was hard, very hard long technical legs, there was lots of technical hiking:
- Scrambling up and down difficult mountain slopes and passes through uncharted terrain
- Lots of hard kloofing and rock hopping
The paddling had everything:
- Long night paddle (with fr!ggin 400m swim) over Woodstock dam
- Long river paddle with interesting portages
- Some serious rapids taking lots of casualties – we lost a paddle and had to finish the paddle with 3 paddles towing the one boat. Must say the rapids were great fun just wish we were more experienced at rapids – will have to look at that!
- Big waves on Sterkfontein dam with five-metre visibility in the mist. I initially nailed the bearing we were paddling on, then upon hitting the other side misread the land that we could make out through the mist and headed off in a 90 deg wrong direction. Realised the error and finally made it into transition.
The mountain biking had an excellent mix of gravel roads, single track and even a bit of hike-a-bike. I know some people complain about the hike-a-bike but personally I have no problem with that as long as it forms part of the natural flow of a race which in this case it did.
Route Choices – In the words of Whackhead “Oh my greatness”.
This might have been one of the best races concerning different route choices and options to go around or over, safe and long or dangerous and short. As a navigator I just looove that. The last mountain in the end proved to be a bit of a bummer since most teams hit it at night with about 5m of visibility in the mist and since there were no paths or passes indicated on the maps you had to guess where you might be able to get down based on contour lines. And as everybody knows by now it has caused major havoc among the teams trying to get down that mountain getting cliffed out at each corner. In hindsight it would have been nice if Stephan had just drawn in a couple of the passes down the mountain on the map to take the guesswork out of the equation.
Scenic – well you don’t get more scenic than this. It’s such a pity the cameras couldn’t capture everything we had seen:
- Top of Tugela falls (3rd highest waterfall in the world I think) looking out over the world below
- The hike down Ifidi or Rockeries pass, both extremely spectacular passes with towering rock formations and dizzying drops
- Snow-capped mountains
- Kloofing through the dagga fields after the abseil
And about the abseil. Yes, maybe it was dangerous, but only if you’re not competent. The paddle through the rapids was far more dangerous for me than the abseil because I am not a very competent paddler and I need to work on it. Similar with the abseils, there were enough safety ropes leading up to the waterfalls and if you followed proper ropes procedures and worked together as a team, there was no reason to be unsafe. I enjoyed the abseils a lot !
This adventure race has lots of war stories, and that’s why we do it !
You don’t remember the easy ones. You remember the hard ones.
Remember: If it was easy any triathlete could have done it.
Thanx Stephan and Heidi – As always I’m in for next year !
Oh yes and as usual the organisation, transitions, transportation, briefing, prize giving and dinner was all up to the, by now, well known high Kinetic standards.
Author: Cobus van Zyl, Team Red Ants
Photo by Aya Kubota