Is This Any Way to Make a Living? (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2003

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Is This Any Way to Make a Living? (Cont.)

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE START, clapping, cheering Primal Quest staffers herded antsy racers and support crew into the Telluride Conference Center. After an inspirational video with a soundtrack by Enya, racers were warned to bury or pack out human waste and informed by grim doctors about altitude-induced ailments like cerebral edema, which, basically, causes you to go insane and then die.

Afterward, each team was given

Barger set out to create the anti-eco-challenge, treating competitors as bona fide sportsmen and not unpaid actors in a wilderness soap opera.

a map and the locations of the first four checkpoints. With no specific line marked, it was up to the competitors to connect the dots, a process that can turn dangerous as racers scramble down cliffs, swim through rapids, and blunder through snake-infested jungles. Amazingly, since the first Raid Gauloises in 1989, only two fatalities have marred adventure racing's safety record—a female racer who died from heart failure during the Challenge of the Volcanoes race in South America last February, and a woman who died from hypothermia last June at the Fundy Multi-Sport Race in New Brunswick, Canada. Nine hours into this race, it looked like Primal Quest might produce the latest casualty. On the map, it had looked as if the quickest way to Checkpoint 3, the old Tomboy Mine, was up and over the saddle of Ajax, a relatively unremarkable little peak that looms over the east end of Telluride. As I slogged along with the team, I was foggy from the altitude but elated to be getting closer to CP4, which would mark the end of my participation and the beginning of a nice, cozy sleep in my hotel room.

When we reached the saddle, we peered over the edge into a steep, nasty couloir. Whoops. Far, far below, we could see a few lights—racers gathered at the checkpoint—and a slow train of headlamps waltzing gaily down the correct route, an old mining road leading down from Imogene Pass. We stepped gingerly onto the talus and then froze immediately when we heard yelling below: We were kicking rocks down onto other teams. We waited for them to clear, and then it was our turn. Terrified, we scree-surfed our way down as fast as we could. Then we noticed boulders rolling past us and scampered to the sides of the chute, where we stopped and shouted at the teams above us to cut it the hell out.

Too late. A boulder the size of a truck tire came rumbling out of the darkness. Illuminated by someone's headlamp, the rock wobbled through the air like an onside kick, picking up speed. Two teams—eight lights—froze in the middle of the chute. It plowed right through the trailing team, and a woman screamed, from either fright or pain.

"Is everyone OK?" Jan shouted. Silence.

"Is anybody hurt up there?" he called again.

Still no response. We got out of there as fast as we could.

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