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Contents 1 Overmountain Extreme Pictures 2 Overmountain Extreme Map 3 Overmountain Extreme Website 4 Overmountain Extreme Results 5 Overmountain Extreme Reviews 5.1 Holly's Take 5.2 Jordan's Take 5.3 Josh's Take

Overmountain Extreme Pictures

Pictures
Preparation Night Before	2007 Over Mountain Extreme Team at Start	Suspension Bridge to CP1	Josh Scooting
Scooting On Rock	Holly & Jordan Hiking on GM Trail	Josh & Jordan Hiking on GM Trail	Travis's Sweet Support Setup at TA2/2.5
Jordan Taking Shot	Holly Savoring Bagel on way to CP6	Jordan Sitting on Bridge to CP6	Mandatory Gear Check at CP7
Late Night Navigating at CP14	Paddling to the Finish	Post Race Meal

Overmountain Extreme Map

Overmountain Extreme Website

Overmountain Extreme

Overmountain Extreme Results

Final Results

Overmountain Extreme Reviews

Holly's Take

2007 OverMountain Extreme

The night before the race, we were given UTM coordinates for checkpoints and transition areas along with instructions of which legs we would bike, hike or paddle. We were given 6 maps in total (no duplicate maps) and began plotting the points. After a meeting, we rushed back to the hotel to plan our course and pack our food supplies for each transition area. This sounds easy enough, but for some transition areas, our support person would just be able to drop a bag and then have to leave. If we didn’t put enough food/water in our bags for each drop, we would be screwed. It was about 1:30am before we were able to “sleep”.

The race started at the top of Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. This is a 6,000 ft mountain-a bit taller than anything in Alpharetta that’s for sure. We were told there were wind gusts 40-50 mph on top. They weren’t kidding. We were not able to “officially” race on the mountain. We were to check in, get 5 additional points to plot for the hiking section later, and check out…our time was to restart when we arrived at our first check point on the other side of the mountain. We started our 2-4 hour “nonracing” hiking section…of course we were racing. Our time didn’t matter, but it did matter in the bigger race because we still had a 2pm cutoff the next day no matter how fast/slow we did the first section. So, we of course, raced cautiously. I began to see why they didn’t want us to race as we reached ladder after ladder taking us up boulders with drop offs on each side joined by a cable to hold onto to lead you to the next series of ladders. Any slip of your foot would be your end. I’m not exaggerating. At one point, my brother who was leading in a group of about 3, 3 person teams, slowed to a crawl when maneuvering a ladder to cable to ladder section. I was beginning to think we would all be stuck behind his fear….so I took the time to look around and see how far up we were. Oh yea, that’s why he’s scared, not to mention the wind gusts about blow you off the mountain. Don’t look down. Whew. And, let me add, that it was very foggy. I felt as if I was on Mount Everest with low visability climbing the ladders to the top. It was AMAZING…I felt like we were higher than the clouds. Once we reached the top and began down, it was equally as exhausting with scrambles through boulder caves and going down more ladders.

We reached the transition to bikes and I found that there was only my bagel sandwich for lunch. I wasn’t smart that morning and only ate a banana and sports bar for breakfast. I’m use to a full breakfast so this was a major oversite on my part. We just didn’t plan time for breakfast that morning. I didn’t have much in my pack for the hike because I expected to replenish at the bikes. I’m not really sure why I didn’t have the sports shots or bars that I was expecting at that transition but there was noone there to ask so we just had to deal with it. A 30 mile bike was next. We mounted our bikes and took off. We began with a long, gradual climb. I was already hitting the wall. My legs just wouldn’t go any faster. My brother was getting frustrated at me and I knew that there was a full day’s worth of racing ahead of me so I didn’t want to kill my legs when so much was ahead of me. I was fine on the fast downhills but the uphills were killing me. Maybe it was the altitude but mostly, I think it was the lack of food. After we hit a checkpoint, we were on our way down the hardest part of the race. First was a long downhill on gravel roads. We were cruising across the gravel at 24 mph around blind curves. After about 3 curves of worrying about cars, I finally concluded that as long as Josh in front of me was ok, then I shouldn’t worry. Just then Josh went around the corner. I was riding in the wheel tread of the usually oncoming traffic when a van comes around the corner. Josh had just managed to maneuver around it, regain balance and then a few seconds too late for me, yelled “Car HOLLY, CAR!” I was doing 24 mph on gravel, in a curve headed for a screaming lady in a van. I was dead on with her at the steering wheel. There was no time to think, I threw on my breaks, started jutting across the loose gravel in the middle of the road as my bike tire was continuing to skid toward her minivan. I finally released the brake and my bike tire shifted in the direction I was going and I missed hitting the van by literally feet. I could have EASILY lost control of the bike as it was skidding and been run over instantly. It was THAT close. God was looking after me for sure. That was by far the scariest moment in the race. Closest I’ve come to being run over in my life. That got my blood pumping for sure. So, more unbelievably torturous uphill gravel service road and then we had a checkpoint we could rest. I believe this was when Josh determined he needed to state the obvious when I said I needed to stop for some fuel…I had no energy. “Yea, you’re riding pretty Krapy. Jordan is too.” Well, thanks for that motivational speech Josh. I’m pumped up now! At this checkpoint, we could send up one teammate (mile up and down) so Jordan went. I told Josh that he should go since he was the strongest biker and currently had the strongest legs under him, but Jordan insisted. So, we got to rest about 12 minutes. That’s forever! Then came my forte. Singletrack. I love it. I’m much better at it because I can deal with the technical riding. Still hard, but it appeared Jordan was not as comfortable with singletrack so I wasn’t the slowest anymore. My only problem with that section was that my right clip was too tight so I took two major falls when trying to unclip unsuccessfully (fell right over)….down steep embankments. My teammates had to lift me up because I was basically head first down a hill (upside down still clipped into my bike). After that, we had a long section of unrideable washed out trails going downhill. Pushing a bike down steep grades with large gully paths isn’t very fun. You get a lot of scraps from your bike as you push it and fall after it, over it. After my bagel sandwich, I started feeling much better. I started biking better.

Unfortunately, we all ran out of water. We had iodine tablet with us but since we were high up at that point, there were no creeks around. We decided that a church on the map a couple of miles ahead would be a promising spot. They would be happy to let us take some of their water from their spicket….if only they had one…which they didn’t. We just keep repeating….how can they not have a water spout???? as we circled the small country church. We were baffled, disappointed and losing hope. At that point, we had been traveling with a solo racer (Chris) who had also ran out of water. We traveled ahead seeing a small pond on the map for a new hope in finding water. Then, I spotted a house for sale. Jackpot….We determined it was vacant…and we were able to get enough water for our needs even though from the pressure of it, I think it was just the remaining water in the pipes from it being shut off. It was really a pitiful drizzle but after a good amount of time, accumulated enough to replenish us. After miles of more gravel roads and some paved, we finally arrived at the transition area where we would see our support person.

We scarfed down some beef stew, ramen noodles, cheetos, a banana, a few cookies that Laura made for us, and anything else we could cram into our mouth as we switched to our hiking attire/gear. We had mandatory gear that we had to have the entire race so we just reloaded our backpacks with fresh water/food.

The next section was the orienteering section with optional checkpoints. You get as many or as few as you want and get points accordingly. Josh wanted me to navigate this section for practice. It was my first navigation and it was getting dark quickly...and he was the one that had plotted the course, let me add. This was a dumb decision I thought at this point but I was willing to try. As we were leaving the last transition, I searched my pack for my compass(which was mandatory) and couldn’t find it. I had a spare in my bags at the transition but in order to not waste anymore time, Josh said I could use his. This would later turn out to be a bad decision…but who knew?

So, along we went trekking. Now Josh was full speed ahead, and I was trying to learn how to navigate on the fly. I knew the theory of it, but hadn’t done it real time yet. By the time I had stumbled over roots, while trying to get a bearing before going too far down the trail as Josh and Jordan kept yelling back “come on, it’s getting dark. We have to do this part fast….it’s not that hard Holly” So, before I realized it, we had managed to walk too far, when I finally said….don’t you guys think this is more than 1k? Oh, yea….so…we decided to get this checkpoint on the way back since it was an out and back course. I then convinced Josh, that it would be better for the team if he navigated in the dark, the portion he was already familiar with.

The next checkpoint was described “at the SW corner of the waterfall at the intersection of the creeks”. That’s the clue that helps you find the flag to punch your passport showing you found the checkpoint once you are in the area of the UTM coordinate given. When you are looking for a waterfall, everything quickly becomes one. A small 1 foot drop, a cascade 3 ft….it all becomes what they might be talking about. We investigated one creek intersection with no luck. Later, we found another one and started looking around there. We were joined by 2 other teams all looking around in a very dangerous waterfall area. They had an altimeter and thought that the altitude was right for the checkpoint. After a while of looking and it getting dark, we determined that we would just have to skip that one. It was disappointing. So, we walked down the trail a ways. We came upon another intersection of trails…one leading back down to the river. We decided to check it out and something instantly struck me when we got to the river. “It’s going the opposite direction as the river we had just been searching….What does that mean?” I said outloud. Jordan was quick to interpret….”It means that this is a DIFFERENT river that is going to meet the other one and make a waterfall”. WOW, that’s where a team is helpful. Join our observations and deductions together make sense of them. So we trekked down this path that we couldn’t find on the map. Josh was getting increasingly convinced that we were on a wild goose chase. After multiple times trying to convince me to turn around, I was just equally convinced by the sounds I heard and the gut feeling I had that we were reaching increasingly volital waters (ie place for a waterfall). I told him, just let me go around this corner and after hitting my power booster on my headlamp….saw across the river…a flag! Yippee! Josh fell multiple times trying to cross the river out of excitement and urgency to get back into the race full force. We went into stealth mode to get back up and off the trail so no other racers could mooch off our efforts. We then had to figure out where the heck we were. We determined that we had plotted that checkpoint in the wrong grid spot. (which meant we were looking about ½ mi. off course). After reorienting ourselves, we headed down the trail for the next checkpoint. Down the trail, Josh informed us shockingly, that his compass was no longer on his attachable compass holder. Ugg. Now I was worried because I knew I had already searched my bag for for mine with no luck. So, again, I searched my bag 100%. No luck. So, Jordan to the rescue with his Walmart, good for N,S,E, W and nothing in between compass. Ha Ha….this wasn’t going to work. Then, Josh was convinced that it kept changing. After comparing it to another team’s compass, I pointed out that the metal on his compass attachment was effecting it. This indeed was the case. So, after multiple attempts at finding checkpoint 10 going off only the terrain on the map, we were unsuccessful. It seemed like we were searching for 10 and the compass for hours. I felt we were wasting major time and not going to find that compass anyway. We headed back to hope to get ck. pt. 8. I hoped by then there would be a good bushwacking trail created by the other teams. This didn’t seem to be the case. Josh went up the summit off the trail where we thought the checkpoint would be. As we sat and waited, a team came past. They told us that the checkpoint was indeed up where Josh was searching. Josh started down telling us no luck, that he needed someone’s help. I headed up since my powerbooster on my headlamp was pretty effective. I started to see reflectors on the trees and remembered that in the race meeting, they had told us to follow the survey reflectors. Guess that’s what they were talking about. So, we followed them up and eventually spotted it. That was a relief…2 out of 5 checkpoints found. Not very promising but best we could do under the circumstances. Back to the transition area.

We grabbed my spare compass out of my bag and off we headed to the road that the race director informed us was off limits. She said, “You want to take the trail at the end of the transition area to get to your trail.” We all said “OK” as we set off in her direction. As we walked, we determined that none of us knew what trail she was talking about and couldn’t figure out what trail she thought that we were going to take. We had planned on taking the road for this segment. We decided we’d rather look like idiots than get lost on a trail that we didn’t even know existed to get to a trail that we weren’t sure we wanted to be on or not. So, we returned to her laughing and asking “what trail did you think we were going to take because were were going to take the road that is right there.

She told us, with a funny look on her face, that we should reread our rules... we couldn't take the road that we wanted to take. So, again, we started walking in the direction she told us. We chuckled as we went down the path. Again, I agreed to take over the navigational part since this trail looked pretty straightforward.

As we hiked down the white blazed trail, we quickly realized that it would not be as easy as it originally appeared. It seemed like every 10 minutes, the trail would split and all paths would have a white blaze.To be continued...and edited further....

Jordan's Take

Josh's Take

Epic start on Grandfather mountain: super foggy/wet, cold, and 30mph winds with 55mph gusts. Combine that with the "rustic" ladders, sheer/technical hike along the mountain, and plastic-covered ropes to assist travel and you get a pretty dangerous start. I had to build up my courage at at least one point during the race where I had to leave a ladder to get to a rope with 1 foot of wet rock ledge between me and a death drop. Meanwhile, Holly and Jordan were making jokes from below while I'm trying to concentrate! Jordan was navigating this section based on a trail map, and did a good job; only one mess up, but he quickly corrected and we were on our way to TA1 after 2:30 or so of non-race racing.

The next section was a road bike to CP4. I discovered that my back tire didn't have enough air so we hand pumped it after a while. We were getting soundly passed as our bike legs were warming up. Some towing involved. I was feeling the urgency of the situation and trying to motivate some speed out of Jordan/Holly, since we were on roads and this was as good as the bike leg would get, but was only somewhat successful. We then zigzagged down 1514 to 192 to Yancy Ridge. We kept leapfrogging with WTF at this point and finally reached CP5. We mostly hike-a-biked down the ridge to 90 (passing many teams coming up) and had lunch at roughly 1pm on the bridge over the stream.

The next section was the 5k climb up Little Lost Cove Cliffs that really made my butt hurt. I think it broke our spirits a bit. We were all tired after that one. Jordan ended up going up to get CP6--I had offered but wasn't gonna argue with him when he said he'd go. Chardon's Outfitters and a few other teams were all in the mix there. Holly and I got a load off, prepared the maps for the next section, and were ready to go when Jordan got back. On the next section we quickly realized that we were all out of water. I decided to stop at Long Ridge Church to see if they had any taps on the outside. At this point we were traveling with a solo (Chris?) and he needed water also. The church didn't have any water and so we continued on and stopped at a house that was for sale whose water was turned off but the pipes still had pressure. After we left, they did not. Spent about 20 minutes total looking/getting water, but after YMCA C4AR, I didn't want to make the mistake of dehydrating again. We continued on to the cut across. That bit was really awesome, and had some sweet jumps, though I think it was lost on Jordan/Holly, who were pretty blasted still from the climb to Little Lost Cove Cliffs. After we cut across, we had a pretty uneventful but tiring bike to TA2/CP7.

Time to eat. Cheetos, hobo dinners, cup o' noodles, snickers bar, watermelon, star crunch, & cappuccino coolers. Travis, our support crew, did an EXCELLENT job attending to everybody's needs.

Off to the orienteering section. Since we still had about 2 hours of daylight, we had high hopes. Holly was navigating and sent us right past OCP8. Oh well, looks easy, we'll get it on the way back. Down to OCP9. We went down to the top of the water fall and searched for roughly 1 hour before continuing on. At this point is was getting dark and we were 0 for 2. Frustration set in. I took the wheel on navigation. Holly convinced us to go down the MTS trail (though we didn't know that's what it was at the time because I couldn't figure out where we were on the trail) and eventually we chanced upon OCP9. Realizing that we had plotted it in the wrong grid, I was finally able to orient myself. There was at least 3 other teams upstream still looking around in the wrong grid square. At this point it was dark and we decided to head back up to get OCP10. It was at this point that I looked down to check our bearing and realized my compass wasn't there!!! It had fallen off the key-holder on which I had it mounted. No problem, we'll use Holly's. Holly searched through her entire bag as I fiddled with the key holder in disbelief. I felt like subconsciously it was still there. She couldn't find hers and figured that it had jumped out of her side pocket at some point. That's okay, we'll use Jordan's. Jordan's compass is a Walmart whistle-thermometer-compass combo with the compass being about 1cm in diameter and pointing towards the closest metal object. Morale check. I was ready to throw in the towel, since I use bearings as the base of my navigation. We decided to look for OCP10 based on trail characteristics while simultaneously looking for my compass, since we figure it must have come off within 1km. We gave up finding OCP10 after about 20 minutes of searching even though we were within 100m of it and continued back down the trail in search of the compass. Holly said she may have a spare compass in the support vehicle. When we didn't find my compass, we decided to continue back up the trail, try to get OCP8, and call it a day on the orienteering course. We found OCP8 after a couple of hikes up to the summit (Holly is very good at spotting CPs), and we continued back up, catching up to and hiking with Calleva back to what we referred to at that point as TA2.5.

I was pretty down knowing that we were likely out of the running for the top 3 at that point, having missed 3 OCPs that were relatively close together. We fueled up again, got Holly's compass (thank goodness it was there!), which I strung around my neck, and continued on. We learned that we were the 5th? team to leave the TA, which was pretty encouraging. We ended up spending 3 hours on the orienteering course for the 3/6 CPs we got. We were planning on taking 181 down to 4218 and then bushwhack south to CP14. However, upon trying to go that way we were told that travel was not allowed on 181 and that we needed to take MTS trail to it. We took what seemed to be an endless hike on it (2.5 hours or so) and picked up Mid Georgia AR Team along the way. We worked together to stay on trail, "White Blazes!!!" and eventually met up with 40 Is The New 20 around the campsite. Jim Farmer told us that they had already searched out the campsite, and that CP14 must be incorrect. Mid Georgia AR Team said that they had plotted CP14 on the other side of the creek, and it clicked that this made more sense since OCP18 (a bike CP) was in the same place and so it would likely be on the jeep road. Back across the stream, we found noodles waiting for us. We took a short break before continuing on across the stream once again.

Across the stream, we started the accent to Table Rock. I was towing Holly quite quickly up the initial climb, as it was a steep grade and I wanted to get it done quickly. We were moving decently and Mid Georgia AR Team ended up catching us when I was trying to make a navigational decision at an intersection. We ended up choosing incorrectly, and getting onto 210 from MTS trail. However, it wasn't a terrible mistake. From there we hit 243, turned back south to Table Rock. Jordan was fully bonked at this point and there was no getting him up. Morale was very low, and I'm a poor motivator, so it stayed low. Holly and Jordan were talking about options for getting a refund for Gold Nugget. Holly would say, "Jordan, so if you were to race Gold Nugget with someone else, would that be okay?" Jordan retorted, "Uh...I was thinking about saying the same to you." Holly, "Even if we can only get the money for the GPSs back, I'd be okay with not doing it." Even at our slow pace, we managed to catch a team at the top of Table Rock. We took a break, refolded maps, and descended to TA3.

TA3 was a source of replenishment. The bike had kicked our butt. The hikes had kicked our feet. Now it was time for another bike, and everyone was dreading it. We had already decided to only go for OCP19 on the bike, but were told at TA3 that OCP17 and OCP18 were out of the race anyway. I vowed to take out at a slow pace and that most of it was downhill. We were all shivering at this point (3-4am?) and so we bundled up for the bike down. Travis had put my running shoes down rather than Holly's bike shoes, so she had to ride her bike clips as if they were flat pedals. We were riding our breaks pretty stiffly and Jordan's weren't working properly so we got passed again by much bolder riders. I was all about making OCP19 at this point with minimal effort. So I was pretty focused on the map. We finally came to it as the sun was rising and I went up to jump through the fallen trees to find it. I did so and we were on our way again. Looking forward to the canoe, I found that the bike ride was not to difficult. We took a break on the turn to 181 and Mid Georgia AR Team breezed past us. We then got on our bikes and started the pedal back. At some point I started feeling uncomfortable about the navigation because the compass was telling me we were going the wrong direction. By the time I figured it out, we were at the intersection of 181 and 1254 at Mt. Zion Church. Looking back, I now see that 1258 becomes 1240. However, 1240 also goes to 1254. So I must have gone in the wrong direction on 1240. When I noticed the bearing was off was when 1240 turned west. So we ended up losing about an hour on that mistake and added 7km to the ride when I was telling my teammates just minutes before that we were 1.5km away from the canoe. I'm sure they were cursing at me under their breath.

After finally arriving to the canoe put in, we refueled by grabbed some eggs & bagels, sparkling water, and more cappuccino coolers. We learned at this point that OCP21, OCP24, OCP25, and OCP26 were removed from the course. This was a bit disappointing, since we now knew we couldn't make up the lost orienteering points by grabbing more canoe points. Despite being way tired on the bike/hike, our energy levels restored once we got off our feet. We made the mistake of not reevaluating our course. It was not until after looking back and seeing a canoe heading towards the shore to portage did we think of it--and by then it was too late. We then opted to just paddle on, even though we knew the portage would save us 1.5 miles of paddling. As soon as we rounded the bend, Holly, who was navigating the canoe leg, was getting her head around water navigation. Jordan was close to falling asleep and having back issues. I was glad to be feeling strong and was aggressively paddling. Jordan popped a couple of Tylenol for his back and no-dose for his drowsiness and then we had no problem with speed. Holly was now steering the boat very well and we were out-paddling teams with 3 double paddles, even though we only had 2. Holly did an excellent job tracking down the canoe checkpoints OCP22 & OCP23. We finished strong around 1pm and were a little upset about the canoe checkpoints that had been taken out, since we could've gotten 2 more checkpoints on the canoe.

Overall, I think Overmountain Extreme was a great race. It had a good mix of orienteering, technical trekking and biking, difficult climbing both on bike and foot, time management, weather tolerance, downhill nighttime biking, single track on the bike with sweet jumps, and a BEAUTIFUL paddling portion. As far as improvements I'd like to see next year, I really like the idea of OCPs. Having them stripped out of the race really was a downer, since it stripped away the diversity of route choices different teams would've taken. As an RD if you offer OCPs, you must understand that because of them, teams with poor time management will inevitably NOT make the cutoff as a direct result of the OCPs. As a competitor, I love the added variables that OCPs put into the race. So it was a downer when we realized that we'd not be able to take advantage of those placed in the latter sections of the race, specifically the canoe. Without the OCPs, the route strategy only came into play on the bike to CP5, the trek to CP14, and the canoe portages. I do understand that from a RD's point of view, more route choices means more difficult task of planning timing and positions of racers. However, I'm a big fan of having many route options to get to a CP, so this was a negative to me.

In summary, two nights after the race, a super virus broke out of the biological warfare lab that I worked at, and I found myself trekking to a safe zone on a gravel road with 2 other coworkers. When I woke up, I fully realized just how awesome Overmountain Extreme was.

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