I attended the Northwest Adventures TRIOBA Race clinic this last weekend (April 12th and 13th). The training was held on Lake Cle Elum, and in the Wenatchee National Forest area, Northeast of Cle Elum, Washington. Here's an accounting of the training event, and some teaser information about the first 24 hour TRIOBA race, and the area we'll be covering for that race.

Friday night was preparation night. Gathered food, gear, bike, etc... and packed the vehicle up. It continues to amaze me everytime I prepare for a weekend training outing, encompasing multiple events, how long it takes to prep gear. I probably spent the better part of four hours gathering, checking, testing, and packing gear. On top of gear for the weekend, I planned to (tent) camp Saturday night, so I had to get all of my camping gear together.

Kathleen helped with food, making sure I had enough food for two days of hardcore activity, and camp food for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Saturday morning I rose very early (4:30 AM), showered, got breakfast and coffee, and headed out the door. I was on the rode about 5:10 AM. I estimated it'd take a good 4 and a half hours to get to Lake Cle Elum. From the moment I rose, until the moment I got to Lake Cle Elum, it was pretty much raining like mad.

I arrived at the lake at 9:45, a little later than I wanted to get there, as the paddling training started at 10:00 AM. However, I had anticipated not having much time to change into my paddling gear, so I had everything ready to go, and easily accessible. I quickly got into my base layers, pulled on my long sleeve spray shirt, very thin hiking waterproof/windproof lightweight pants, my neoprene booties, PFD, and my Camelbak with water and food.

There was a very good turnout for the event, especially considering it had been raining hard all morning. There were about 40 people total, with a strong showing from the pdxAdventureRacer.com crowd. Reed and Andrea showed up with thier wife/husbands, Craig (one of our new members) showed up, and Tiffany and her boyfriend Dennis also showed. (If I'm missing anyone else, give a shout!) All in all - (counting Reed and Andrea's wife/husband) it appeared that pdxAdventureRacer.com was fielding eight people.

I noticed a couple of times WA state trainees saying "Wow! You guys are from Portland? How many of you are there here!". That felt good to see Portland have a good showing!

The weather did start lifting about the time we all got ready to kick off for the kayaking practice. However, it was pretty windy on the lake, and there was good chop blowing in from the Northwest.

If you weren't aware, the whole purpose of the paddling section was to get everyone into the dreaded blow-up Seyvlor kayaks. I've never paddled a blow-up kayak like the Seyvlor, so this was a great experience for me. I'd heard about how squirelly these things are, and I wasn't disappointed! Paddling directly into the chop was fun. The slightest push of a wave causes the entire kayak to swing wildly about 90 to as much as 180 degrees in the other direction.

I found it fairly easy to paddle the kayak, as long as no external wave action was messing around with my direction. You have to concentrate very carefully on your paddling stroke to keep the boat going in a straight line. I didn't have much success in keeping the boat tracking on a dead straight line, but with a bit of wiggling and wandering, was able to get it from point A to point B.

Unfortunately, I only paddled a single Seyvlor, so didn't get any experience working with another paddler, and seeing how the kayak would respond to paddling effort from two paddlers.

We finished up the paddling training around 11:30. I headed into Cle Elum and picked up some lunch at a local bakery. Then I headed out to Teanaway Campground, where the remainder of the weekend training activities would be staged out of. The directions on how to get to the campground were horrible. Mileage distances wrong, road names slightly wrong, etc... After a couple of wrong turns, I finally found the campground.

Or so I thought. It looked pretty dismal, a place where local kids obviously came out to drink beer and party. A huge mud puddle dominated the center of the campground, in which several empty beer bottles floated, cardboard beer cartons, and various trash. I was a bit shocked, and started considering getting a hotel room for the Saturday night stay.

I arrived right after the noon hour. The orienteering portion of the training event was scheduled to start at 2:00 pm. I did expect to see a few folks there from the paddling training that morning, but alas there was noone. I sat around for an hour...and the clock slowly marched towards the start time for the orienteering.

I was pretty sure I was in the right place, as the sign at the front of the road said Teanaway Campground. Finally someone showed up. I ended up talking to him for a few moments, and he mentioned a possible turn back by the entrance to what I thought was the campground. So, we headed back towards the other area. Sure enough, I had missed the turn!

Which, wasn't too hard to do. The turn was a dirt road, with a cow grate across it, and the sign for Teanaway Campground was clearly past this turn off. Ah well, I guess I shouldn't complain too much, considering the vast bulk of the racers had managed to figure it out!

From 2:00 to 3:00 pm we did a basic navigation training clinic. Justin and Joel from Northwest Adventures went over the basics of taking a bearing, reading map topology, handrails, catching features, etc... All in all pretty basic stuff. They offered to let those who were comfortable with the basics to go ahead and take off for the Orienting portion.

I decided to hang back and listen to the training. You never know when you'll come across a tip, technique, or some valuable nugget of information on how to do something better, faster, or more efficiently. I initially planned on tagging along with Reed, Andrea, and their SO's. However, I was approached by a nice guy named Rod, (who mentioned that we might have missed the turn, earlier) who wanted to know if he could team up with me.

I decided that would be just fine, so I bailed from the Reed/Andrea group. As we headed out, a lady named Carla asked if she could tag along too. She brought Daisy along with her, who is an Australian Shepherd. Very very sweet, nice, well behaved dog (I don't much like dogs, so it was nice to meet a good one!).

The weather at this point had turned beautiful. Most of the clouds cleared up, it was sunny, warm, and a beautiful spring afternoon. We set out on the Orienteering course just about 3:00 pm sharp. The course consisted of about 6 miles of travel, as measured on the map, with 7 check points, plus the finish line.

The terrain was perfect fo an intermediate level Navigation training practice. There were several well defined features to use to orient off of (hill tops, saddles, ridges, rivers, etc...), and the terrain was hilly enough that you had to rely on multiple navigation methods to take and keep your bearing.

Throughout the course, I worked with Rod and Carla to help them learn how to orient. I really enjoy teaching, as it forces me to stop, think, and break down what I know and have learned, and make it palatable to someone else. It really forces me to carefully think over each of the steps I go through in a skill, and really formalize what I'm doing, which helps me internalize and analyze what I am doing.

The course also had enough catching features, hand rails, and prominent topology points to make the navigation fun, informational, and full of great elements to work with. We used several different methods to locate the various CPs.

From the start line to CP1, we simply followed the West Fork of the Teanaway River for about 500 meters, until the North Fork of the river merged with the West Fork. CP1 was located at the point where they merged. We had to do some bush whacking for the last few hundred meters through willow scrub.

CP1 to CP2 was pretty easy, travel up the North Fork for about 100 meters, cross over the river on the bridge. At that point we had a decent navigational decision to make. We could then travel up the west side of the North Fork of the river, then at aprox. the right distance, head 80 to 100 feet uphill to the ridgeline where the CP marker should be. Or, better yet, travel slightly West of our objective, and head up a relatively easy ridge to the correct eleveation, then grab the drop-off to our right as a handrail. We then would simply wander along the length of the drop-off, until we hit the CP. We hit CP2 dead on also.

CP2 to CP3 also had a couple of different attack methods. We could either drop down into a steep valley, and follow a seasonal stream bed up the very sharp valley, up to a hanging meadow, or we could shoot a bearing, just to the right of the CP, then grab the seasonal stream as a handrail, and follow it in to the CP. We chose to shoot the bearing, mostly because it didn't require us to drop down 100 feet in elevation, and then have to hike back up the valley. We reached the hanging meadow, just about where I expected to. The map showed a road sweaping by at the top of the valley, but there was no CP. I decided not to trust that road as being the marked road, as there are dozens of logging roads and trails not marked on the map.

Sure enough, after travelling another 100 yards up the road, we found the CP marker. Travelling from CP3 to CP4 presented several possible routes. I let Rod decide on the method, and he chose to shoot a direct bearing, pick a point on that bearing, heading to it, shooting another bearing, etc... All in all, it went pretty well, we ended up drifting off to the left a little bit, not terribly much, only about 50 yards, over the course of 1/2 mile - but over a greater distance, that's an error rate that will stack up.

CP4 to CP5 was fairly straight forward, but we again had to chose a route, we could either go left or right around a hill top, or go over the top of it. Since the hilltop was a relatively prominent high point in the area, and we were already near the top, we decided to climb up it, and take a visual bearing towards CP5. The view from up there was beautiful, it was a great big huge granite rock top, as large as a football field. As chance would have it, we could see the CP5 marker almost about 4/10ths of a mile away. We just happened to chose the exact spot on the hill top that was the only visual angle to see the CP5 marker!

We hoofed it at a pretty quick walk pace for CP5. From CP5 to CP6, we decided to take a bearing to the North of our CP and to then grab an access road as a handrail, then follow that down to a small valley where CP6 was tucked into. We ended up doing a bit more bush whacking, and stomping through some pretty marshy, wet, and muddy meadows.

We grabbed the road, but quickly got a bit nervous about it being the right road. There was only one clearly defined merging of two roads (on the map), which we were shooting for, but in reality, there were four roads that merged, all relatively well travelled. We headed down the road as planned, hoping it was the right one. However, we quickly realized we had the right road, about a 100 meters down the road, we saw our objective valley to the right. I pointed down the valley, and said, "There!" I bet the CP is right there. We wandered down into the valley, and sure enough, there it was!

After that, all of the real navigating was over with. CP6 to CP7 was very easy, drop down out of the hills to a major access road, cut across a meadow to the West Fork of the Teanaway River, and there's CP7. After that we shot back across the meadow to the access road and hoofed it back for about 2 miles to the campground.

Despite having been the 2nd to last group to leave the campground, we gained and passed 3 or 4 groups in the hills. I believe there were about 8 or 9 groups total that went out. We only walked the course, at a moderate pace, stopped frequently to discuss our various routes, orient on the map, do some basic terrain identification exercises, and generally enjoyed the afternoon. ...yet, nearly perfect navigation allowed us to leisurely stroll the course and pick up several spots in the rankings (non-existant as those "rankings" were...).

That evening, we went over some more navigational exercises, I helped with some UTM training for some of the members, and most of the trainees generally tried to pump Justin and Joel of race course information. None of which was given up!

We spent the evening around a campfire, socializing, having dinner, and relaxing. I broke from the group about 9:30 PM or so, and headed for bed.

About 2:20 AM, I was woken up from the pouring raing. From then until about 5:00 AM, I woke up several times from the rain, checked the tent out several times, generally was satisfied that I was as dry as could be expected, and snoozed back off. From 7:00 AM until 9:00 am was morning waking, coffee, food, getting gear together, etc. The whole time during which it absolutely poured on us!

The morning Mountain Bike ride was going to be wet, muddy, and grueling! Fortunately, it started to lighten up around 9:00 AM, when we were taking off. The group got off and going about 9:15 AM. The ride was to be about 15 miles long, with some pretty decent hill climbing up front.

Decent turned into bloody grueling. The hills in that area are blessed with the same thick nasty clay-type mud we've got in a lot of areas around Portland. Better yet, they have lots and lots of mixed clay and sand! This provided for a beatufiul compacting/clumping action - fouling up any and all moving parts, shoes, brakes, you name it...and sanding down any nice finishes on your bike!

We ended up hiking our bikes up the majority of the 1500 foot climb. ...and fortunately for me, I have the absolute worst tires for that type of clay. My tires are designed for dry loose trails, for maximum traction and gripping. Hence, my nobbies are very closely spaced, which doesn't allow the clay/mud to shed. Some of the folks out there had tires that were much more rounded (rather than the wide squared tires I have), with very widely spaced nubbies. Although they got a decent amount of build up on their bikes my (and several of the other riders, too!) were attaining record setting clumps of clay and mud that weighed easily from 30 to 50 pounds. Try pusing 60 to 80 pounds of bike up a 50+ degree slope! Yuck!

Fortunately, once the up-front climbing was done, the remainder was scooting along a ridge top, with gentle rolling up/down/up/down action. We hit several patches of snow, and had to hike the bikes through the majority of them. At one point we missed a critical turn, and ended up dropping several hundred feet of elevation, which we had to climb back up. We spent the next mile or two pushing through some pretty deep snow on the trails. It was a shame, because that ride would have been killer, if the snow had been gone, and the surface a bit dry.

We finally dropped down far enough that we had a decision, head down some single track, or take a logging road back. The single track had the potential to be the same thick nasty mud we'd been encountering all day, which would add some significant time to the ride. I and most of the group opted for the logging road back, as I wanted to get my gear together quickly, and get home, as it was pushing 1:00 pm Sunday, and I had 4.5 hours of driving home left.

The logging trail, although 95% downhill action, was just as much work. It was thick, muddy, and sandy. You had to peddle hard to just keep the bikes moving...no easy coasting there! At one point the two of us bombing down up front encountered a nice mud pit. We could tell it was pretty deep and nasty, and that we likely wouldn't make it through. We slowed enough that if we couldn't make it through, we wouldn't go sailing over our handlebars (several people through the morning had done seom endo-action trying to attack the snow drifts that were just too deep). We hit the mud, and it was like the fist of god closing around our bikes - proclaiming we would stop dead. We sunk about 12 to 14 inches deep into the mud.

Forward momentum, being one of those pesky laws of Newtonian Physics (equal and opposite reactions, and all that stuff)... demanded that something had to give. So, we both ended up plummetting over to our sides, into the mud pit. Fortunately, both of us were able to get our feet out of the pedals, and catch ourselves from going completely over. But in the process of stomping down into the mud to regain our balance....we sunk knee deep in the mud.

The sounds of fierce braking ensued behind us, as the riders behind us desperately encouraged their poor sodden, wet, and nearly useless brake systems to bring them to a groaning, creaking stop. Fortunately, they kept from plowing into the back of us, and into the mud pit.

I nearly lost both my shoes into the mud, as trying to pull them out became a struggle. The mud demanded penance for us disturbing it - and chose to render penance in the form of bike shoes. Fortunately, we got away with out dropping any coin in the collection plate. That was certainly the deepest, nastiest mud pit I've ever witnessed!

Nothing on the X-Dog/Big Red Lizard Dirty Du compared to that mud pit (sorry Kevin!).

Another few quick miles brought us down out of the highlands. We wandered through a fast moving stream, about 12 to 15 feet wide. Boy is that snow-melt, spring run-off, frigid water darned cold! But, that wasn't the end of our water fording fun! We also, unbeknown to us, had to ford the West Fork of the Teanaway River! Okay, calf deep stream water is cold, and certainly will make you pause - considering to cross it. But, 50 feet wide of rapidly moving snow-melt, 2 foot plus deep, River - will definitely make you pause!

We all safely made it across, no mishaps or spills. ...and we even took the oportunity to dunk our bikes and clean several pounds of mud off them!

Sadly, the group that took the single track, showed up just as we finished crossing the River. They proclaimed the single-track down was the single best part of the ride, dry, the trails in good shape - and they just bombed down it. Dang! I really wanted to hit some fast downhill single track!

Okay. Sad for me, not so sad for them!

After that, it was just a few miles of access road back to the campground, cleanup, change, and get out of Dodge!

All in all, the training was awesome! The terrain fun, and the paddling educational, and the orienteering was excellent. WELL worth the trip and the time!

(Okay - for those of you that hung on to the bitter end of this tale - hoping to get some nuggets on the race course ... ... know this - the course will cover the same terrain as our training took us over!)