Bimbache Extrem 2007, Andalucia

A 4/5 day continuous 450km expedition race for mixed teams of 4 involving orienteering, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and rope work. 18-24 March.

This year the longest and most prestigious Spanish adventure race returned to Andalucia for a second year. As the final event in the adventure race world series before the world championships to be held in Fort William in May, it proved very popular with the 30 places being filled over two months beforehand. Over 20,000 euros of prize money was at stake and for the winner a free entry to the world championships. Many teams were using this race as training so half the field consisted of teams aiming to race the world championships.

Amongst the favorites were Team Finland, Buff-Coolmax (Spain/France), Aberdeen Asset Management (UK), Abarth-Teva (Spain), Lundhags Adventure (Sweden) and CoastZone.dk (Denmark) – all placed top three of recent world series events together with SupplierPipeline (Canada) and Feed The Machine (USA) both crossing the Atlantic.

Besides Aberdeen, three more UK teams made the journey: CamRacers (that’s us!), Sleepmonsters lead by Ifor Powell, and Salt and Pepper from Scotland lead by Chris Morgan. Irish AR were lead by Vanessa Lawrenson.

Kit checks and briefings were in a hotel just outside Jaen on the Monday. The bikes for IrishAR failed to arrive as they had to rush to even make their flight themselves and SupplierPipeline were missing a substantial part of their luggage. After most of the day on the phone IrishAR were relieved to see their bikes delivered to the hotel but SupplierPipeline were not so lucky.

The briefing was short with the detail in the route book and by 10pm we had the 20 maps making up the course. There were to be 4 bags: bike, hike, skate and kayak/ropes. Only certain bags would be at each of the 13 transitions and food or drink were only allowed in the bike and hike bags. The intricacies of the route started to stand out. We would have to carry wetsuits and canyoning gear around the first hike. The first kayak we needed ropes kit and to carry the buoyancy aid around the trek for a swim. We would need to trek with our bike helmet after the skating ready for a bike stage following the next kayak. Finally we would have to carry all our food for the final bike and kayak legs, with allowance for an 11 hour dark zone during the final kayak.

"we were confused passing under a
motorway bridge, then realised
it was a brand new road!"

Marking maps and writing down the essential information took us past midnight but was time well spent as without this being written down our tired brains later in the race would forget essential kit or leave us without food. We weren't the last to finish when our heads hit the pillows.

We started at 10am on a 40km+ trek via Jaen for street orienteering then climbing to the summit of Jabalcuz (1618m, see pic below) and down to the canyoning section to cool off. A valley trek took us back to our bikes in the early evening. We were confused passing under a motorway bridge which had us thinking we had gone wrong until we realised it was a completely new road absent from the maps. Six teams wouldn’t make it past this transition through illness or missing equipment including SupplierPipeline, Coastzone.dk and Feed the Machine.

"we descended back to 900m,
where it was still below zero"

Stage 2 was a 100km bike leg overnight up into freezing temperatures and over 1700m in the mountains. The added wind made the conditions very harsh indeed. We descended back to 900m, where it was still below zero and grabbed an hour's sleep on a village green. Team Sleepmonsters were forced out by a knee injury on this stage and it was still chilly as we worked our way up in the daylight, seeing IrishAR and Salt and Pepper coming down ahead of us again now. They said her hands had been frozen the whole night.

The leaders finished this stage in the early hours. We arrived late afternoon losing over 4 hours to IrishAR on that stage. However the conditions had been tough enough to force further teams nursing illnesses to drop out at the transition including Aberdeen Asset, IrishAR and Halti. We took an hour's sleep and set off at dusk for the second 40km trek. More confusion in the early hours when we encountered another new A road, so we grabbed some sleep in a small ditch and in daylight it became clear that the road had been built over the track we were trying to follow. Team Lundhags and SMS dropped out during the night.

"with a following wind,
we converted our
shelter into a sail"

At the kayak transition we had to crack ice off of the kayaks. It was a narrow river but with reasonable flow and a large number of tree obstacles waiting to pin you. We broke out into a large reservoir, just shown as quarries on the map and with a following wind we were able to convert our shelter into a sail. We'd missed the cutoff for the ropes stage so took a time penalty and finished the hike back to Baeza.

There was now a 4 hour mandatory stop where we mostly slept then headed out into the evening on the bikes. We moved into 6th place overtaking Salt and Pepper here. A relatively uneventful night's 90km biking saw us arrive for the skating around 5am – but there were no skates! We bedded down for 90 minutes before they arrived and then warmed up on the 10km up to La Virgen de la Cabeza. Skating uphill wasn’t as hard as we feared. The summit was a major transition as the last place we would see our main food stocks. A short trek down to a reservoir for an out and back kayak past sunbathing turtles and a final trek up to our bikes.

"one kayak was sinking, as the
drain plug had been left out!"

Our 4th night started with singletrack and a sunset ride in hills normally closed to riders through thickly grassed woods with wandering stags. It was great to still be in the race. A long descent chilled us and we struggled with sleep from there on. Biking was interrupted by a kayak river crossing with the bikes and we suffered a rear-mech failure before arriving at the final river as the dark zone was lifted. Only to find – no paddles! A 2 hour wait with breakfast in a petrol station saw us rush out once the paddles arrived, only to find 1 km down the river one boat sinking as the drain plug had been left out! Once emptied and plugged with bamboo we continued.

Salt and Pepper saw us at the first portage but were unable to catch us. We were often walking, pulling the boats and slipping over in the warm water. It was a pleasant way to end a race if you weren't trying to go too quickly. A final walk into Cordoba brought us tired but happy to the finish after 4 days and 10 hours in 6th place shortly to be joined by Salt and Pepper as the last finishers on the full course.

* * *

Antonio's course showed us some of the best sights of the area amongst some fantastic scenery, lots of wildlife and a varyingly paced route. It was quite a journey even if organisationally it wasn't quite as tight as we come to expect in the UK.

Full course results (7 finishers):

All photos by CamRacers team member Paul