Update: Team GearJunkie/WEDALI wins! First place overall for our sponsored adventure racing team in the 2012 Checkpoint Tracker Championship, held this weekend in West Virginia. Details to come soon, but so far we know Team GJ/WEDALI finished the 110+ mile course in about 28 hours. The squad was the only team to “clear the course” and get all available checkpoints spread across forests, rivers, mountains and singletrack trail in the area.
The victory, the second win in a row for team captain Justin Bakken (who also captained the 2011 CP Tracker National Champs team), ranks GJ/WEDALI as a top domestic team and the No. 1 team in the Checkpoint Tracker race series, which includes dozens of events as well as hosts the National Championship race each fall. Monitor the site for details. The team is recovering and traveling home over the next day. We’ll publish a full report on the adventure competition soon!
100 miles. 30 hours. Those are the distance and time limits for the 2012 Checkpoint Tracker Championship Race, a season-ending decider with 45 adventure racing teams that takes place this week, starting on September 28, in the wild depths of the New River Gorge of West Virginia.
Mountain biking, off-trail trekking, trail running, whitewater rafting, riverboarding, and map-and-compass navigation are the disciplines. The teams include many of the top squads in the U.S., including two Team GearJunkie configurations, GearJunkie/WEDALI and GearJunkie.com, with our racers Justin Bakken, Kelly Brinkman, Thomas Puzak, Andrei Karpov, and Emily Korsch toeing the start line.
Stephen Regenold, founder and editor of GearJunkie, will race on the GJ/WEDALI squad, for which captain Justin Bakken is defending a title as the 2011 Adventure Racing National Champ.
Thanks to our fans and team sponsors Wenger, Fenix Lighting, and Platypus! We’ll be putting a load of gear seriously to the test for 30 hours straight out there in the big hills of West Virginia.
You can see more on the race at the Checkpoint Tracker site, and be sure to monitor GearJunkie Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the week. Wish us luck in the deep gorge of the New River!
—Follow Team GearJunkie throughout the season on our dedicated team micro-site.
