The Chill was my introduction into adventure racing. This annual event takes place in early December, which can be disappointingly balmy or annoyingly rainy and muddy in Southeast Michigan. This year, the weather cooperated with the race’s name, though: it was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit in the beginning, with the day’s high expected at 27 F, and the chance of snow was 100%, with accumulations of two to four inches possible. Gusty winds were promised, too.

December 6, this year’s date for the race, happens to be Finland’s independence day. I’m about as patriotic as a squirrel, but it seemed appropriate to me to celebrate the day by romping through marshy woods in a snow storm. (According to one theory, the Finnish word for Finland means “swamp land.” Whether the theory is correct, I have had my share of wading through Finland’s innumerable swamps, bogs, marshes and fens.)

The Chill is an adventure “sprint”: a race with a mere seven-hour cutoff time. Yesterday, it took place in the Island Lake State Park, in Brighton, Michigan, and involved trekking, with navigation, mountain biking, canoeing, more trekking. The last part also had a ropes section; the nature of the ropes was kept a secret until the briefing on race day: it was a about a fifteen foot climb on cargo netting, to be done by one person of each team only.

Yes, teams. This was also a two-person team event (although a solo option was available). I teamed up with my CrossFit buddy/mentor Feng, for whom The Chill was also the first adventure race. It also served as her introduction to trail biking and riding her new mountain bike for the first time. We felt, in retrospect, that this did not necessarily make for the most enjoyable experience, at least not when the trails frequently consisted of icy ruts with lots of light new snow on them.

Still, it was a splendid experience. So the race began with a quick and quite easy orienteering section, the purpose of which seemed to get a bit of a spread into the group before we hit the single-track bike section. There was literally a long line to the first control point punches, even though all control points in the navigation sections could be approached in any order. The three first CPs were pretty quickly dealt with — despite a bit of swampy terrain, which in Michigan tends to involve semi-impenetrable briars, brambles and small tree branches. We then hopped on our by now snow-covered bikes and hit the trail. In the bike section, the CPs had not been marked on the map but were simply along the trail (to discourage shortcutting). Although the group had spread out quite a bit, it still occasionally felt like riding in a rush hour, except that everyone fell at least a few times. The trail, which under normal circumstances is a very fun and mainly fast riding trail (I had ridden most of it the week before in my attempt to recon the location) had now become one of the most technical trails I’ve ridden in a long time. Still fun, at least occasionally, but also stressful and frustrating at others. About seven miles of this, and we graduated onto the somewhat easier ride on paved trails and roads to the canoe launch. Given that the road was pretty much sheer ice with blowing snow on it, it still wasn’t your typical Saturday ride in the park. Many falls were witnessed by your reporter; he managed to stay upright — just barely, though — through that section. All in all, the biking amounted to 10.1 miles, according to the cyclocomputer.

Then it was time for the canoe leg. Big bulky aluminum canoes don’t capsize easily, but their launch still involves enough maneuvering that you worry about having half your gear or, worse, yourself in the river. In the end, our launch went fine.

The paddling was 5.3 miles down the Huron river. Downriver was good; the headwind, with thick snow, kind of cut that advantage off. Still, we worked hard, and managed to pass quite a few others. This was a pretty good feat, considering we had never had a chance to practice paddling together. And, to be honest, others passed us, too. The highly meandering river, numerous downed trees and a couple of very low bridges made the paddle kind of interesting. Not to mention Feng getting her gloves soaked. That’s the disadvantage of having to steer and paddle.

Once we finished the canoe section, Feng’s wet and frozen hands needed attention: new gloves, and chemical hand warmers in the gloves began to do the job. We now faced the final trekking section. The task: find at least three of the twelve control points to remain a ranked team, do it before the 4 p.m. cutoff, and manage it without getting shot by the multiple hunters in the park. (Wearing some orange was on the mandatory gear list. The constant gunfire around us served as poignant reminders of the fact.) This being our first outing, we had a couple of plans, depending on the time and our feelings: either get all the twelve, or forgo the two farthest ones and get ten. The decision time was after we got the two nearest ones.

Well, the first two nearest ones had us trek through a pretty wet swamp. (Those of you who don’t know winters or swamps need to know that it has be really, really cold before swamps stop being wet.) I had gotten waterproof socks, but Feng only had smartwool, and that wasn’t enough. Decision time: put foot warmers in Feng’s shoes to get rid of the numbness in her toes, give up on the two farthest CPs. Said and done.

Or, rather, said and embarked upon. It wasn’t done right away (though it did get done, in case you want to know so you can stop reading). The good news: the snowfall had ended for the time being. The bad news: the tube of my CamelBak had frozen. I discovered, fortunately, that if you bite the mouthpiece and keep sucking, eventually you’ll get a water slushy and even more eventually some really damned cold water.

Here I felt I was cheating. I was the team’s navigator, Feng the passport puncher. (Not a trivial division of labor, as one can do some planning while the teammate is punching at the CP.) Since we now were somewhere in the midpack — I occasionally worried we were close to DFL — we weren’t the first to aim for any of these CPs. Sure, you don’t want to follow any old set of footprints in the snow because it could be hunters not interested — to say the least — in looking for some darn orange-white contraptions or poor navigators. But it ended up being navigation on landmarks and tracking footprints. Only once did I use my compass to take a bearing; otherwise it was to make sure we were heading in the generally correct direction.

That said, though, I must abandon all false modesty and say I’m a damn good navigator. Much as I hated the twelve years of mandatory orienteering at school, it and growing up in the middle of the wilderness and having to be very good at reading topo maps turns out to be a good skill to have and hard to forget. All those ways of fitting the map and the terrain around you together sure came in handy.

All the CPs we went for had been pretty charitably placed, except for one, which involved trekking through a very serious marsh and crossing a creek with very mushy banks. (Consider: landing knee deep in mud and almost leaving you shoe in the muck when it’s 25F and snowy all around you isn’t the most fun that can be had this side of Disneyworld.)

Excitement aside, we did get the ten CPs we went for and arrived at the finish well before the cutoff. The preliminary results place us at the forty-seventh place our 122, but there’s an error in the results, and we’ll more likely end up in the mid-fifties. It’s nothing to be ashamed of in our first adventure race. But I have to offer this observation: racing around the midpack, I was struck by the relaxed attitudes about competition we encountered in many of the teams we saw. I had a really hard time getting that attitude, even though there were about zero stakes in this race for me. I don’t mean to judge; quite the contrary, I think it’s wonderful to see people just enjoying the outing on a beautiful — well, if not beautiful, interesting — day. But I constantly felt a frustration every time someone passed us, and an eagerness to push harder to catch them. It’s not for that reason only, though, that I do plan to do more adventure racing. Heck, I now have most of the required gear, and I’ve discovered it’s something I both enjoy and might have skills for — endurance, navigation skills — so why not?

Here are photos from the race, and here their official report, with results.