Pop quiz. What is the number two industry in West Virginia in terms of income brought into the state? If you said white water rafting, you'd be right. It is second only to coal.

This one of the few interesting tidbits we picked up this weekend from our white water rafting guide Ark (like the boat) from Class VI River Runners during the Odyssey Wild Wonderful 24HR Adventure Race. Other things we learned were that West Virginia is pretty much covered in poison ivy and stinging nettles, and not all things are as easy as they may appear.

The Wild Wonderful would be our second foray into West Virginia in a little over a month and the team was hoping for a much better result than our previous race in the same area. We knew it wouldn't be easy as the competition would be strong. Teams such as Eastern Mountain Sports, Calleva, and Berlin Bike would all be there vying for a top finish and points in the Checkpoint Tracker series.

Before the race even started we got our first taste of what the competition was bringing. In the pre-race gear check one of the required items was a trowel. Most racers know they will never use a trowel, and subsequently try any number of angles to try to carry the smallest and lightest "trowel" they can. Depending on the race, I've seen people get away with a disposable plastic spoon. Not wanting to get caught on a technicality, we usually bring one of these, with the handle cut off. At about an ounce, it's not too much to carry. So, back to the gear check. The team behind us breaks out their trowel, and I kid you not, they whip out an entrenching tool! Even Ronny the race director said that they should try and find something a little smaller. I'm not sure if they ever did, and I'm impressed if they made it the whole way carrying that hunk of steel.

Just like E-Fix, the race started out with a rafting section down the New River Gorge. Boats were assigned by lottery, with teams starting in one of 4 waves. The later waves would receive time credits so there was no penalty for starting later. Checkpoint Zero drew a spot in the last wave, which was fine by us, because we didn't have to worry about any teams finishing 5 minutes behind us and beating us on overall time. The challenging part to the rafting wasn't making our way down the river, we thankfully had guides for that, but rather each team got paired with some of the competition and you had to work together to get to the end of the paddle as fast as possible. We got to share our 8 person raft with a team of soldiers from Ft. Bragg. After we got talking to them, two of the four said they had done this race a while back in Georgia. Turns out they had survived the infamous Checkpoint Zero Adventure race, so at the very least, we knew we could count on them helping us to get to the end of the paddle section.

We managed to finish second in our wave of boats and came to the first TA where we saw a majority of the teams making the transition from rafting to trekking. We made an effort to get in and out quickly, and in that TA alone we probably passed 3/4's of the teams. Knowing we had a long climb out of the gorge, we set a quick pace up the road and continued to catch teams from earlier waves. By the time we got to the second CP, we had moved into the top 10 overall and were already taking time out of the EMS, Calleva, and Berlin Bike, all of whom started in the first wave.

As we moved onto the trail that took us along the endless wall, we kept our pace strong. At this point we figured we had a little bit of an advantage over some of the teams, as we had just used this trail 5 weeks back, albeit in the other direction. This really came in useful when we came across a CP hanging off the trail, but it was no where near where anything was plotted on our race maps. We quickly realized that the point was left over from E-Fix, and simply hadn't been taken down after the race. There were several teams with us at that point, and I assured them that this point was not part of the days race and we all continued on to the real CP. Unfortunately there were other teams behind us that hadn't done E-Fix and ended up punching that flag thinking it was the right one.

We finally climbed our way out of the gorge and made it to Beauty, WV. Beauty was the site of one of the E-Fix TA's, although this time we found Susanna from Odyssey and our bikes in someone's front yard. We hadn't seen anyone biking out yet, but soon saw the three teams ahead of us head out. We had cut a 15 minute gap to less than 5 minutes! In our rush to get rolling, I managed to cut my thumb pretty badly on the lip of a soda can. Fearing the worst, I called out for a bandaid and clutched my hand trying not to bleed all over the place. With out first aid kit in the bottom of one of the packs, our resident Dr. Hobson (Michele) offered up a piece of duct tape which I applied to my wound. I'm sure it wasn't the most sanitary of dressings, but I figured once the bleeding stopped we could clean it out and dress it properly.

Hopping on the bikes we were in hot pursuit and quickly caught up to Berlin Bike. Unfortunately one of their teammates had gotten some debilitating cramps and had come off the bike trying to ease the pain. Just ahead we caught a glimpse of Calleva, and soon caught up with them. We ended up riding together a bit, chatting and commenting on the beautiful weather we had before parting ways. With only EMS ahead of us we knew we had our work cut out for us, we knew we didn't have to catch them, but stay within 15 minutes and we'd be in good shape. We were able to track our gap because each CP had a sign in sheet where teams had to sign in and leave a time.

Our bike ride took us north east to the Gauley River NRA, much along the same path as E-Fix. We were to take the same rail trail as we did earlier, to the site of the infamous E-Fix CP5. This is the CP that many teams had trouble finding, several spent 10 hours looking for it. In response to the problems experienced, Odyssey stepped up and provided regular 1:24000 closeups of the area that showed the trails that were not on the main map we were given. Had they done this earlier, E-Fix would have been a different story. But I digress.

Making our way on bike back to Camp Washington Carver, we made the transition to to foot for a trekking section. We had slowly watched EMS start to pull away from us, and by the time we started on foot, they had about a 30 minute lead. Calleva was just behind us, and pushing us hard. The first trekking loop was pretty straight forward, just a long decent back into the gorge and a tough climb back out. At the top of the final climb we started hearing voices, and saw a few cars parked around a cabin. The trail we were on split and one fork took us towards the folks, and the other appeared to go in the direction we wanted to go. As we paused, we were noticed and the people started shouting at us, beckoning us to come over their way. As we got closer we realized they were having a big party complete with a huge bonfire and ample amounts of beer, plenty of which had already been consumed. I think we were quite a spectacle to them, tromping out of the woods decked out with headlamps and spandex. They said that the team ahead of us (EMS) had come through a while ago and that we'd better hurry up and catch them. They offered us a beer and moonshine, and for a moment I actually considered taking them up on their offer. Had we not had the orienteering section ahead of us, I would have for sure.

The last section of the race was an orienteering section, where all the points were optional. We knew that the winning team would have to collect them all and looking at the map before we head out I had roughly estimated 3 hours or so to do just that. Boy, was I wrong. What ensued was the most brutal orienteering course I think I've ever done. There were briars, rhododendron, massive logging, and more briars out there waiting to flay the skin from our bones and force us to our knees as we attempted to crawl through them. Starting off in a roughly CCW direction we managed to get two of the points before becoming completely disoriented. We ended up coming across a series of homes tucked away in the woods that were not shown on the map at all. After much deliberation and guesswork, we made it back to the camp and got our bearings. It was here we bumped into EMS who were restocking their packs and getting ready to re-attack the course just like us. The only difference, they had obtained all but 2 points so they were well ahead of us. After we greeted them Chad Denning and pointed to a couple of points on the map and said "this here is really fun." I thought I caught a bit of sarcasm in Chad's voice and figured the already difficult course would get worse.

True to the warning, the route got tougher with the addition of a large swamp tossed into the mix of everything we had encountered before. We took some time picking our way around and through it, and were rewarded with another series of steep climbs to get the next couple points. About 2 hours before the sun came up we again got turned around and this time I was fed up. I suggested taking a 2 hour nap before knocking off the rest of the course. The always encouraging team mates of mine convinced me to take one more stab at finding the next point and that was all it took. We got rolling, found our next target, and finished picking up the rest of the points.

We got to the finish line and saw EMS, showered, and packing up their gear getting ready to head out. Before we even "finished" the race we went over to congratulate them on an excellent race and for getting first. Much to our surprise they congratulated us and said they never found the two points they went back out after. We had managed to find the two troublesome points after the sun came up, which certainly made it much easier to spot them and follow the terrain. I know how hard the decision is to stop looking for a point and I can only imagine how close they were and never realized it in the dark.

All in all I have to thank EMS for making us work hard and setting the bar a little higher for us. We also want to thank Calleva for pushing us along, even though just after we saw them the last time one of their team members got violently ill and they were unable to finish the race. Of course I'd also like to thank our generous sponsors, Inov-8, nuun, and Numa Sport Optics for the fantastic support we get from them.