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.)

AT THE FINISH LINE in Mountain Village, a few photographers, journalists, cameramen, and race staff mingled with family, fans, and a handful of curious onlookers. "Oh, it's the Eco-Quest thing," a tourist dad explained to his son. The Telluride Adventure 360 Festival was just setting up, and a few forlorn expo tents fluttered in the Village's faux-European plazas. Those who were on hand weren't quite sure where to look until the lead team appeared around the corner of a condo complex. Skirting the barriers for the weekend's mountain-bike races, the four trotted past a row of portable toilets to the finish, where they hugged one another while champagne corks popped and the media moved in.

Barger had hoped to make Primal Quest more spectator-friendly by looping the course through town. But that move mainly produced quizzical looks and honking horns as haggard racers stumbled into traffic. He'd also planned for teams to finish on Friday or Saturday, at the peak of the Adventure Festival. But the top teams flashed the shortened course much faster than he'd estimated.

Fresh and merry after their eight-hour penalty-nap, Montrail had caught and passed four other teams, including GoLite, to move into second. Then, at the top of the gondola—the final checkpoint—the team got another surprise: a five-page indictment from officials detailing myriad infractions by Montrail's overeager support crew. (Examples: trespassing on private property, borrowing badges from other support crews, stashing food and water in a portable john.) The cost: a 90-minute delay, to be served at the gondola station. "It was like getting in trouble in school," huffed Montrail's Novak Thompson.

Once the top teams finished, the air seemed to leak out of the race. Mountain Village was taken over by well-muscled climbers and downhill mountain bikers, with their anatomically improbable girlfriends. Wasted, filthy adventure racers wandered into the base area from time to time, including Team Stryker, which passed oodles of teams to take a solid 17th place (out of 39). The finish area began to smell of stale champagne, complementing the racers' own pungent reek. By week's end, no one except a few friends, family, and crew seemed to be aware that the biggest adventure race in the country was still in full swing.

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