Adventure racing includes a variety of sports - running, biking, rappelling, paddling...
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- Created on Thursday, 30 June 2011 18:22
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
By Dave Philipps, The Gazette
James Luttrall stood at an undisclosed location on the north shore of Rampart Reservoir and turned in a slow circle.
“This is going to be one of our checkpoints,” he said. “People will bike by this way, come running in over there, then they’ll have to go down to end of this peninsula to the water.”
Luttrall is an adventure racer. And one day, after noticing that the options for adventure racing on the Front Range were severely limited, he and a group of dedicated friends decided to start their own. In fact, they started a whole series. They call it Big Mountain Adventure.
See photos from the Rock2Rock adventure race.
Their latest event, a combination of running, mountain biking and paddling — with a few surprises, including a zip line — takes place July 16.
“It’s going to be a lot of beautiful scenery, a lot of fun and a lot of hard work,” said Mike Lester, one of Luttrall’s partners in race planning.
Both men moved to Colorado in the past few years from very flat cities (Dallas and Chicago) and were surprised to arrive at the foot of the Rockies and find relatively little in terms of an adventure-racing scene.
Adventure racing by definition defies definition. It is always changing, but usually is characterized by coed teams of four racing through some combination of mountain biking, orienteering, paddling and climbing or rappelling. Race lengths vary from several hours to several days. Courses are usually secret until the start of the race, and sometimes can include surprise events such as math problems or paintball target shooting.
And the racers? Don’t picture fine-tuned triathletes obsessed with shaving seconds off their splits.
“Adventure racers don’t count their heartbeats. They definitely don’t shave their legs,” Lester said. “They are people who love the outdoors and like to have fun.”
It might be fair, then, to expect that the Front Range, with its uncounted thousands of bikers, runners and climbers, would be Grand Central for adventure racing. Not so.
An adventure-racing group called Front Range Outdoor Groupies (FROGs) has struggled with anemic membership for years. Its website is two years out of date. And only a handful of races are put on each year in the state, mostly by one organizer based in Durango.
Because of the added logistics and added expense of doing multiple sports in one race, adventure racing has always faced added hurdles. But in the other regions of the country, including places like Texas and Illinois not often associated with mountain biking and rappelling, “There is a much stronger scene,” Lester said.
One night last year, over a few post-bike-ride beers, the group decided to stop complaining and start doing.
Their first race, this April, attracted more than 100 people, most of them first-time adventure racers. Picture TV’s “Amazing Race” but with bikes instead of taxis. The teams rode mountain bikes from Monument to Pulpit Rock where they had to hike to a choice of a rappel or a zip line off the sandstone cliffs.
They then pedaled to Sondermann Park for an orienteering hunt and a surprise challenge: Teams had to decide whether to descend into Fountain Creek, walk a slack line or touch a checkpoint hoisted 10 feet above the ground. Only after completing one of the tasks could they move on to the next leg of the race — an on-bike orienteering chase through Bear Creek Regional Park.
“It was a blast,” Luttrall said. “And I think we introduced a lot of new people to adventure racing.”
Big Mountain has a third race planned this fall.
Whether a small race series like Big Mountain, put on by organizers working in their spare time, can last is another issue.
Other organizers in the region have tried and fizzled.
The biggest obstacle is getting permission from land managers, Lester said.
“Colorado has a lot of great places to race,” he said. “But finding permission is more difficult than anticipated.”
Forest Service applications must be filled out months in advance. Anything crossing water usually also crosses a municipal water provider, adding another layer of paperwork.
Big Mountain initially wanted to organize an event on Pikes Peak, using North Catamount Reservoir and trails connecting it to The Crags. But Luttrall said they soon learned coordinating with two city divisions (Colorado Springs Utilities and the Pikes Peak Highway) as well as the forest service, was more work than they could handle.
Some events in Colorado sneak around land-agency bureaucracy by trying to stay underground. The epic annual Colorado Trail Race has no entry fee, no prizes, no marked course and no volunteers. Anyone interested in mountain biking the 470-mile course simply shows up on the right day.
In the past, adventure racers in the Pikes Peak region tried doing similar unofficial races, which they called “practice races,” to sidestep the permit process. But Luttrall said Big Mountain has no plans to go that route.
He said by keeping races fun, challenging and beautiful, Big Mountain can continue to attract enough racers to sustain itself.
“We’ve now learned a lot from doing it, and next year it will be that much easier,” he said.
Already the group is eyeing Lake Pueblo State Park, where there are miles of trails, a reservoir, cliffs, and a river all under one management agency — Colorado State Parks — that is generally easy to work with, Lester said, because it is geared toward outdoor recreation.
“We need to get to a point where we can break even,” he said. “Right now it is a labor of love.”
Big Mountain Adventure Racing
To see the whole Big Mountain schedule and sign up for the July 16 Rampart Rage race, go to bigmountainar.com.
To learn more: Sign up for a free adventure racing clinic at REI on July 7; rei.com
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