Primal Quest Montana - On the Ground
Jun 22nd, 2008 by Brian
Big Sky, MT, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.
For the next 9+ days I will be hanging out at Primal Quest Montana, covering “The World’s Most Challenging Human Endurance Competition.”
What is Primal Quest? From the PQ site:
Called “the Superbowl of Adventure Racing” by Sports Illustrated, this year’s edition will take place in the backcountry of Montana where the top teams in the world will trek, mountain bike, and paddle their way across a 500-mile course with over 100,000 feet of elevation gain. Top endurance athletes from around the globe will compete for more than $175,000 in cash and prizes over ten days of grueling competition.
PQ is like a big family reunion and I’ve already run into plenty of friends (and am looking forward to making new ones).
Some things to watch for in this race (besides the “ordinary” adventure racing drama):
- Bears. There are lots of bears. And they’re a bit bigger than your friendly neighborhood Shenandoah Park, “Oh look, people! I’m going to go climb this tree and hope they don’t see me” black bears. No, we’re talking big ol’, wrestling with Brad Pitt, don’t mind me while I nibble on your head Grizzly bear bears.
- Snow. Sort of be design when planning the race course it was hoped that snow would cover much of the course until the race start so as to keep curious teams away and lessen any sort of advantage they might gain from seeing parts of the course early. But, having 10′ of snow above 9,000′ a week before race start was not really part of the plan. Race staff pre-running the course had to rely on GPS in order to figure out where they were as all of the physical landmarks shown on the map were buried deep! Teams will now be allowed to carry a hand held GPS and use in case they can not figure out where they are located (more on this later). Much of the snow has since melted away though, which leads me to the next thing to watch out for…
- Water. There is A LOT of it and it is making its way downstream.
While previous weeks of onsite course planning and retooling by the PQ management team have been focused on the unusually huge amount of late Spring snow pack, this week brings a quick melting of the snow fields and new safety concerns for the water sections of the course. The Gallatin River is running at 155% of it’s average stream flow for this time of year. With more than 100 miles of water sections on this year’s Primal Quest, Don Mann now has to consider the racers safety in rivers that are running at, or above, a class IV rating.
“Course variability will be a large factor for this year’s water course as conditions continue to evolve,” says Don Mann. “Safety is our top priority! We may be required to alter the water sections of the race.”
And that’s about all for now. Sunday is day two for teams to check in, and pass their skills tests. I’m going to be out wandering around, taking notes, photos, etc. for the rest of the day.
Stay tuned for more PQ Montana action!
