My day began at 02h00, after a 50-minute sleep, when I headed down to the canyon exit with Swedish photographer Martin Westerstrand as well as the Australian journo Angela Pownall and photographer Mogans Johansen. We’d concocted a plan during the night to head down there to intercept Cinnober (Sweden) and Havacrack (Australia) and Martin and Mogans wanted to rig a two-flash synchronised setup to perfectly illuminate the teams.
Tracking showed the teams to be near the exit but as we’d learned during Monday, near can mean anything from one to three hours away!
We were really surprised that the canyon wasn’t even half as cold as we’d expected. As I’d only slept for 50-minutes, I curled up on the ground to nap. After two hours I was cold, but not unbearably so. All teams that slept in the canyon during the night said that they slept pretty well. Very fortunate. Last night I had images of hypothermic teams crawling out of the canyon.
It proved to be two hours before Cinnober emerged. Flashes popped, photos were taken and I joined Martin in walking with his team to the transition. Havacrack were a bit back and, according to Cinnober, were not moving very fast.
Ida Svensson confirmed that the situation down there, in terms of cold, wasn’t as bad as we expected. The canyon has large boulders and some pools high up in the first few hundred metres. It improves from there. “We had one swim,” she says. “We put on dry clothes and after that priority one was not to get wet.” They exited the canyon around 4am (Tuesday) and were dry (except feet) and warm.
Throughout the morning, teams made it through the canyon and to T3 at Mboyti River Lodge. Here’s the thing… By Tuesday afternoon teams were still only getting to the canyon; that’s almost 30 hours AFTER the first team, Seagate, emerged on Monday morning.
Thus, the only discipline that these teams have done since Sunday afternoon is to hike. That’s at least 40 hours for many of the teams and around 60 hours (and counting) for the handful of teams still in the canyon.
By mid-morning (Wednesday) there should be no more teams down there; and the winning team could be very nearly finished this challenging 500-odd kilometre course.