Pangorge adventure race ’19
- Total miles 15.4
- Total elevation 2554 ft
- Adventure style check-point race
- Daddy/Daughter race day
This was such an awesome day in the woods spending it with Bella. The day started off clear and cool in the morning with a start time of 7:16. Our route took us up the mountain following the Sulfur Branch drainage to reach the waterfall, which was the first non-mandatory check-point for us. The scramble up the creek was fun, we took it easy and explored as we headed up. Bella’s always finding the details in the leaves, rocks, and other things laying on the forest floor. As we got to the bottom of the falls we hung out abit, took some pics, and enjoyed the view. After a rest we started to hike the bottom of the cliffline to find our climb up. We roped up and began simil-climbing the first pitch, which consisted of easy climbing and traversing a ledge system. I lead the second pitch with BB following up. The overall climbing wasn’t that hard, just steep enough to want the comfort of a rope. After topping out we landed on the Cumberland Trail. This marked the end of the vertical climbing and onto the trail running. This section of the trail is beautiful, weaving around trees and boulders till we hit the Indian Rockhouse formation. We squeezed through the stone door and hiked uphill to where our bikes were waiting on us at the next check-point. At this point we were about 3.5 hrs in and decided to skip a couple of the non-mando bike check-points, wanting to save legs for the ride out and down to our boat. The ride out was all gravel and pavement and we were both feeling the cold air in this section. Once we left the gravel, we had a long, winding downhill to the bottom of the mountain. Nice and fast but damn cold! We pulled into the start/finish/basecamp to ditch the bikes and grab our tandem kayak. We had to drag the boat a half mile up and down a hill to get to the river. We had a solid downstream paddle to the final check-point of the day. Once we landed at Deadmans Eddy, we decided it would be faster to run the road a few miles rather than paddling upstream. Slogging through the run, we made it back to basecamp with a finishing time of 5 hrs and 48 mins. We were tired and happy with the day we had together. Bella was the only female to race that day and the youngest to ever complete a Pangorge course. This was such a special time spending the day in the woods getting after it with her!