High Profile Adventure Camp & Lightning Strikes 8 Hr Adventure Race

March 23-25, 2012
Racers: John Hohenberger, Britt Mason, Cory Mason

The Central Team made its first 2012 appearance at the 6th High Profile Adventure Racing Camp, a training grounds for adventure racers beginner to advanced capped with an 8 hour race testing everyone’s skills. Britt and Cory made the trip out Friday while John joined up mid-day Saturday.

On Friday, Britt and Cory arrived and got settled into their cabin. Britt was the only female in a full 16-bunk cabin (just like being at the fire station!). After getting settled in, they attended presentations covering paddling, mountain biking, and navigation. Saturday morning was spent doing paddling practice on the Mississippi River and an orienteering course in the Mississippi Palisades. Saturday afternoon focused on ropes training – a short presentation on the basics of zip lines, rappelling, ascending and tyrolean traverses. The field work was much more exciting as we set up our rigging, worked our ascenders, rappelled, zipped over the river, and watched Cory eat it on the slack line over the water.

After all the training was complete, Robyn Benincasa (Britt’s adventure racing hero) gave a great presentation on the value of team work. Everyone laughed and was amazed at her experiences in global adventure races and how her teams were able to overcome numerous challenges time and again. This was specially fitting for the Rev3/Mountain Khakis as it was the first time that Britt, Cory and John would be racing together!

About 10pm, instructions and maps were finally handed out for the Lightning Strikes AR. There were 22 CPs and all had to be done in order except for the prologue. The race was broken up pretty nicely:

CP 1-3 Orienteering prologue
CP 4 Canoe
CP 5-6 Biking
CP 7-14 Orienteering
CP 15-16 Biking
CP 17-22 Orienteering / Ropes

We received three maps for the race covering everything but the mid-race orienteering section. Britt took charge with the maps, plotting a few points and determining our routes of travel. It went quickly and we were ready for a few Zs.

Morning came quickly. We met up for our bike drop at 5:30 and temperatures were already approaching 50 degrees. Mother Nature was on our side. Highs were going to hit mid 70s for mid-March!

The race started Sunday at 7am after a few pre-race photos and last minute advice from Robyn. With the gun, Britt and John raced to pick up a canoe from the pavilion down to the river. Cory carried our paddles and life jackets for the three of us. The path down to the river was fairly narrow and there was a little bumping and grinding. We dropped our canoe at the river with the lead teams turning our attention to the prologue.

All three CPs were across the river without a bridge. No one hesitated and Britt had the team running along the river bank for the first CP. We quickly cleared the 3 CPs and were back at our canoe. A few spectators cheered us on and word came that we were the first coed team but behind a male team.


Looking to move quickly, we hopped in the canoe quickly looking to head down our 3 mile canoe in shallow waters. As soon as we jumped in the canoe – SPLASH!!! We flipped immediately. Even though the water was only a few feet deep, we were soaked and even worse, we were passed while emptying the canoe. Back in the boat, we took a little more conservative approach. While snaking back and forth, the river turned into more of a stream only a couple inches deep. At least a half dozen times, the boat hit ground and the three of us got out to walk the boat downstream. Without further event, the three of us finished the short canoe at CP 4.

Britt, Cory and John were all glad to put the canoe in the rearview mirror and quickly transitioned to bikes. At this point, we knew there was a coed team ahead of us and we needed to make up ground. We were biking mostly hard packed dirt roads to CP 5 and 6. With only 13 miles to the orienteering section, there was little time to make up ground. We got a break coming across the lead coed team as they had bike trouble. At CP 5, we passed our way into first as the male team overshot the CP. We finished the bike greeted with the news we were in first place!

Excited by the positive news, we picked up our new map, quickly assessing routes that would take us through the next several checkpoints. Britt led us straight to the first CP. From there, Britt and John managed the maps following some trails, bushwhacking to other CPs. Without any big misses, we finished CP 12 with the male team watching our moves for clues. We knew we didn’t have much of a lead and had to keep moving in a hurry. With the male team following quickly, we completed the orienteering, switched to bikes and made it out of the TA in first place.

Biking 10 miles back to the start, we made a quick stop to pick up our paddles. All along the way, we kept pushing to keep distance on the chasing teams, using a solid pace line most of the time.

We dropped our bikes at CP 16, next to the start, and put on our harnesses for the upcoming ropes section – the only thing separating us from the win. We knew each of these CPs was going to be challenging. We slid down a slick rock re-entrant to get to CP 17. Then after stomping through the river, we found CP 18 in a tight crevice – Cory had to drop his pack in order to squeeze in and out. CP 19 was in a cave back at the river. The cave entrance looked small, but as we turned our headlamps on, it had to have been 100 yards deep. Hitting the CP, we startled a bat that went flying past us. We were greeted by by 2 teams heading into the cave as we were heading out! We only had a couple minutes on them with 4 CPs to go.

Britt and John picked a route back across the river and up the rock outcropping to CP 20 and a zip line. We knew the zip line was single file to keep the teams behind us, but the ascent and rappels at CP 21 & 22 had a few lines. The race was going to come down to who could ascend the 100 foot wall the fastest. The race was on!

Britt had her slings ready for the zip line and was the first to shoot down. John was next with the desire to win outweighing his fear of heights. Cory was right behind. Hitting CP 21, Britt made quick work of the ascension. John started working his way up the line while Britt rappelled down the second face. John finished the ascent and moved over to the rappel. While Cory worked up the line, Britt and John set a course to the finish as the male team hooked up for their first ascent. The run to the finish was less than a mile, and Cory kept our lead strong. Fighting off the unusual warmth, the team crossed the finish line in 5:44. Rev3/Mountain Khakis won the Lightning Strikes, qualifying for USARA Nationals and picking up $500 toward the race.

A huge thank you goes out to the race director, Gerry Voelliger, for putting on an outstanding AR camp and race, along with his team of volunteers, presenters, and Camp Benson staff. The time and effort they put into making this camp and race exciting and successful was incredible!