Subaru Primal Quest Adventure Race Update

July 14, 2002 (6:30 am; Mountain Standard Time)

Greetings:

Team Santa Fe has finished the SPQ adventure race in 28^th place at 1:45 am this morning. This is after racing for 6 days and 9.5 hours.

I have not talked to the team or support crew since my last e-mail update. They apparently have been out of cell phone coverage. So I will summarize what I knew based on the website reports.

Two of  the SPQ teams dealing with yet another river crossing and a 400' rappel. (photo credit: SPQ website www.ecoprimalquest.com)

Team Santa Fe had another 24-hour stint on their mountain bikes between CP21 and CP24. They met the support crew at CP23 at 9:30 pm on Friday and rested there until 2 am on Saturday. They had a last long leg on the mountain bikes that got them into CP24 at 12 noon. This is the transition area to the next trekking and rappelling leg. Based on the reports from earlier teams, this trekking section was very challenging as well. The teams had to carry their rappelling gear with them on the trek and take it the rest of the way to the finish line at Telluride. They hit CP25 of the trekking leg at 2:50 pm and then went on to CP26, arriving there at 10:15 pm. That meant that they had to do the 400’ rappel in the dark. They completed the rappel and hiked the 5 miles to CP27 by 1 am. I suspect that they had to wait a bit at the rappel location because there were 2 other teams just ahead of them that were "short coursed". (This means that these other teams were not going to make the time cutoffs at the back of the pack so they were allowed to cut the course short, and will be scored as such.) They arrived at the finish at 1:45 am, presumably to meet the support crew and friends that were able to make it to the finish. I am sure that they are now sleeping.

An anonymous racer showing the wear of the race. (photo credit: SPQ website www.ecoprimalquest.com)

There are currently 29 qualified teams listed as having finished the race. This is still less than half the teams that started. At this point 13 teams have withdrawn from the race, 9 teams proceeded unranked in the race after losing a team member and 3 teams were short-coursed. There are another 8 teams that are listed as active and still out on the course.

I hope to send out one last e-mail report, after I talk to Barb sometime later today.

If you would like to view any earlier e-mails (with a few pictures), they have been posted on the following website: http://www.lawired.com/csr/home.htm .