With a mist covering all of Big Sky we awoke with much anticipation camera crews walked about covering the excitement while teams prepared. A crowd grew along the start line as the racers waited for the mist to lift so a helicopter could tape the start of the race. Brunton, in a show of how much they enjoy the sport of adventure racing went skipping threw start line of Primal Quest 08. The first leg of the race was a trek up past 11000ft to the snow covered top of Lone mountain whose shadow the competitors had been in for the past three days. The way down was much more enjoyable the team had said because they were off there legs and on there rear ends sliding down the side of the mountain in a controlled fall. Coming off the mountain they went threw there first transition area (TA) in little over ten minutes with only time to fill water bottles and eat a ham sandwich. They then spent a long cold Montana night trekking threw the mountains. The team decided even after an extreme night in the elements that they would forgo sleep and take on the cold flood stage waters of the Gallatin river. Team Brunton prepared for the water by layering in thermal, neoprene as well as full dry and wet suits, due to a lack of boats this protection from the cold worked against us as the team sat in 83 degree heat unprotected from the sun for over a hour and a half waiting for there boats to arrive. While news of dangerous waters and teams needing to be rescued from life threating situations came in our team sat until word came from down stream that all teams were to be pulled from the river. The team then proceeded to check point ten and after only two hours of sleep headed out right before night fall to navigate the Montana wilderness once again.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Primal Quest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.