Jit's Journal: Project 2010, part 2

Jit’s Journal: Project 2010, part 2After a long week in and out of the gym, it was finally time for my teammates and I to make our way into the wilderness. Fourteen athletes, three coaches, and one brave dog named Brooke. Our destination was King’s Peak, the highest point in Utah. Just getting to the place where we could park our cars would take ten miles of driving on a dirt road. The hike up to base camp was nine miles. We would be living around 9,000 feet for the duration of our stay.

I know nine miles doesn’t sound like much, but if you factor in that we were each carrying well over one hundred pounds worth of gear and food, things start to get interesting. Add in a fifty-pound rock inscribed with the eight words that define our team, and one mile feels like three.

Each member of the team carried the fifty-pound rock as we made our way up to base camp. It had it’s own backpack. With the hike being as long as it was, I seemed to go into trances. The rain snapped me out of it though, as it began to pour down heavily on us. After trudging through some nasty mud and up some never-ending hills, we finally made it to our new home.

Orienteering, for people unfamiliar to it, is when a team is given a topographic map marked with checkpoints the team must reach. No trails are used, and the surrounding lakes and mountains act as a compass. Our coaches (Rewk, Sasha, and Swampy) thought that it would be a good way kill some time. Broken up into groups of three and four, we set out to find each maker. Funny moments would soon follow.

You could always tell when someone rolled their ankle by the heavy amounts of swearing that could be heard for miles, and believe me it was often. With six markers on the map, the pivotal moment came at the fifth one. Jimmy Cochran’s team was in the lead. On his team were Erik Fisher, Chris Beckmann, and Drew Roberts. They were ahead of T.J Lanning’s group. His team included Steve Nyman, Ted Ligety, and me.

After being almost twenty minutes ahead of us, Jimmy’s team couldn’t find the fifth marker. When we showed up, Ted Ligety found it right away. However, while covering it up with his foot so no one could see it, Erik Fisher caught on to our bad acting and pushed Ligety off of it. Game over. As we raced to the finish across marshes, fields, hills, and more marshes, I saw the true drive of my team. Ted threw himself across a ten-foot wide river, hurling his body into the abyss of some heavy bushes. I laughed because there was a rock crossing two feet to the right that he didn’t see. T.J face-planted while sprinting for home, and I kept losing my shoe in the mud as I ran.

We arrived at the camp, sweating, bushwhacked, and tired. Jimmy’s team won, but we all had a good time. Team Dartmouth on the other hand (Evan Weiss, Paul McDonald, and Roger Brown) found no markers and returned two hours later cursing coach Rewk’s name.

The next morning we left for the summit. The hike seemed to be going just the way it should, when at a pivotal point in the climb there were three different ways to go. Suddenly we struggled to work as a team, and we were soon separated. When we finally met back up we sat down as a group and talked about what had happened. We realized what we had done was against the concept of the rock, and regrouped to make it to the summit as a team. As we climbed to the summit, we became a unit, not 17 individuals. The air was thin and the last 100 yards seemed endless, but at last we had made it.

13,528 ft up, coach Swampy reached the summit, the oldest guy and the wisest mind. Our goal was at last fulfilled; we had all made it to the summit. We unzipped the rock from the backpack, and had a guy take our photos. The problem was the guy didn’t know how to use a camera. Go figure. As I hiked out the next day I was happy to being getting back to reality, while at the same time I looked forward to the next adventure down the road with my teammates.

-Jit

On the rock the word team is surrounded by these seven words: Respect, Communication, Heart, Accountability, Passion, Challenge, and Fun.