Sat, Aug 21 2010, Sun, Aug 22 2010 - Gary's Survival Series #4 - Wet & Wild Cross Country (View Original Event Details)
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Well the name saids it all. It was Wet & Wild Cross Country event. We started off from Nine Mile Marina (just about 20km south of Bala on Saturday morning. It was an overcast day, but no rain today.
From the marina we travelled down the road looking for a yellow blazed trail. We decided to started off down an ATV/snowmobile trail. But it was not going in the direction we wanted to travel in. So we decided to go cross counrty (i.e. bushwhacking) looking for the yellow blazed trail. We followed a hydro line for a while then crossed a beaver dam and generally followed a ridge line between Thompson marsh and an unknown marsh to our northeast. No trail yet. According to the local marina guy this was going to be a challenge to make it through the marsh. We'll we made it to Big Outer Lake about 3 hours later. So I guess the local doesn't get out of the marina very offen!
Our mission was to cross a 250 meter open section of the lake to get to the other side. The water temperature was reasonable and we stripped down to our suits and garbage bagged our packs. Most of us added a 2-3 meter line between the floating pack and our waist. We crossed is two's and threes to spot each other. We'll it took a little while but we all made it across. Most of our waterproofing job worked well and we made it across with no water entering our gear. We put our clothes and boots back on and headed down the side of the lake. A little while later it was time to get "LOST" in our teams of two.
Check out the photos and the map on line.
I ended up pairing up close to Jenn and Judith since we had an odd number on this event. Jenn and Jenn set up their garbage shelter and we had a nice fire and conversation as we waited for dark. There were no bugs. I think I heard maybe 5 mosquito's all night.
It started to rain some time in the middle of the night. Not very heavy. More of a drizy that last most of Sunday. We'll the shelters worked well!
We made the rounds from 8-10AM and collect everybody and reviewed all the shelters with the various teams. We made it back to base camp and had breakfast.
Well the adventure took a small deviation after I spotted an old fishermans aluminun beat up boat stowed in a marsh area across the lake. So Jenn and I swam over and decided we would borrow it for a while. There was 1 paddle and some old broken boat seat boards from another caved in fiberglas boat that the winter ice had destroyed. Back at base camp we sawed up the boat seat planks into 4 paddles. All-A-Board! We made 2 trips for the 8 of us. Stefan was so keen he decided to do the pack swim again. Either that or he did not trust the beat up boat. The boat was fine!
Back on land, we were on our way back to the marina, and we made excellent time on our way back doing the 4+ Km in under 2 hours.
About 200 meters from the marina we finally found the yellow trail markers.
Some of us decided to take a swim in Nine Mile Lake to get all the sweat and pine needles out of our hair. It was nice to get into clean dry clothes.
Most of us meet in Bala at a local grease spoon for a late lunch/early supper. Some of us checked out the local waterfalls.
See you all soon.
Gary
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