The buses rolled out of the Wildman Whitewater Ranch at 4:45am. Clear skies, and northwoods summer temperatures greeted us as we drove to the race start. Forty teams started the 2000 Mid-America Extreme Adventure Race, amid hoots, cheers and howling hunting dogs (for real). The race began with a 1.7 mile run to the start of the orienteering section.

Different from most races, the orienteering section consisted of a 10 mike trek through 7 unmanned orienteering checkpoints. We navigated to each point, punching our passports with a special stamp signifying our arrival at each site. Team Orange Triangle, relying on John McInnes’ solid map and terrain reading skills, moved swiftly through this section with little trouble. Finding the locations did not prove too difficult, getting to each location was another story. Points ranged from deep in the woods, close to the road, high on Baker Rock, to the middle of a swamp. The cedar swamp trek for two hours slowed us down a bit and almost caused Tracy to lose a shoe, but we held on. Following the swamp crossing, we found ourselves at the rappel site in 13th place. Five hours into the event, we were ready to change the activity. A brief 40 foot rappel was just what we needed.
 Another hour and several water and mud crossings brought us to the first transition area. New socks, water, food, and bike shoes, and we were off again, this time in 12th place. The bike leg was to be difficult and we weren’t disappointed. We began with a quick 2 mile warm-up, followed by one of the race highlights, the bikewack.

As if orienteering through the swamp without a bike wasn’t enough, the race organizers thought we might like to try them both together. It was only a ¼ mile section, but the occasional waist deep mud bog made it seem more intense. The bike leg consisted of a combination of 26 miles of two track roads, snowmobile trails, and gravel roads. The rugged snowmobile trails, littered with television-sized boulders, made for slow movement on the flats and uphills and great excitement and airtime on the downhills. This section brought many teams to a stop. Ever confident we kept chugging along, remaining steady in our standings. The heat took its toll and 2 teams got past us bringing us into the second transition area in 14th place at 3:15pm.

The entire day was free of rain with exception of the 10 minutes we spent in this transition at McCaslin Mountain. We dropped the bikes, switched gear, and shoes, grabbed the climbing gear and headed off at 3:25pm.

 Facing our team was a three hour uphill hike over and back down McCaslin Mountain, two more checkpoints, an ascent up fixed ropes, and whitewater rafting on the Peshtigo River.

 One hour after leaving the transition area, as we neared the top of McCaslin Mountain, the race organizers showed up on an ATV…we have a problem! The local 4WD club has decided to join us in the woods and has moved all our course makers, we’ve been hiking the wrong trail for nearly and hour…uphill. They are re-routing the course and we’re going to skip the ascent (and we bought those ascenders just for this race too)! Back to the transition area and a 4 mile hike down the road from there led us to the start of the whitewater section. 

Three hours after first leaving (and returning to) the second transition area, we arrived at the boats. We were pretty excited about this leg of the race, despite our all-around lack of experience on whitewater. The boats were inflatable “Thrill-Cats”. It’s a cross between a mini catamaran and a kayak. Very maneuverable and quite fun. with names like Widowmaker, Five Foot Falls, and Horserace was a ride we'll not soon forget. We all came through the water section well, and completely soaked. Well worth the trip down the river!
Team Orange Triangle completed the race in 8th place in the mixed team rankings, and 12th place overall out of 40 teams. Our finishing place continues to improve, our experience continues to grow, and we’re having a great time.