GOALS Krista Greisacker Memorial Adventure Race is a 12
hour adventure race held in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. This
year the race featured a linear course spanning from the town of Tamaqua to
Kempton PA with a true single-track mountain bike course, two bushwhacking
intensive orienteering courses, and a canoe leg in between. The course was
fairly straight forward point to point navigation with some adventures thrown
in between.
The race began with a prolog where racers had to run
100yard to a parking lot and find their bikes with one teammate racing on foot
to the first CP. We came out of the prolog in third and raced to the beginning
of the mountain bike course. The section was an intensive 10 miles of
single-track designed specifically for some fun mountain biking and favored the
more experienced riders. During this bike course we stopped to help another
race team fix a broken rear derailer which turned out to be unsuccessful. We
came out the single-track course a little behind but pushed fast toward the
orienteering courses about 10 miles away getting two CPs along the way.
The foot orienteering course was split into two sections
that began at the bottom of a ravine with each section requiring a 400 - 500ft
steep climb to begin. We chose to start with the "A" course which was
more spread out. The O-Course required intense navigation and a lot of
bushwhacking. We cleared the A course but only had time to take one CP from the
"B" course before riding down to canoe put-in.
The canoe section was not the fast paddle the racers were
hoping for. The water levels were quite low and required almost as mush time
out of the canoe pushing as time paddling in the canoe. After some time on the
water the takeout came as welcome relief.
The last section of the course required racers to
navigate their way to the base of the north side of Hawk Mountain where we
punched another CP and one out of three optional points due to time lost on the
water. From there we had to bushwacker a fairly linear line up over 800 feet in
elevation to the ridge line punching one CP along the way and one at the top
(Dan's Pulpit on the Appalachian Trail). The route down the south side of the
ridge line took a lot rock jumping and good navigation to meet up with an old
Jeep trail that ran through the final two mandatory CPs. Once the final CP was
checked we had to hustle about three miles to finish where we placed 2nd in the
3-person coed division.
Thanks to GOALS ARA for a great job incorporating some
great riding, orienteering, and sights into this race.
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