August 15: Aussies and Kiwis thrive on water sections
By Dan Morrison

Team Eco-Internet leads the teams into the whitewater portion

After sorting out gear in pre-packed drop boxes at Camp 1, the competitors followed an 81-kilometer mountain bike route though a rainforest.

"It wasn't too bad," according to Robert Nagle, captain of Team Eco-Internet, "but the bridges were very slippery and very tricky."

Dropping their bikes at PC-18, the teams then tromped over steep hills and finally down to the Tully River. The only Dark Zone on this course, the put-in for the whitewater raft leg is closed from 6:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m.

The first team to reach the river was Team Eco-Internet, who arrived just before 7 a.m. They were followed closely by the French Team ARS with New Zealand/U.S. Team Endeavour arriving soon after.

The 15-kilometer river rafting section, billed as extremely technical with Class IV rapids, turned out to be just that. Although the rapids weren't difficult — there were no large drop-offs followed by potentially disastrous suck-holes — the river course ran through frustratingly demanding rock gardens with names like Staircase and Zig-Zag, where the wrong approach or even the wrong lean at the wrong time could leave a team stranded atop a semi-submerged boulder for many minutes, critical in a race like this.

After the rafting section, which, if negotiated properly could be completed in under three hours, the teams trekking through the rainforest for 19 kilometers and then mounted horses.

Unlike the previous two runnings of the Eco-Challenge, in which each team of five competitors rode two horses (do the math — that means three people running at all times trying to keep up with their two equestrian teammates) this year all the competitors rode, four horses per team.

Mark "Ox" Foster of Team Canterbury leaves Camp 2

At PC-23 on Maalan Road, (I'm relatively certain Maalan is an indigenous word for "Does this rain never stop?"), the teams traded horse saddles for mountain bike seats and rode their bikes for 18 kilometers into Mungali Falls, PC-24, Camp 2. At Camp 2 they were greeted for the second time by the drop boxes, and quickly sorted out gear and put on dry clothes.

In the 85 kilometers from the Tully river put-in, the order of the top teams has changed significantly. Although Team Eco-Internet was still hanging on to the lead, Team ARS had dropped from second to sixth, Team New Zealand was now close on the heels of Eco-Internet, followed by Team Canterbury of New Zealand in third, Team Pure Energy Australia holding down fourth, and Team Red Hot in fifth. Team Endeavour, who had gone through the Tully rapids in third place, had not yet checked into Camp 2 by 6 a.m.

Cathy Sassin, captain of Team ARS, puts the ranking of the top teams at this point in the race in its proper perspective. "Everyone is traveling in a pack. We're all within minutes of each other."

Actually, not "everyone" is within minutes of each other. As normally happens in a multi-day event, the race eventually breaks down into two groups: the top teams who have a realistic chance of winning, and the rest of the pack who have a realistic chance of finishing.

At this point in this event, there are no more than a dozen teams at most, and probably less than that, who can still hope to take home a winning paycheck.

And although even the top six teams checked into and out of Camp 2 over a period of almost eight hours, it is still way too soon to start predicting the winner.

Cathy Sassin of Team ARS rides on one-hour's sleep

Her team has been allowing themselves no more than an hour or so each night, and have decided they will catch an hour here before continuing the race back into the dripping rainforest.

"You've got to be careful what you wish for," Sassin says with a laugh, "because you can get it. We were in the middle of the heat and the spear grass with no water. We were out of water for a long time because we went super light, we only carried a liter and a half. And we were dehydrated and we thought, 'I just wish we were at the waterfall right now.' And look what we got. We've been wet for three days."

The river was demanding for Team ARS, as it will be for all those teams who make it far enough in the race to encounter it. "The whitewater rafting was way technical," according to Sassin. "The whole thing. The rapids weren't the problem. It was the little rocky sections that we had to maneuver the raft through, the raft didn't really fit. And you could get hung in there for hours."

Each raft carried a local river guide, someone who knew the river's many idiosyncrasies, its moods and its hidden dangers.

"It was all that little stuff that was really technical," Sassin says. "You had to be right on. There was a lot of leaning, lean left, lean right. You had to tip the boat a little bit one way or the other and then it was 'Lean-left-lean-right!' The guide maneuvered the boat at angles the whole way down the river. It was 'Back-paddle-quickly-change-quickly!' and he had us moving around and doing things in the boat every minute. He did great."

French Team ARS negotiates one of many obstacles in the Tully River

"You can make up hours in that distance," says Sassin. "It could go any way. There's 10 or 15 teams really close right now. Any of them could win it."

The last leg of the race will be an offshore kayak section, which could be on either slick-calm seas or in rolling, choppy surf, depending on the weather conditions.

"In the kayaking section a lot will depend on when you hit the tide," notes Sassin. "That's very important. I think it's going to be a paddler's race. It's going to end up that whoever knows how to paddle wins."

And does team captain Cathy Sassin think Team ARS think they will do will in the kayaks? "Oh yeah," she says with a wicked grin. "We have a secret ..."

Dan Morrison covered the Marathon des Sables for Outside Online.