New Hampshire Team Competes in Patagonia Expedition Race in Chile

It was no country for old men – or old women.

Not even for most young men and women.

“I am really tired. I am having a hard time staying awake. Every time someone stops to tie their shoe, or go to the bathroom or eat something or whatever I just fall over and take a nap. Five minutes or something. Shut my eyes. That’s life at the moment.”

That’s 26 year old Dave Stiles of Lisbon.

He carried a small camcorder in addition to the standard 25 pounds of food and survival gear.

Stiles teamed up with other veteran adventure racers Jamie Myers of Lisbon, Jenny Johnson of Bethlehem and Jason Lane of Ontario.

“Team Littleton Bike & Fitness,” as they were known was one of 11 teams that started the Patagonia Expedition Race last month.

Starting in Punta Arenas, they would try to cover about 360 miles in 10 days.

There would be sections for mountain bikes and kayaks.

But mostly the race would be on foot.

The teams had virtually no trails to follow.

Instead they had to use a compass to help them bushwhack a course through thick woods, mountains, bogs and fast-moving rivers.

The idea was to cover ground faster than anybody else - - and not get hurt.

WALKING ON LOOSE ROCKS.

Often they traveled at night.

They learned there lots of things that go thump in the dark.

Some of them have big teeth and claws.

Dave Stiles was leading when he heard a thumping sound.

“I stopped and looked and saw these two green eyes looking at me probably 12 to 15 meters away. I stopped real quick and kind of put my arm out and everyone stopped behind me. But they didn’t realize why I had stopped. To them I was just looking at the map or my compass and trying to figure out the best way to go. So they are chatting away behind me as I am watching this very large cat walking back and forth in front of us with its hair up and ears back. “

Another team showed up and one member announced he was a vet.

Cats don’t attack people, he declared.

Stiles thought: Yeah, this one might.

The Puma showed no sign of giving way.

So Team Littleton Bike & Fitness did.

Dave Stiles. “We backed out of there with our tail between our legs and found a way around.”

As the team went on the aches progressed to pain and then more pain.

SLURPY, SUCKING SOUND OF WALKING IN A BOG.

They cross bogs, which is like walking on a sponge, except in the soft spots where they sink to their waists.

What used to look like feet become waterlogged and begin to disintegrate.

Dave Stiles on the trail: “At the moment I can’t describe the pain in my feet. We’ve been walking for the last 16 hours or 15 hours through water and mud. Wet socks and this and that. It looks to be another five or six k worth of walking. Then we’re going to cook up some chow, sleep for a few hours. Get back up about midnight or 1 (o’clock) and hammer out the last section and then find the race director and strangle him.”

Jenny Johnson, 29, is the only one who has done a 10-day race, the Primal Quest in Utah.

To the men she is a source of amazement and envy.

Dave Stiles. “Jenny is the strongest athlete I’ve ever met in my entire life. Male or female. As far as endurance goes I have never seen her slow down. She just goes all the time.”

But Jenny is a miserable failure when it comes to beating gravity.

One night they’re climbing an embankment.

It is so steep it almost qualifies as a cliff and suddenly Jenny falls backwards into the dark.

Horrified, her teammates see her headlamp flickering through the air as she completes each backwards rotation, feet over head. Feet over head.

She is falling towards a real cliff.

Jenny Johnson: “It was very strange. I wasn’t panicking. In my head it was like this is okay. I am flipping over backwards but I know I am going to be fine. That was the strangest thing of all because I was flipping over backwards in a creek bed that was nearly vertical and there is big rocks all around me, logs. ”

Dave Stiles: “As we were all starting to freak out she just popped up. Her headlamp came out of the bushes and she with a big Jenny smile said ‘I’m alright. I’m fine. I’m awake now.’”

There is more trouble when they have to cross a river.

Dave Stiles on the trail: SOUND OF WATER RUSHING IN THE BACKGROUND. “It is about four feet deep and running at about 35 miles per hour. Right off a glacier. We got waist deep in it last night. We linked up and tried to do a train across this thing. By the time it got up to my waist, I was the front person on the train. I started losing balance. We all aborted mission at that point. This is like a class four river. Because it has been raining the last two days it is huge.”

For adventure racers there is plenty that can go wrong, a smorgasbord of ways to get hurt.

Their safety net is the satellite phone that the organizers gave them to call for help.

Faced with such a dangerous river the team decides to call the race organizers for advice.

The team is stunned to discover the satellite phone can’t reach the organizers.

They never had a safety net.

That also means they have to cross the river. After four hours of searching they find a tree trunk that spans it.

It is what they call “sketchy,” which is a different way of spelling “dangerous.”

Jenny Johnson: “We got across to the other side, stood in a circle and just hugged and cried because it was so stressful.”

Then, suddenly it is over. The last sections going on to the official finish at Puerto Williams are canceled due to weather.

Of the 11 teams that started seven gave up.

Team Littleton Bike & Fitness finishes fourth, having raced 167 hours and 31 minutes, that’s 7 days.

The winning team has three French members and one American.

Second goes to a Spanish team and third to a group from Turkey.

So, what was the attraction of adventure racing?

Jenny Johnson.

Jenny Johnson: “In adventure racing it is somewhat unpredictable and very spontaneous and you never know exactly where you are going or exactly where you may wind up. I think that is one of the things I really love about it.”

(are they going to do it again.?)

For NHPR News, this is Chris Jensen in Bethlehem.