Race Across South Africa, part three

It always seems to be the fourth or fifth day of a long tour that the physical wear and tear really starts to set in. Even though our daylight plan in the Freedom Challenge ensured plenty of rest, and nutrition was good, twelve-plus hours of riding and wrestling with a bicycle every day takes it toll. For me, wrestling with the bike caused major strain. I'm well-adapted to turning pedals all day, but I failed miserably in upper body strength department. It's not a natural strength to begin with, and I admittedly did almost nothing to improve it before the Freedom Challenge, reasoning that running would be training enough for the hike-a-bikes. I was wrong. My shoulders and neck ached, and my arm muscles felt tingly and weak. My legs were a patchwork quilt of cuts and bruises, including a swollen and painful bruise over my right knee that formed after I partially flipped over the handlebars on a cattle trail the previous day. The Freedom Trail beats up bodies in ways I hadn't experienced before on a long tour, and I was feeling it. While the crew at Ongeluksnek cooked up our breakfast of dark porridge, eggs, and steam bread, I massaged my numb biceps. 

As the four of us discussed the narrative for the coming day, Di seemed particularly stressed and Steve particularly excited — both of which I interpreted as cause for alarm. Tough nav day, coming up. Steve was talking about finding an old wagon trail early in the day, but Di skipped right to "Vuvu Valley."

"Vuvu Valley," she kept bringing it up. "If we are bumbling around in that valley after dark, we are screwed." Di went on to tell a story about a past year when she and her companions took on a tough portage late, and ended up spending the night huddled in a barn. "I was so cold I thought I was going to die," she said. "I really thought I was going to die."

I was carrying a robust emergency bivy sack and some firestarters, and although I felt confident in the survivability of my system, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of putting it to use when nighttime temperatures were dropping well below freezing. Before the race, I confidently (and mistakenly) assumed that if nights went late we'd just keep moving, neglecting to realize how navigation can become impossible at night. Darkness was as good as a wall in some places. We might actually get stuck somewhere outside overnight. I hated that I hadn't just planned my system with an assumption that we'd sleep out, and brought a sleeping bag and thin pad. I probably would have been less anxious in the afternoons with a real sleeping system as insurance.

 

Also leaving Ongeluksnek were two Race to Rhodes riders who started one day later, Bruce and Ryan. They disappeared into the first gorge before us, and were already picking their way up the other side as we arrived at the edge of a cliff. "Now we must look for the wagon trail," Steve announced. He located a tumble of table-sized boulders, only slightly less vertical than the cliffs, and started down. "How did people ever get wagons down this?" I pondered out loud. 

"Well you see, the trail was much less eroded back then," Steve answered. "But they had all kinds of techniques; they'd lower them on logs." In the early colonial days of South Africa, wagon trains traversed the landscape via high routes — the reason being that necessary springs and streams were located in the mountains, so they had to stay high in order to travel long distances with water sources. Modern development arrived and roads stayed low. Although the wagon routes fell into disuse, many remnants remain. When David developed the Freedom Trail, he traced these historic routes, which is why public access is allowed through private lands. What exists today is sometimes hardly a trail at all — it's an overgrown doubletrack, or a faint footpath traveled by shepherds, or a string of tracks trammeled by sheep and cattle. A distinct characteristic of the Freedom Trail that I think not many North American mountain bikers would understand (I didn't) is that it's not a real trail. There is no trail development, no government funding, no earmarks for recreational use. It's just a series of points along the Great Escarpment, connected with a dotted line. As a North American, I'm used to routes that have been set aside, developed, and signed, and this simply isn't the case. At all.

We climbed to a village called Black Fountain and proceeded along a broad ridge on a ripple of cattle trails — a sort of "choose your line" adventure on often rocky and overgrown singletrack. It became a tough technical challenge to keep up with Di and Steve, who are both strong riders, especially with my sore shoulders and dead arms that were even more reluctant than usual to pull up over obstacles. I was struggling but determined to stay with the experienced couple, especially after Di's foreboding description of Vuvu Valley.

We aimed for the long way around a peak rather than scrambling up and over. Steve still managed to find a tiger line down near-vertical rock benches, into the village of Ngolilwe, which was slightly off route. This is another aspect of the Freedom Challenge I think many North American bikepackers would find strange. Here, there is so much emphasis on sticking precisely to a route, without any deviations. In the Freedom Challenge, the route is more of a suggestion. Although the portages are mandatory in the race — you can't just go around on roads — it's perfectly acceptable to develop one's own "sneaks" and other strategic offshoots of the established route. Finding the most aesthetic line is the aim of the Freedom Challenge. While this aspect was difficult for me, it's also one of my favorite things about this event.

After a light lunch on the steps of Tinana Mission (mine was the last of the dried cherries and shelled pistachios that I brought from California), we encountered Bruce and Ryan riding out of the village. Apparently they had taken a bad line out of Black Fountain and ended up behind us. The friends from Pietermaritzburg had scouted much of the Race to Rhodes route in training, and informed us they had discovered a great route through the Vuvu Valley — rather than crossing the river multiple times and bashing through endless reeds, they found a high line that involved a lot more climbing, but was often rideable. Di was ecstatic at this prospect, and Bruce and Ryan seemed willing to team up with us. Liehann and I engaged our strong road legs to hold their pace through the rolling hills past several villages, and waited for Steve and Di while guzzling two-liter glass bottles of Coke at a spaza shop.

We veered off the village streets and descended into the Vuvu Valley. Di had gotten me pretty riled up about this thing. The main river valley was fairly wide, and flanked by side valleys that promised confusion about whether one was still on course. Year after year, racers ascend the wrong canyon out of the Vuvu Valley and become terribly lost — finding themselves stranded below cliff faces, spending nights out, and sometimes skipping the checkpoint at Vuvu altogether. Anxiety levels were high, and I had this ominous sense of descending into the Heart of Darkness.

We began bashing through six-foot-high grass, and I quickly fell behind. Amid thick vegetation on steep rolling hills, pushing the bike feels like wrestling a reluctant animal; I simply lacked a necessary component of strength and experience to do something I very much wanted to do, which is keep up with the group and not end up lost and alone in the Vuvu Valley. I wanted this with all of my being, to the point where my heart was racing as I gasped for air, and my shoulders and arms ached. My top limit wasn't good enough — and this was a humbling reality. I scanned my map to get a sense of where we were, but it was readily apparent that I'd either have to invest the time to study the thing and take compass bearings, or throw my own navigational understanding to the wind and race blindly after the group. I knew Liehann wouldn't leave me, but if I fell too far behind, there was a question of whether we'd fail to locate each other.

I bashed over a spur and caught sight of the group, riding along a rocky bench. Their path was something of a trail, but again was a technical challenge of uneven stone slabs hidden in tall grass. Much of it was stuff I normally wouldn't ride — I admittedly have never developed much skill for technical rock riding, and once I start getting bucked around I often get bucked off. I'd already taken a few disconcerting crashes in the Freedom Challenge, luckily walking away with only bruises, but one bad crash wouldn't just force me out of the race — it also would put me in a bad position far away from help. It wasn't worth the risk, and yet — what were my options? I laid into the pedals and hacked my way across the rocks, feeling that rush of exhilaration that one feels when everything is on the line.

Liehann and I did end up both losing sight of the group at one point. We spent some time debating vague suggestions from the maps like "look for the lone tree" before we caught a glimpse of them scaling a steep face across the Tina River. This must be the line out of the valley, but it wasn't quite straightforward — there were multiple spurs jutting out, and I still wasn't sure whether this was the final climb, or whether we needed to descend and cross the river again. My energy levels were tanking but there was no time to eat anything; I fired up the willpower reserve and marched hard.

The climb just continued to steepen, until we were scaling a veritable cliff on a staircase of three-foot-high boulders. A true scramble. I could see the others hoisting their bikes on their backs, but every time I tried to lift mine up, my rubbery biceps and shoulders simply failed — as though I had done too many reps of a heavy weight, and now there was no amount of willpower that would make them work. My ascent was a too-slow process of power-lifting the bike up onto a bench, propping it against the wall, and then using both arms to climb up myself. I watched the group disappear over a crest with an icy feeling of trepidation. In hindsight, the route was fairly straightforward and I would have been fine to work at my own pace until I reached Vuvu. But at the time, I had been so fixated at keeping up with them that my fatigued mind equated abandonment with doom. I was engaging everything I had to race up that mountain.

Toward the top, something snapped. I became extremely dizzy, and the whole valley swirled around as I weakly gripped my bike against the rock face. The cliffs weren't too exposed, but a slip would have resulted in a fall of ten feet or more, and I could see those drops rushing toward me as I teetered on a ledge. It was only fifty or so more feet to the top; I was almost there. And yet, when I turned around to try to lift my bike, the dizziness became more pronounced. I gazed up helplessly at the group waiting at the top. My struggle must have become blatantly apparent, because one of the Rhodes riders (I think it was Bruce, although I apologize that I don't remember exactly) scrambled back down and grabbed my bike, carrying it the rest of the way up. I followed behind him, still teetering as my legs folded underneath me and I balanced on my rubbery arms like an intoxicated ape. I felt both incredibly grateful and ashamed. At the top, I drunkenly stumbled toward Liehann — unable to even hold a straight line on solid ground. He ran toward me with a packet of Hammer Gel.

"I thought you were going to fall of the edge," he said.

"I thought so too," I stammered, and took the gel. Both of my hands were shaking violently as I struggled to open the packet. "I've never had a bonk like this. Never like this."

The last remnants of dusk filled the sky as the group pedaled into the village of Vuvu in full celebration mode.

"Vuvu in the light! We made it to Vuvu in the light! Can you believe it?" Di exclaimed.

My head was foggy and I felt ashamed. Defeated. My empty legs spun the pedals and I slumped over my handlebars, completely spent. Physically, this time. And mentally, too.

"I'm not strong enough for this," I fretted to myself. "I'm just not strong enough."

But this was not the time to give in to despair. I had to turn my mental game around and fast, because tomorrow, we would climb Lehana's Pass.

Race Across South Africa, part two

On the third day, we were still trying to develop our morning routine. Phone alarms went off with their upbeat tunes that were both infuriating and oddly comforting. We'd push aside a crush of blankets in always unheated rooms and rush to pull on clothing layers as quickly as possible — sometimes laundered, sometimes still damp from the day before — and shiver as our warm bodies slowly heated the chilled fabric. Most breakfasts were a quick food-shoveling affair — granola, instant oats, boiled eggs, and instant coffee left out on a table. But at Ntsikeni Lodge, Ncobo (thanks to Liehann for remembering the manager's name) made us a big breakfast spread with eggs, bacon, and a dark porridge. I tried to stuff down as much as possible. 

I refilled my frame bag with supplies from the boxes that Liehann's parents lovingly packed for each support station. Having not understood the extent of the provided meals in the Freedom Challenge, I requested a larger-than-needed amount of supplies. The drop boxes were small — the size of a two-liter ice cream container — but Liehann's parents did everything they could to stuff them full, including opening up packages of electrolyte chews and cramming individual candies in every spare nook. Early in the race, when I still cared, I also spent a few minutes each morning readying the bike — wiping off dirt clumps, cables and chain, applying fresh lube, checking tire pressure and brakes, resetting the devices, readjusting the bags. We had yet to streamline this routine, and on the third morning we were particularly slow to get going. Dawn had already cracked by the time we stepped out the door, and Steve and Di were long gone. 

Liehann was bummed out because his warm pair of socks had been placed too close to the wood stove inside the lodge to dry overnight, and had large holes burned in the heals. Temperatures were again several degrees below freezing; thick ice had formed on the streams and frost coated the grass. We had, by my calculations, about five kilometers of doubletrack before we were supposed to find some manner of offshoot followed by ten kilometers of portaging. Liehann remembered from his 2011 race that this section was tricky, but couldn't recall many specifics. "Those ten kilometers could take five hours," he warned.

I'm not sure I believed him at the time — two kilometers per hour is what I think of as "PTL speed," or about the slowest I'm capable of moving in the outdoors while still retaining forward motion. I had yet to take into full account the reality of fifty-some pounds of food, water, gear, and an awkward mountain bike that's impossible to carry in any efficient manner — especially when such things were never practiced — so it's safe to say I did not yet understand there is a speed slower than PTL speed. Freedom Challenge speed. But ignorance is bliss, and I relished the five wonderful kilometers of doubletrack through the nature preserve in the chilled dawn air.

Kudu ran along the hillsides and wildebeest called out from long distances. The best I can describe a wildebeest call is something like an angry duck — guttural moans that echoed through the still air. I was enthralled by these animal sightings — strange, hulking beasts I recognized from childhood cartoons, that suddenly became real in this radiant wilderness. It was like a fairytale brought to life, and I pedaled along the periphery, fully absorbed.

We hit the point where our cues informed us to pick up "a management track that heads into the hills." We rode back and forth along a kilometer-long stretch looking for a track, but only saw faint impressions in the grass farther up the hill. "This part is mostly bundu bashing," Liehann said confidently. "We just have to head off that way." Anytime the cues called for a track that we couldn't find, my internal alarm sounded, but I admit I saw no better solution. We started hacking up the hill, cutting zig-zagging lines southwest, then south, then northeast. I scrutinized the maps but, as was many times the case, found without a solid reference point I couldn't quite interpret the correlation of topographic features. Yes, my map skills were lacking, and maps were pretty much useless to me unless I already knew exactly where we were on them. "Do you even know if we're going in the right direction?" I called out to Liehann.

"No," he replied.

We stopped to assess the map and he determined that in fact we were walking in the wrong direction, and Liehann traced the right direction to a game gate that ran up the spine of a steep hill. The surface had burned, and what remained was a crunchy surface of charcoaled grass and fine black dust. It was volcanic in appearance, and combined with the barren mountains surrounding us, reminded me very much of Iceland — although brown instead of green. As we walked, clouds of smokey dust swirled around my face and settled in my throat, causing me to cough. The hill was so steep that even pushing a bike, I had to stop every twenty steps or so to catch my breath. "How long are we going to flounder around like this before we just go back to Ntsikeni?" I asked Liehann. "Six hours? Eight?" You can be determined as possible to finish something, but when you're lost — you're just lost. My predominant fear was being lost forever. I made mental bread-crumb markers of landscape features we passed, so at least I could find my way back.

At the top of the hill, we finally had a good view of the land, and were able to draw a more accurate picture from the abstract lines on the map. We also caught sight of the track we were supposed to be following, veering up from a completely different valley. We'd been pushing our bikes on very difficult terrain for nearly two hours for a net loss of forward progress, but at least we landed in the correct place. We sat down for a snack and I told Liehann stories about my running trip to Iceland. "I would love to come back and explore Ntsikeni someday, but without the bike," I said. "On foot. With a GPS."

As we worked our way around the contour of a plateau above steep canyons, we were caught by two Race to Rhodes riders who started one day after us, as well as Steve and Di. Apparently they'd tried one of Steve's characteristic "sneaks" that didn't quite take, and came back to catch the main route where we'd missed it. Despite his experience, Steve's propensity for sneaks as well as winging it on portages made me reluctant to stick with them in the early days in the race. Later, I would realize the wisdom in his thinking and make more of an effort to absorb his sage advice.

The group of four opted to take the "high road" when I was certain the cues directed us to stay in the valley, so I threw a bit of a temper tantrum about following their route, but Liehann and I made an effort to stick with them. Steve and Di, as well as others we rode with, were strong technical riders and much more adept at the on-off finessing of carrying and pushing a bike, and thus were always faster than us on portages. At the time, my bike-portaging strategy was still all pushing, and actually this is much less efficient and more strenuous than carrying much of the time. We lost the group at a saddle, where I was pretty sure they'd disappeared into the next canyon to take the direct route to the other side. I looked across the gorge and announced that I wanted to take the long way around.

"It looks like a scramble," I said. "I don't want to scramble anything with my bike." (Again, I just had no idea what was coming.) "The contour looks short enough and there's even a cattle trail." The trail was worn too deep into the soft ground to be rideable — pedals just hit the side. By the time we made it to the end of an eroded jeep track, it was well after noon.

"Wow, that really did take us more than five hours," I said to Liehann. "You were right."

"I know this place is beautiful and all, but f*** Ntsikeni," Liehann replied. He was joking, mostly.

Still, where Liehann and I faltered on technical portages (I will say this was me more than him — his fork trouble made descending difficult, but I was the weaker uphill pusher), we were often able to make up with our strong gravel road riding. We arrived at the lunch stop in Glen Edward just a few minutes after Steve and Di, just as the Race to Rhodes riders were leaving. "You guys made good time but you don't want to spend too much time here," they told us. "You don't want to get stuck in that valley after dark."

"That valley," in the Freedom Challenge, could translate to "any valley." Valleys were the worst. On top of hills and ridges, the world almost made sense, but quickly descended into a web of confusion and misinterpreted lines in a valley. The cues directed us to do things like "keep the slope on your right" (which slope?) and "head toward the wattle stand" (to which Di joked, "wattles here, wattles there, there are wattle trees everywhere.") We opted to stick with Steve and Di that afternoon, wending our way through a tree plantation maze, into one river valley, up to a spur, and on a faint cattle track into the next valley. "Is this the right trail?" I asked Steve after scrutinizing the cues.

"Doesn't matter. It's a cattle track," he said. "They're everywhere, one is the same as the next. Now, what we must do is go over there." (South Africans have this particular accent on the words "here" and "there," which sounds a bit like "they-air," that I will never forget. These words were said to me so many times, and never seemed to provide any comfort.)

Night fell as we fumbled through the tall grass of the valley. Liehann was pointing to a saddle in a far distance off to the right and speculating that the district road was up "there," and I thought, based on cues, that access must be all the way around a peak and off to the left. Soon we could see nothing except tall grass, hacking through low-lying marshes as Di fretted about getting her feet wet as temperatures plummeted.

Per the cues, we were looking for "two old farm houses" of which we were supposed to turn right and head up the valley "at the top house." A spur blocked our view to what I presumed had to be the saddle we needed to climb toward, but Di wanted to stay out of the marsh so we were further veering away from it. Finally, I just took a hard right and stomped across the marsh, where my headlamp beam just happened to pick up the ruins of two buildings. "The old farm house!" I called out. "Not sure if it's the bottom or top, but it's definitely a farm house."

Di approached to shine her light at the circular building and corrected me. "That's not a farm house, that's a hut."

Her statement bristled a bit. Was she really going to argue semantics right now? We hadn't seen a single other building since we dropped into this valley, and here one was. Hut, house, who cares? We finally interpreted it as the bottom house and cut left along the low-lying ridge, where we came to another, occupied house at the end of the spur. Far above that, I saw a spark of lights that I was pretty sure were the two Rhodes riders nearing the crest of the saddle.

Darkness wore on as we picked our way up to the bench and then down into maze of village roads dropping into the next valley — this one sparkling with lights and civilization. By the time we reached our support station in the village of Masakala, I was spent. My legs felt fine, actually — there had been a lot of walking that day, and a lot of stopping to make map assessments. But mentally, I was shattered. We'd spent upwards of fourteen hours covering about ninety kilometers, and I'd been a tightly wound ball of stress for a lot of it. "Navigation," I thought. "That's the part of this race I can't cope with; I can't just use mind games to shut it out. And the worst part is, I can't just quit because of navigation. Damn it."

The following morning, I had no idea what to expect — only that we should stick with Steve and Di, who joyfully took on all of the navigational challenges. Steve especially. He seemed to love solving the puzzle. I was upset with myself for having such a bad attitude, but I had yet to accept the true mission of the Freedom Challenge: I was not here to ride my bike. I was here to find my way. Day four involved crossing from one hillside village to the next across frosty river valleys. I picked a bad day to wear my shorts, and my legs were bright red and feet numb by the time the morning sun finally started cranking out heat. Steve would stand up on the ridge and point to the village on the horizon, and say, "Imagine a man going to visit his girlfriend in that village. Which path would he take?" For Steve, the simplest route was the right route.

The day was characterized by fumbling through mazes of village streets while interacting with locals — again, all very friendly, but it became tiring to be such spectacles for so many people going about their day-to-day lives. We passed by a school and were quickly mobbed by children. The situation became a bit uncomfortable as they crowded around asking for things and grabbing parts of our bikes, but Steve turned it around by asking the kids to sing the national anthem, which they gleefully obliged.

We worked our way out of the village to a high ridge, where I was introduced to another favorite of Steve's — the "tiger line." Rather than take the contouring track that wrapped around a hill, he opted for a direct push up the steep face, complete with a rock scramble at the top. Beyond the radio towers, we had about five kilometers of blissful ridge riding before we reached the point where we were instructed by the cues to take a left turn. We failed to locate any track, and so we took the tiger line down — more scrambling, which made me nervous. There was actually a fun bit of singletrack through a thickly wooded gully that we had an opportunity to ride. But once at the bottom, we were definitely no longer on route.

Steve kept pointing to a far hill and saying, "Now, we must go over there (they-air.)" How to get there was the question, and Di, who had advocated the loudest for staying on the ridge when she didn't recognize the drop-off point, was also not a fan of "bumbling around." But we had left ourselves few other options. We knew we needed to pass by the Gladstone Farm House, so we would ask locals as we worked our way along the dirt roads about "Gladstone." Predictably, every direction they pointed to was slightly different. Steve, still aiming for the far hill, guided us through a network of farm tracks before we actually did find the Gladstone Farm House, leading to a foot path at the top of the ridge. The whole thing seemed to be quite the hack — foot paths, downhill hike-a-bike, stream crossings — and I was close to cementing an opinion that the Freedom Challenge would be better as a foot race before we even reached the first major portage. At least on foot, it would be easier to pay constant attention to the maps. Bikes require you to pay attention to steering and all that.

We arrived at Ongelusknek with only 61 kilometers on the day — a day that was nearly ten hours long. Night was coming, and it was too late to even consider taking on what promised to be a very long and complicated day five. "Short day," I tweeted. "Spent more time bumbling around and looking at maps than riding bikes. Frustrated, but what a beautiful spot to stop."

Indeed, the nature preserve sat at the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment, with wide-spanning views of the sculpted uplift. I sat on the porch with a cup of rooibos tea and let the day's frustration dissolve in the quiet serenity of the landscape. I was happy to be there, I was. Managing the draining navigation angst — well, that was just going to have to be my hurdle to clear. 

Race Across South Africa, part one

This has happened to me a few times in my life: A moment — on a bridge over the Colorado River, or a curb in front of my house in Salt Lake City, or the edge of a frozen lake in Alaska, or a trailhead in the Canadian Rockies — when I straddle my bicycle and realize that I really have no idea where this is going to take me for the next week or three or nine. I made some plans, I did some preparations, I studied some maps, but really ... I have no clue. It's a gut-sinking moment, a wide-eyed gaze across a bewildering horizon, when the scope into a vast unknown opens as wide as it's ever been. I feel that quiver in my lower spine, a weakness in my limbs, a gurgle in my throat that ignites an urge to sit down, to not venture any farther into an unfamiliar world where there is so little that I control. Every time, that's my gut reaction — don't move. Stay here. Crossing that threshold in a swirl of excitement and dread is like stepping out of a warm house into a blizzard — and it's one of my favorite moments in bike touring. 

 Straddling my bike in the predawn fog next to town hall in Pietermaritzburg, that urge to not start carried a lot of compelling arguments: "You're not just striking out into middle America or even Alaska, you're in Africa, really far from home, with all of its unfamiliar customs and language barriers and big scary animals and no signs on anything, and all you have is this map, and although you thought you got a sense of it earlier, right now it just seems like a bunch of squiggly lines. Don't go. Don't go."

I looked toward Liehann, who was passing his camera to someone else for the round of obligatory pre-race photos. Ever other person in our starting group of four men and four women seemed to be nervously fidgeting with lights and gear. Over our heads was the bright red banner for Comrades Marathon, and I thought about the 18,000 runners that stood in this same spot just over a week earlier. "How weird would it be to start a race that you knew was going to end on the same day?" I wondered. Comrades simply follows a main highway on a marked course 56 miles to Durban. I'm not saying that makes it easy by any stretch of the imagination, but there was comfort in pondering something so straightforward.

 Somebody called out "Go!" and the eight of us took off, following our pilot car — driven by race director David — as it guided us out of the one big city we would need to navigate in 1,500 miles. With a population of about 220,000, Pietermaritzburg is massive by any other standard we'd see. David worries about riders dealing with early morning taxis and other road hazards in the city, so he gives a neutral-start escort for the first six kilometers from town hall to the entrance of Bisley Nature Reserve. After he turned us loose at the gate, someone called out, "Okay, where do we go from here?" The group laughed. Pietermaritzburg is the one freebie you get in the Race Across South Africa. After that, you better have the mental capacity and daylight to pay a lot of attention to both maps and surroundings. Barring attention span and daylight, only luck and experience will help.


Liehann and I kept a slightly fast, somewhat nervous pace out of the city and into the mist-shrouded hills. The landscape was a rolling patchwork quilt of golden grass and tree farms — blocks of forest nestled amid the natural grasslands. I stopped at the first intersection to consult the map, and realized Liehann was no longer behind me. Several minutes later, he still wasn't there. "Did we already get lost in the first six kilometers of the Freedom Challenge?" I wondered. "That doesn't bode well." I pedaled back up the hill and found him hunched over his bike, giving off frustrated grunts as he tried to remove a pin in his chain. A broken chain at kilometer six — as it turned out, this would be a harbinger for poor Liehann's curse of mechanicals throughout the race.

 The rest of the morning passed without incident. Weather remained misty and cool, and the others in our group commented on the fact I was still wearing shorts and short-fingered gloves. "I'm from Alaska," I'd often reply. "Well, not really." But that and the fact this race is tracked on Twitter, where my handle is "AlaskaJill," gave me a reputation for being impervious to cold. That was far from the case — and at times even I was shocked at the depth of cold in this supposedly subtropical region — but cool temperatures were certainly one of the more easily manageable challenges in the Race Across South Africa, for me at least. We climbed over a divide to Minerva Tractor Museum for hot soup. The tractor museum has all manner of old vehicles and even a jet engine on display in the most unlikely location. We climbed overgrown track near powerlines to get there, but even the main route that we took out of the museum is a steep and rugged dirt road descending into another nowhereland. Lunch on the first day was the place where I started to grasp the reality that we were probably going to spend the entire race far away from anything.

 We pressed further away from civilization on a deteriorating track overrun by cattle and goats, and dropped into the Umkomass River Gorge on steep concrete slabs littered with small, round rocks. The effect of these rocks was like roller skates on a slide, and Liehann and I opted to walk down the slabs rather than risk crashing. Indeed, these slabs have forced more than one person out of the Freedom Challenge on the first day. This year, one competitor broke six ribs and punctured a lung in a crash on the slabs. The people who found him saw a bicycle lodged fairly high up in a tree, which is how they knew something was wrong.

At the bottom of the gorge, we followed a narrow and surprisingly rideable cattle trail through the thick willow-like trees. Where the cliffs came down to the river, we simply had to hike. The rocks were slippery and at times more treacherous than it looks.

 During this section we were caught by Tracy, Di, and Steve, and made an effort to keep up with them on the technical riding along the river. Di and Steve, a married couple in their fifties with grown children, run a bicycle touring company near Cape Town called DayTrippers. Both have both been involved with the Freedom Challenge since the early days. Di completed her first Race Across South Africa in 2007, and 2014 would be her third. Steve had also completed it before, though I was never quite clear on the number. These two would prove to be a fountain of knowledge, and they were always full of good humor even when things got tough. Di is a petite woman — probably 100 pounds tops — but incredibly strong, amazingly strong. We'd sometimes see them towing some of the longer climbs, meaning both bikes were attached to a rope with the stronger partner towing the person who was struggling. In every case, it was Di towing Steve, which was impressive for me — as a woman who understands my own level of strength — to witness. Steve was self-professed out of shape but always seemed to be in a good mood, even when he was, in his words, "shattered."

 Late afternoon brought a long climb from a village called Hella Hella, which I enjoyed immensely. My bike computer also gauged grades, and this climb often topped 14 percent, on loose gravel, over nearly 3,000 feet of climbing. Liehann was determined to pedal the whole climb without walking, and I aimed for this as well, although admittedly faltered near the top. The first day clocked in at 114 kilometers with 2,600 meters of climbing. Although there was some tough technical terrain on the grassy powerline trails, deteriorating jeep tracks and cattle trails, most of it was rideable. As it turned out, it was one of the easier full days on the route, although I'm not sure I would have believed it if someone told me this at the time. I was pretty spent as we rolled into Allendale farm, our first support station. In past multiday events, I've become accustomed to either complete self support, or else the bare-bones services you receive in the Iditarod Trail Invitational or Racing the Planet stage events. Freedom Challenge is comparatively luxurious. The woman at Allendale set us up in cabins, did some laundry for us, and prepared a big meal of what would become standard fare out on the trail — chicken pieces, mashed potatoes, rice, mashed pumpkin, peas, and bread. Carby and wonderful. This is one thing I will say about the Freedom Challenge — the food is so good and abundant that it's actually hard to lose weight out there. I lost 15 pounds during the Tour Divide and none in the Freedom Challenge.

 The following morning we were raring to go and set off in the frosty darkness about an hour before sunrise. This would be our introduction to "portages" — making our way across a section of land with no real trail. In our early-race excitement to get moving, we messed up the entry and spent more than an hour trying to find our way out of the farm. We could see Steve, Di, and Tracy's headlamps working their way up a hill off to the side and suspected they were just as lost. I had already accepted that a few hours of going nowhere were simply going to be part of this race, so I wasn't too frustrated about it ... yet. But I was nauseated. I had yet to adapt to the long days in the saddle followed by 4 a.m. wakeup calls, and my body was rebelling. I remedied my nausea by stripping off layers and letting my core become chilled. The temperature was a few degrees below freezing and I was in shorts and a single top again, much to the amazement of the South Africans.


Finally, with my headlamp on high beam, I was able to spot a depression in the grass that proved to be the singletrack cattle trail we were looking for. From there, we worked our way along the contour and into the next valley, climbing over several barbed-wire fences. I struggled to lift my bike, hooked my shorts, and made a joke about my natural awkwardness and terrible climbing skills. These fences were only four feet high. As I laughed at myself, Steve had a smirk on his face that seemed to express a belief that this newbie American had no idea what she was in for. "These fences are nothing," Di said. "Wait until the game gates. They're just as bad and three meters high." I remember her saying this, but I'm not sure I believed her at the time. Who would expect people with loaded mountain bikes to climb three-meter-high fences?

 Lunch on day two brought us into a rural mission, where a nun served barley soup and tasty cupcakes. The early days of the race through the Kwazulu-Natal province took us through one village after the next — never densely populated, but there was a sense of always being around people. These villages were populated by Native South Africans —in this area, the Zulu people. Infrastructure was minimal, and there was no running water or electricity in the villages. Subsistence farming appeared to be the main occupation, and it was rare to meet someone in these villages who spoke more than a few words of English or Afrikaans. But everyone was very nice, and the children in school uniforms were well-behaved — we were only bombarded for "money and sweets" a couple of times. I learned the Zulu greeting "sawubona" (I see you) and "unjani" (how are you?) Boys especially were fascinated the gadgets on my handlebars — often when we stopped in a village to look at our maps, that's what they would examine.

 We wove through a forest road maze and embarked on a long climb toward Bosholweni Peak on a track that can only be described as a river of babyhead rocks. Not so rideable, really.

This was also the section where Liehann realized his fork was busted. Oil was leaking out in several places, and the shock would bottom out and not rebound. He hoped that finding a shock pump and putting more air in it would remedy this, but he suspected he needed a new fork. Making arrangements to have one delivered to a town further down the trail proved to be a big production. Cell phone reception was minimal at best, and he had a difficult time conveying necessary information to all the people we needed to involve. At one point I sent Beat a 160-character message from my Delorme tracker that he relayed to Liehann's dad, who relayed it to a bike shop in Pietermaritzburg, who arranged something with the other race director, Meryl, to pick up and take with her to Rhodes. It will probably surprise no one that vital information was misplaced in this process.

Navigation was tricky through this section, and I was feeling anxious with all the time we were spending making fork arrangements. Each passing afternoon minute brought us closer to the claustrophobic darkness of night, when long-ranging sightlines and landscape features disappeared, and our world was reduced to the weak beam of our headlights amid bewildering black emptiness. During the day we could look toward the horizon and see the mountains we needed to approach, the villages we needed to pass by, the valleys we needed to cross. We could use our compasses to capture a bearing and at least feel confident that we were moving in the right direction, if not on the exact right line. At night, we could only see our immediate path with no real certainty that it was taking us where we needed to go, and I found this reality terrifying. As the race progressed, the coming of night would fill me with a heavy anxiety that is difficult to describe. Stress levels would far surpass any fatigue or aches I'd accumulated during the day. I feared night perhaps more than anything else. I would put up large walls of resistance at the prospect of navigating anything at night. The twilight hour was a desperate hour. Nightfall was a sinister force, a promise of doom.

But as long as the sun was up or at least was going to come up soon, as was the case in our always-predawn starts, I was happy. The landscape itself was more stunning than I'd imagined it would be. Some of the locals we spoke with told us, "It's sad that you had to come here in the winter. It is brown and ugly right now, not beautiful like it is in the summer."

 Approaching the nature reserve of Ntsikeni was the first place my intense "Night Is Coming" fear sparked. Liehann had lost his sense of where we were on the maps, and although I wasn't sure of this either, I was following the cues supplemented by Beat's intersection gadget to wind our way through a maze of faint tracks. Stress swirled around in my gut, and I was extremely happy when we caught up to Steve and Di at the border of the reserve, which meant we were at least on the right track, even if night was coming. We scaled the game gate on a ladder that I presume villagers put up to access a nearby stream. "It's a good thing this ladder is here," I said. "Otherwise we'd never get over this fence." Again, Steve just smiled knowingly.

The track into the lodge at Ntsikeni was almost entirely overgrown, but there didn't seem to be any offshoots to the trail so I was relatively thrilled, even if the riding was slow and prickly. We arrived about 45 minutes after dark to a warm welcome. I forget the name of the man running the lodge, a big Zulu man, but he had made a big spread of chicken and pumpkin, and put us up in our own cabins. It was gratifying to experience such kindness after every tough day. Anxiety and gratitude. For me, these would be the dominant two emotions on the Freedom Trail. 

The days before

So what exactly is the Freedom Trail? It's an off-road route across South Africa conceptualized by a former environmental lawyer named David Waddilove, traversing roughly 1,500 miles from Pietermaritzburg to Paarl, near Cape Town. The route follows foot paths, cattle trails, jeep tracks, disused old wagon routes, seldom-traveled dirt roads, farm tracks, cross-country "portages," and the very infrequent tar road connector. There is reportedly somewhere between 140,000 and 150,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain on the route. But when it comes to weighing the difficulty of any section, distance and climbing are almost nonentities — terrain is what matters. 

Each year in June, David organizes a Freedom Challenge, inviting mountain bikers to take on the route within a 26-day time limit. The race is held in the austral winter, with long nights, more frequent storms, occasional flooding and snow, and consistently cold temperatures. If terrain and weather didn't make the challenge difficult enough, David throws in a rule that all participants must navigate the non-marked route without the aid of GPS — old-fashioned maps, compass, odometers, and cue sheets are used to discern the frequently implausible passages over rugged ripples of land.  The Freedom Challenge first launched in 2004, and in that time roughly 170 individual men and 20 women have finished within the time limit. Almost all have been South Africans — only a handful of foreigners have completed the Freedom Challenge, and as far as I know, no other Americans. 

My friend Liehann planted the seed just over a year ago. He participated in the 2011 Freedom Challenge, riding for ten days before mechanicals forced him out of the race. Shortly after that, he took a job at Google and moved from South Africa to California, where he joined Beat's team at work. It was just pure coincidence that the huge world of software engineering brought together two ultra-endurance enthusiasts, but Beat and Liehann became good friends, and we all started riding together on a regular basis. Liehann and I often compared Tour Divide/Freedom Challenge notes, and he's long been anxious to return to Pietermaritzburg and wrap up unfinished business. He worked on several angles to convince me to join him, and I dragged my feet on making any commitments for a long time. You think I'd be an easy sale for something like this, but I was extremely reluctant to enter a race with such a strict navigation rule. I hate feeling lost, and knew the uncertainty of map navigation — no matter how much I worked on improving my orienteering skills — would be a constant source of stress. Although Liehann and I planned to ride the route as a team, I was terrified of the notion of hacking through the bush in some remote part of Africa all alone, with no idea where I was going, and rhino and leopards lurking. Still, predictably, adventure lust eventually won out and I was on a plane to Cape Town. 

Cape Town is near where Liehann's parents live as well as the finish of the Freedom Challenge, but it's more than a thousand miles away from Pietermaritzburg. We opted to manage this leg of travel by renting a car and driving one way along the coast. The South Africa road system isn't as well-established as the United States or Europe; even the major routes are usually just two-lane strips with no shoulder, often in poor condition, and see heavy use from pedestrians in some areas. Still, I was excited to get a sense of the land before the race started, even if it meant two days in a car on rough roads. 

We spent the first night near Port Elizabeth and the next morning driving across Addo Elephant National Park to gawk at animals. 

 Warthogs!

 Lots of elephants.

 This jackal curled up next to an elephant carcass like it owned the thing.

 Buffalo. Mean and scary.

Zebras and kudu. We spent a lot of time in the park and didn't arrive in Pietermaritzburg until late that night. 

 The Freedom Challenge begins in downtown Pietermaritzburg under the same starting gate as the Comrades Marathon, which is the world's largest and oldest ultramarathon. David told us he conceptualized the route back when he was regularly training for Comrades. He read somewhere that one needed to run 1,800 kilometers in a season in order to do well at Comrades, and he started venturing further on trails from his home near Pietermaritzburg. This expanded into an idea to create a roughly 2,000-kilometer, all-dirt route across South Africa, and David began connecting a lot of far-flung dots. He picked spots he could run to in a day, and looked to local farm houses and villages to find places to sleep. It's notable that the Freedom Trail started as a trail-running route and only later developed into a mountain biking challenge. During the first days of the race, I had frequent dreams that I was explaining to Beat why the Freedom Challenge would be better on foot.

 We were slated to start with group "B" on Tuesday, June 10. The Freedom Challenge still utilizes farm houses and other tiny places as support stations, so participants start in waves of eight or nine over the course of a week. Of the eighty or so starters, 35 were signed up for the full Race Across South Africa, and the rest were participating in the Race to Rhodes, which covers the first 500 kilometers of the course. Our wave had five RASA aspirants and three Rhodes riders. I forget the names of the first two Rhodes riders in our group (one not pictured), but after me and Liehann is Ingrid, a Rhodes rider who graciously gave me her compass in Rhodes after mine was rattled to death on day four. Then there's Tracy, Di, and Steve. Steve and Di were a married couple who we spent quite a bit of time riding with during the race. They were a valuable source of knowledge and entertainment on a regular basis, and Di ended up being the only other female finisher in this year's Race Across South Africa. Di always left her headlamp turned on long after the sun came up, so this photo makes me laugh.

Team California at the race start, so bright-eyed and innocent. We had a long, long road in front of us, that we hadn't even begun to fully realize.