Adventure racing is about testing one's will, fitness, and gear. This race gave us (team Jackalopes) this opportunity and then some.
The course was brutal by design: 260 total miles weaving through the high desert and volcanic ridgelines around Redmond, Oregon. It pushed us across 29,000 feet of elevation gain over 93 hours with only 8 hours of sleep. No GPS. No breadcrumbs to follow. Just a set of maps, a compass, and four stubborn Jackalopes refusing to quit.
Packrafting, trekking, mountain biking, and climbing made up the bones of the course, but it was the navigation that gave it teeth. Hours were spent scanning topo lines, trusting bearing lines, and debating route choice under stars and through foggy, sleepless, brain fatigue. But that’s exactly what we came for.
This wasn’t about finish lines or podiums. It was about testing ourselves in the realest way we know. Can you move well when your feet are screaming, your eyes are gritty with sleep-debt, and your body is begging you to lay down? Can you rely on your teammates when things get messy, or when a wrong turn costs you hours and daylight’s fading fast?
Through it all…bushwhacking through sagebrush, paddling headwinds that laughed at our strokes, scrambling scree fields, hauling ourselves up brutal climbs…we kept moving. We joked. We swore. We moved as one.
Team Jackalopes held it together.
And our gear? Yeah, in part, we do these things to test our gear to the fullest. Dry when it needed to be, breathable when the sun beat down, and still standing after everything we threw at it. We designed it for this kind of punishment.
This race was a reminder: there’s beauty in suffering with purpose. In relying on old tools like a compass and a map. In grinding it out with people you trust when there’s no one watching and no easy way home.
Adventure racing strips you bare, and if you’re lucky, it leaves something stronger behind.
- Team Jackalopes (Jeff C., Dom, Jeff A., Greg)
