This past weekend, coming in midday to finish on September 11, Team GearJunkie/YogaSlackers took 2nd place overall in the 4-day Gold Rush Mother Lode expedition race! Amazing race all the way to the finish line, where the squad got in just under the cutoff with a scant 2 minutes and 30 seconds to spare. The team raced for four days straight on about six total hours of sleep.

Mountain biking, trekking, navigation, paddling, and a pack-raft section were included events this year in the Mother Lode, which was a part of the prestigious AR World Series of international events. Long off-trail mountain treks were a big part of the challenge as racers traversed the Sierra Nevada Range over four days.

GearJunkie/YogaSlackers was initially crowned first-place overall winners, but a technicality/snafu by the race organizers bumped them to 2nd overall (one of the race maps was marked incorrectly, causing eventual winners Tecnu Extreme-Staphaseptic to miss a checkpoint, which was later credited to them, and which pushed their team ahead of GJ/YS).

Congrats to Tecnu, our squad (Jason, Chelsey, and Dan), Team NUUN, and the other teams who pushed it this past week in California for four days. GearJunkie’s Jason Magness, who captained the Mother Lode race this year, will soon be posting a race report and a gear wrap-up from what was one of the team’s most epic efforts of the 2011 season so far.

—Follow Team GearJunkie/YogaSlackers on the new team micro-site this season as they race around the planet.