Recently, I realized that I've barely mentioned “pain” in this story. That's surprising, because pain and discomfort are a big part of the Safari. It's possible that, this long after the race, I've just forgotten how painful it is? I suppose that's true, but I think that a better answer would be “pain and discomfort were not a dominating element for me”. I considered writing a long section here about pain and discomfort during the race, to make up for all that I missed, but I've dragged this out long enough already. When this is over, I'll talk about my race recovery and I'll male sure to include a long bit about the pains I discomforts I went through and what I saw Matt going through. Of course, I could never know all of his experiences there, but I did hear some complaining along the way...haha, sorry Matt.
For now, I'll mention that the knots in my upper traps weren't going any where. It was a sharp pain that only ice packs could relieve, temporarily of course, because ice does not last long in June...in Texas. Another concern were the two injuries I'd picked up during the months leading up to the Safari. My elbow and shoulder both started bothering me on day 2. Fortunately, neither of them progressed into an issue. I seemed to settle on the idea that, if I didn't paddle very hard they would be OK.
As we're leaving Invista, I should also mention that I'd made my second major mistake of the race. Really, I'd made numerous major mistakes leading up to the Safari, but in the context of our goal out there, which was to finish our first TWS, I made two major mistakes during the race. The first was forgetting that extra gallon of water at Gonzales. The second was mentally writing off the last 35 miles of the race as being “in the bag”. Even with a log jam and a potentially bad bay ahead, I had some how convinced myself, on day 3, that those last 12 hours on Tuesday would be cruise control time. Fuck, that was a bad move, and the Safari would make me pay for it.
Regardless of how easy we thought the miles would be, we were actually a bit intimidated by this section, mostly because we'd never seen it. For the next few hours, we were running purely off of information passed on by other racers. We knew there was a smaller log jam at the railroad bridge and that it was runnable. It sounded a little hairy. We also knew, of course, that there was a bigger log jam (IE. The Log Jam) further into the section. That area of the river forms a really big horseshoe. Log jams tend to start at the beginning of the horseshoe, where the river turns sharply to the left. I believe the current jam made it's first appearance in 2009.
When log jams get too big, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority comes in to blast them open. I have no idea how far things have to progress before that happens. In the mean time however, the log jam grows and produces some hilarious, entertaining, and horrific Safari stories. 2009 is widely considered to be one of the toughest Safari years ever: ridiculous heat, low water, and log jams. I've heard of teams losing hours portaging around the big log jam in 2009. In 2010, a 6 man team lost several hours trying to portage through the swamps into the infamous “Alligator Lake” short cut. A few other teams took the easier cut around the jam at night and got lost and confused along the way.
This year, rumor was that one of the top teams had spray painted trees, marking the take out on river right, about 50 yards before the jam, and the 200 yard portage route through the woods and into the cut. The other option was to portage river left, up an even taller, steeper bank, then drag the canoe 400-500 yards along a jeep path. Even with the navigation risk involved, I was set on taking the shorter portage. It was daylight, for one, and I'd spent a good amount of time looking over Google Earth and charts to get an idea of the cuts and alligator lake. The Google Earth image for this location was from 2008 (shortly after the race, Google Earth updated to a 2011 image, providing an awesome view of the log jam...bastards), so the current log jam was not there, but I felt confident that I understand the area. I even noticed that, after the cut flows back into the main river channel, we would pass a power line clearing before too long. This should be a good marker, in case we were not sure of our navigation once we hit the river.
Much sooner than I expected, we hit the first log jam. At the time, we weren't sure if this was it. There was a small ledge, with a ton of junk piled on top, more junk, then a bridge just beyond it. From descriptions I'd heard, I was expecting a really tricky sweeper with only a tiny, critical slot. Like most descriptions of river hazards AFTER Luling, this was at least a little exaggerated. There's no longer a current to push you into trouble and the water is deeper, so you don't have that upper San Marcos River experience of being pushed into a sweeper in water too shallow to steer. We slowed up a bit, hit the slot, and cruised through the rest of the junk.
My memory is cloudy after this. There were miles of middle-of-no-where river with our thoughts locked onto The Log Jam and wondering when we would get to The Log Jam. That is, of course, when my thoughts were actually locked onto some thing. With the lack of sleep, 72+ hours into the race, my brain was drifting. I started thinking about the log jam area, with the cuts through the forest and Alligator Lake. Exciting! Finally, I would get to explore all of the cuts, maybe find Alligator Lake. I'd spent enough time looking at charts and images, even with no water in it, I should have a decent chance at poking around and finding the Lake. At the least, I'd actually get to see the cuts in person now. Wait. We're in the middle of a race. This isn't a training run. We're on the last stretch of the Safari. Holy shit!. Was I that out of it just now? I really thought we were on a training run, about to explore the swamps. The lack of sleep and isolation had me convinced. This realization sobered me up pretty quickly. I was slipping, at a time when I needed to be sharp.
I didn't voice any of this to Matt. Our conversation now was focused on navigation. The GPS showed our location and the location of the big horse shoe bend, but we didn't know the mileage and I'd never seen exactly where the jam was, due to the outdated satellite image. At first, we were both content with being patient and waiting. Then, things got confusing for me. We were paddling through a debris field that looked like a log jam. Clearly, this was not a log jam, because it wasn't obstructing our path, but I was not thinking clearly. These little bits of log jam had vegetation growing on them and, I suppose, might be the nucleus for a future log jam. To me, at that time, it seemed like we were there. Now, on river right, I was starting to see cuts going into the woods. “Matt, I think that's it right there!” “I don't think so, we're not close enough yet.” “Are you sure we shouldn't pull over and check it out?” “No, we're not close enough to the bend yet.”
After slowing our pace to a crawl and going back and forth with this conversation, I think I finally realized that Matt was right and that I almost caused us to make a huge mistake. We could have easily wasted a hour, maybe several hours, stumbling around those cuts in the woods. This late in the game, that was a horrible thought. I was a little scared now and sort of angry that we had to deal with this near the end of the race with no real guidance or information. That's ridiculous. This kind of shit is what makes the Safari special, but again, I was not at all clear headed. “You're right. Let's agree to paddle all of the way up to the jam before we do any thing.” That may have been the only smart thing I'd said all day.
We continued on, at a slow pace, with me checking the GPS now and then. I have absolutely no idea of the time this went on, but after a while of slogging down river, there it was, The Log Jam. Seeing it, you definitely cannot mistake this for a debris field. It's solid. The Novice team that left Invista before us was all the way on the jam, preparing to portage their canoe up the big bank on river left. We slowed down and I started scanning the bank on river right. Matt was still set on paddling to the jam and was, I'm assuming, planning on catching up to these guys to see what they knew. “Wait! There it is!” I'd spotted the tree marking the take out and I absolutely knew that was it. Maybe 100 yards up river from the jam was a tree, with spray paint marking, and a muddy bank with a slick spot from racers dragging their canoe. Matt was understandably unsure, but agreed when I guaranteed that this was it. We paddled over and beached the canoe in the thick mud. I told Matt to hang tight, then hopped out and scaled the bank. I was starting to amp up again now with another major task at hand. I yelled to the other Novice team and waved them over. They just about had their canoe onto the bank.
Sprinting down the “trail”, I spotted spray paint markings often enough that, even at night, there would be little chance of wondering off. I believe the trail went on for 100-200 yard before hitting the cut. There were two different put-ins, with one being a little further into the woods along the cut. The put-in was very steep, with a fair bit of current flowing through. The log jam in the main river channel forms just before this cut. You might think then, that the best route would be to portage or ram your way into the jam, then paddle into the cut. Unfortunately, this is not possible, as a small log jam has formed about 50 yards into the cut. So, your best option is this portage through the woods that ends just beyond the small log jam. After launching here, it's clear sailing, as long as you can navigate through the cuts...
Sprinting back down the trail and to the river, I saw the other Novice team pulling up to the bank. I quickly explained that this was the shorter, more popular portage. They were surprised that we knew about this portage, being that we'd never done that race before. “We've heard from other racers.” I was in too much of an amped up hurry to explain beyond that. I'd already climbed back down the bank and was throwing all of the gear I could out of the canoe, up onto the bank to lighten the load. Every thing, including us, was now covered in mud, and we'd be even more muddy by the end of the portage. Matt scaled his way up the bank and with a little help from me, heaved that heavy canoe up. I do mean a “little” help, because Matt jerked the canoe up there very fast. I expected much worse. Before I climbed back up the bank, I shot off a quick explanation of navigation to the other Novice team. “Portage down the trail, then launch into the cut. After that, keep taking lefts and you'll hit the river.” That was all they got. We were off.
Time for the dragging straps again. With the canoe on the trail, we each took a strap and muscled up as fast of a pace as we could, which probably wasn't much. A 100-200 yard portage through the woods may not sound too rough, but with a heavy canoe and a hot summer afternoon, it's not fun. At some point during the portage, Matt noticed that one of our paddles had fallen out. I sprinted back down the trail to retrieve it, then sprinted back to help Matt get the canoe moving again. Towards the end, I think we gave up on dragging and tried to carry the canoe, which turned out to be even more uncomfortable. After what was probably a relatively short amount of time, we arrived at the put-in. I honestly don't remember much of the details here: another steep, muddy bank, slowly and carefully lowering that bitch of a canoe into the water, both of us jumping/falling down the bank, mud, a swift current at the bottom, more mud, trying to help Matt back into the canoe, mud all over every thing...
Never the less, we were excited. We had finished the portage and now it was time for our jungle adventure. The cut is a very narrow (10-20 feet wide), swift flowing, river, if you will, through the woods. We were running purely off of my mental image of the route, so the “swift flowing” part made things interesting, and probably saved us from any urges to explore. I told Matt roughly the same thing I'd told the other team, “we need to take left turns”. That was a left turn, almost right away. Clearly not the correct route though, as that turn was heading back. I was not 100% confident now and Matt was even less confident, which is understandable, since at the least I had a decent mental image of where we were going. “This. This is it!” We'd come to a “T” in the cut, left or right, with the main current flowing to the left. We turned left and kept pace in the fast current. Now, we were in a very narrow, very long straight section. There was no doubt we were headed the right way, but we weren't there yet.
The entire cut is only 1 mile long before you merge back onto the Guadalupe and a large portion of this is the straight section, so we were finally able to ease back a bit...until we saw another left turn. Had the current been slack, we might have stopped to contemplate the situation. As it was, with a swift current pushing us and our instincts telling us to stay our course, we quickly cruised past. For one, it just didn't look right. We were clearly in the main channel, with the main flow. Also, we were headed roughly east, which was where we wanted to go. Finally, with my mental image from Google Earth I remembered seeing a left turn that WOULD take us back to the river, only it would merge further up river, possibly into the log jam. I explained this to Matt with all of the confidence I could muster, which was genuine, because I was confident now.
Before I could settle back into the ride, a thought occurred to me. “Oh shit! We should have waited for those guys. There's no way they'll get out of here cleanly with the directions I gave them. I just told them to keep turning left.” I think Matt's response was that they would be alright and there was nothing we could do about it now. He was correct on that point. I briefly considered paddling back upstream, but in this current, that would be a really idiotic waste of energy. I suppose we could have pulled over immediately and waited, but that thought never occurred to me. Even if it had, who knows how far back they might have been. Our portage went quickly, because Matt's a big guy and he muscled the canoe up the bank in short order. Two guys about my size may have taken a while. Worrying about what may have happened was pointless, we were headed down river. I felt a bit guilty about that for the rest of the race though.
Less than ½ of a mile from that turn, we came to another “T”. “This is the river. We're going right.” Neither of us was completely confident, because the river at this point looks disturbingly similar to the cut: small and narrow. I do remember some markings and signs at this intersection, which I thought was very odd. “Who the hell comes to this part of the river?” It feels so remote that it's hard to imagine who might pass through. Of course, there's not always a log jam. In other years, I'm sure boats travel along the southern miles of the river.
Paddling south on what we assumed was now the Guadalupe, Matt was still uneasy about the navigation. “If we're on the Guadalupe, we'll pass a power line clearing very soon.” I was banking on this marker, knowing that teams have hit the Guad, become confused, and turned left, going back upriver towards the jam. Similarly, if this was another portion of the cut, we would be heading back into the woods and would not cross the clearing. The debate was avoided entirely as we quickly made it to the clearing. I was 100% confident of our course, even if Matt was a bit uncomfortable. Unfortunately though, now that we'd cleared our second to last major obstacle, my body let go. I suppose that adrenaline was temporarily carrying me through sleep deprivation and that tough, fast, sweltering portage.
I felt terrible and I wasn't sure if it was heat exhaustion or lack of electrolytes or lack of food or what. More likely, it was the cumulated effects of every thing. I asked Matt if we could pull over for a quick dip, so I could at least try to cool down my core. There were no sandy beaches this far south, so we pulled onto a muddy banked and took a dip. I explained the situation to Matt, “my energy is gone”. We agreed to push on and get to the check point. Matt put on his head phones and started cranking. Music would have been nice, but I'd ruined my MP3 player on the way to Victoria. I had forgotten that I was wearing it when I took a dip. No music for me. I tried to occupy myself by popping a bunch of Endurolytes, eating, and drinking plenty of water. I knew that I'd need to stay on top of all of those to recover.
This was another long stretch to the check point. There is about 6.5 miles of dead river and nothing, with only a vague idea that you'll eventually see people. We passed another cut to our right that I thought might be the exit from Alligator Lake. That was cool. Yet again, I don't remember much. We had long ago locked onto what our average pace was and I had resolved to looking at things in terms of “hours”. You realize there are 2 or 3 or 8 hours ahead and you do the time. After a while, I started to come around and our conversation shifted to our usual topic of “where the hell is the checkpoint”. Matt was, I think, still questioning our navigation around the jam, but we had the GPS and we knew we'd hit the checkpoint before the I-35 bridge in Tivoli. Zooming in and estimating the distance was not comforting...we'd have to slog it our for a little while.
If my memory is correct, we spotted the Salt Water Barrier checkpoint just as Matt was starting to get antsy. Again, we were VERY happy to see the crew. We pulled up and gave Ed some instructions on what we wanted. As we were climbing out of the canoe, a captain from one of the Novice teams walked over to ask if we'd seen her paddlers. I suppose she was the girlfriend of one of the guys that may or may not have been lost in the swamp. Feeling pretty guilty, I explained to her what happened and tried to reassure her that they might not be too far behind us. She looked a little worried.
Being that this was the last official checkpoint, I was surprised how empty the place was. A few crew members were sitting in the tent area and there was no TWS official. I don't know, it just felt weird at the time. Mean while, we were doing a good job of dragging things out. Me and Matt milled around as Ed slowly filled our water jugs and made a couple of ice socks. Ed and Dan were in a great mood at this point. They could smell the finish and were as eager to get it over with as we were. Still, they were taking their time with things and I was getting anxious again. We had one more stop ahead of us before the bay. Wooden Bridge is not an official checkpoint, but almost every team stops there. It's a small ramp, on private property (the owners allow access during the Safari), and it's 1 or 2 miles from the bay. This is the absolute last chance for crew access. Teams stop here and dump every piece of gear and food except a bit of water, paddles, and safety gear. Also, with the afternoon heat you much prefer to strap your spray skirt on here, rather than further up river at Salt Water Barrier.
Ed agreed to meet us at Wooden Bridge. Once again, he'd hooked up with Zoltan's crew captain, so we knew he'd find the way. Before pushing off, we noticed the TWS mileage sign posted up on Salt Water Barrier: GO TWS MILE 244. This was crushing. Some how, we'd convinced ourselves that we were much closer to the bay. Having to cover another 10-12 miles before the bay seemed horrible and honestly, in our state of mind, I think we had added the math up wrong and thought it was even further. Neither of us was in a good mood now, but I think we'd flipped again and now Matt was the one dragging. Even more annoying, you paddle maybe 100 yards from the checkpoint before hitting Salt Water Barrier. With a drought and stiff onshore winds, the barrier is inflated to prevent salt water from pushing up river. Almost as soon as we started paddling we had to get out and portage. Ed was snapping photos and making jokes, Matt was not laughing, he was ready to get to Wooden Bridge and the bay.
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