DEEP IN THE ZONE
Adventure Racing Team EMS Jumps the Hurdles

By Joe Dobson

In July 2004, the Eastern Mountain Sports Adventure Racing Team introduced itself to the global Adventure Racing community. There was not a lot of small talk. In its first outing—the high-profile Balance Bar 24-hour ordeal in Beaver Creek, Colorado (race one of a three-race series)—Team EMS took eighth place out of 42 teams, 22 of which were ranked Elite. Nike-ACG, Montrail and Seagate were in the ouse—the top teams on the globe. If there were questions concerning Team EMS’s right to be there, they didn’t get asked. Apparently, the upstart threesome of Jennifer Shultis, Jason Poole and Pete Swenson is not some puffball corporate contrivance.

They barely knew each other before Balance Bar, but there was some kind of collective wattage. “Pete and Jason are not only exceptionally strong athletes, they are also very experienced and total professionals,” says team leader Jennifer. The electricity came in handy as Team EMS blasted through the Grand Prix run along the Colorado River and had the jump at the kayak put-in. They were competitive in the Class II rapids, but technical difficulties arose. The kayak became suddenly and irretrievably unseaworthy. The thing leaked. Team EMS took on water and watched in dismay as the waterline became one with the gunwales. Then it got weird. Unscheduled sport-fishing ensued. Jennifer tells the story.

“Pete is in the stern and doing a heroic job of keeping the struggling kayak straight during a stretch of rapids, and then he starts yelling. My heart sinks—he’s gone out the back, I think. But no, it’s a ten-inch fish (it started out at six inches and has grown with the story). It’s out of the river and in Pete’s lap, and it’s flopping around. Does Pete deal with the fish first or keep steering?  Somehow Pete managed to get us through the rapids before flipping it out of the boat.”

After the encounter with the fish-of-indeterminate-size and the leaky boat, which finally sank just before the take-out point, Team EMS had some time to make up. The 20-mile trek and 65-mile mountain bike leg, complete with a Tyrolean-traverse-with-bike (the kind where you hang upside down from a rope and shimmy across the abyss, in this case carrying a less-than-wieldy object that whacks you in the shins), did not offer a lot of gain. But then came the orienteering challenge at Beaver Creek, during which Jason’s navigational wizardry—despite Jennifer’s difficulties with altitude-acclimation—catapulted them back into contention.

After a thunderstorm accompanied by an unpleasant drop in temperature and a very cold night—and after about 14,000 feet of vertical gain over 105 miles—Team EMS finished in 19 hours, 19 minutes. Of the 42 teams in the race, 17 didn’t finish. Team EMS had hopes for fifth place, and Jennifer says that the hope was well founded. The chemistry had clicked. “The team worked very well together against teams that have been racing together for years.”

October 10, 2004. Balance Bar Race II. New York City and Ringwood State Park, New Jersey.

In a departure for the Balance Bar series that some may have considered radical, starting positions for the 24-hour race scheduled for the next day were determined by a sprint-swim in the Hudson River (in October), entered by way of zip-line off a Manhattan-docked aircraft carrier (the storied WW II-era U.S.S. Intrepid). You also had to do some rappelling and climb up a cargo net to get back on board.

Team EMS landed a mid-field start for the following day’s main event in Jersey, and kicked it off with a 24-point, 9-mile orienteering leg. U.S. Orienteering champion Eric Bone filled in for Swenson, and Bone did good. Team EMS posted the fastest split of the day and made up for time lost in the chilly (and maybe not all that healthy) Hudson. Then came 32 miles of mountain biking, including a four-mile stretch during which “the rules said the wheels couldn’t touch the ground,” Jennifer says. Carrying a bike for four miles is not guaranteed fun, but when the trail turned to steep rock face and boulder fields, things got particularly interesting. A nine-mile flat-water paddle and a sixteen-mile trek later, Team EMS had another eighth place. “The deciding factor was the hike-a-bike section, in which some teams gambled by deviating off the main trail and onto a game trail—it saved up to an hour of rough travel,” Jennifer says. Good orienteering proved critical. Last year’s series champions Seagate finished first and Eco-Challenge winner Nike-ACG crossed the line in second. Eighth place was a different order of competitiveness, but it was not a different league. The finish put them seventh overall in the Balance Bar series. Next up was a trip out west.

November 20, 2004. Balance Bar Race III. Los Angeles, California.

By now Team EMS had earned an Elite ranking, which came in handy as it faced 60 miles of mountain biking, 23 miles and 15,000 vertical feet of trekking and 14 miles of ocean kayaking (accompanied by seals) along the Santa Monica shoreline. At the pre-race meeting, a ranger informed the participants that the course led through lands recently acquired by the state to protect the growing mountain lion population. It added a certain psychological dimension to the race—a woman had been dragged off her bike by one of the big cats earlier in the year.

The seals posed less of a threat, but the kayak finish was less than graceful. A rogue wave turned the boat sideways and flipped it onto the beach. Pete broke his paddle, but didn’t need it anymore.

The ropes section had the team members dangling over a dammed-up gorge on an assisted Tyrolean traverse. Pete went first and brought along a helper rope. Then he pulled Eric across, and Eric helped him transport Jennifer, who hoisted all three packs and never looked down.

More about Team EMS >>