DART-nuun News
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Well, at least half the team has arrived. Matzke and I arrived yesterday while Mari and Rinn are still on the road. Mari is arriving from Colorado after some good times at altitude and Rinn just left Seattle with our support chief, Ryan Fleming. They are driving our support vehicle. Our master navigator support crew, Daniel Schaublin, is stuck at the Denver airport after missing his connection and our Chef (yes, we even have a Chef), Maria Romero, is driving on Saturday to meet us just in time before the Monday start.



Wow, what can we say about Big Sky and Montana. The first word that comes to mind is BIG. Everything here is big! The mountains are enormous. Just look at the photo (to the left) of the first mountain we're climbing straight out of the start gate (well, at least that's what the circulating rumors are suggesting since the course will not be revealed until Sunday night). Apparently, we'll be going straight to the summit of Lone Peak at over 11,000 ft to find the first check point. Not exactly a slow start to this epic 10 day non stop race! Did you notice all the snow still on the mountain? Summer hasn't really arrived here yet. Montana's snowfall this year is well above the norm and just last week they had a few feet of fresh powder. All this snow is going to add to the challenge of the course. Just simple creek crossings will now be raging torrents. That brings us to the next BIG thing we observed, the water! Every river and creek is overflowing so the river sections, especially the riverboarding, will be intimidating to say the least. What else is big here? The valleys, trees, animals (a massive beaver crossed our path today but he was friendly. I don't think we can say the same for the black and Grizzly bears in the area), and the Montana hospitality!

We're looking forward to having the entire crew onsite tomorrow so we can finalize our preparations.The excitement begins on Monday June 23rd begin 9am -11am.

The support crew will try to post updates during the race but we're not sure if we'll have access to the internet on this remote course so the best way to follow us is via the Primal Quest website which will have live GPS tracking. We're team # 42 and our team page on the Primal Quest site can be found here.

Keep Exploring,
Cyril