Mt Adams

["Steph Teeter" <steph@endurance.net>]

Beautiful ride! Thanks Chris, Stephanie - everybody else that
worked so hard. The views were incredible. Base camp was in 
a huge mountain meadow at the base of Mt Adams (12,000 ft - 
a *real* mountain :).  The trail was gorgeous - lots of windy
trail and 2-track roads with perfect loamy footing. A fair
amount of logging roads too - we ended up putting easyboots
on the front so we could make good time on the gravelled roads.
The course varied between roads and trail so it never felt
like there was too much of one or the other. And the views ...
Mt Adams, Mt Hood (11,000 ft) and Mt Saint Helens (used to
be 11,000 feet until it blew in 1980). Lots of ooohs and aaahs.

I rode the 100 with my crazy little horse, Santini, and had a
blast. Rode with Carol Andrews and her big beautiful smooth
steady (yes, I was jealous!) arab 'Rhet'. Angie once described
Santini as 'riding an eggbeater'. Boundless enthusiasm though,
and he never ever whined or asked to slow down. This was the
first 100 miler for both horses so we were fairly conservative
all day - steady pace, extra time at holds, grazing some out on
the trail. Both horses did very well - we even top-tenned - a
big surprise considering our slow ride time. But the course 
was very tough - a lot of elevation change - and it got hot 
(for the NW) during the day so a lot of the early front runners 
had to back off. 

We started the last 12 mile loop just before dark and were out in the 
deep dark woods when it finally got totally dark. Trotting
in the dark is one of my favorite things to do - I like to just
let the horse go and hang on - feel the turns and ups and
downs, just enough light from a glo-stick hung on the breast
collar to see a little trail right in front, but not enough to
see what is ahead - so its a fun balance game to try to stay
in sync with the horse's gaits. But it has it's drawbacks.
Santini got creative at one point and veered off the
course onto a nice little road. Ride management only used
glo-sticks at the turns, so we weren't really searching
for ribbons - just following the trail and occasionally
using the flashlight to find a ribbon and make sure we
were ok. Well when I looked for a ribbon I eventually
saw a stub of one. We had been following 2 colors (common
trail) at that point, and the stub was only one color, but
that late at night the brain synapses aren't firing very
well so I remember thinking, huh - that's odd, and kept
going. We finally found some whole ribbons, but still
not the right color combo, and still seemed odd. And 
pretty soon I recognized a few landmarks - and that
sinking feeling hit. Somehow we had looped back to
the section of trail we had already done an hour ago.
So we did an little extra loop - probably 3-4 miles worth.
Very discouraging. And I started just walking and using 
my flashlight after that :(   Carol was very patient though, 
and didn't even complain. I got pretty cranky when I 
realized what I had done - so nice to have a kind patient 
friend to ride with. We pulled in to camp a little after
midnight - almost 3 hours to do the last 12 miles.. sigh.
It was very tough course though, the last riders didn't
make it in until just before cut-off time - almost 5:30 AM.
The winning time (Christine Janzen and Tais) was well 
under 12 hours - an amazing time for that course. 

I'm not sure I want to do another 100 any time soon with
Santini - he is a FUN ride, but a lot of work. I have to
constantly rate him and his short stride is much more
tiring. But we did have fun!

Again - THANKS to ride management. Very nice ride. And
it is soooo good to be riding in the Northwest again. 

Steph