May 6 2001 2 Sunday

2001 Race - May 6, 2001, Sunday
The Great Mississippi River Race for Rett Syndrome, May 2001
We are Going the Extra Mile..... The Extra 2,348 Miles to Find a Cure!

May 6, 2001, Sunday, Day 2, Safety Check in: 5-7 AM

Team Name	Time Called	River Mile	Nearest City/State	Estimated Position
Alaska MSC	6:30 AM		Bemidji, MN	3rd, 4th or 5th
Amazons	6:25 AM		Iron Bridge Landing, Bemidji, MN	3rd, 4th or 5th
Double Helix	6:15 PM	Mile 1275	5 or 6 miles east of Bemidji, MN	2nd
Kruger	7 AM	Mile 1260	Cass Lake Dam, MN	1st
Rebels	7 AM	Mile 1284	Bemidji, MN	3rd, 4th or 5th

The current charts that best show the area the paddlers are travelling in is "Map 1, Mississippi State River Trail Lake Itasca to Cass Lake and Cass Lake to Vermillion River.

Updates/Comments Recieved for May 6, 2001, Sunday AM:
From Jeff Pastir, Medical Officer, taking calls from teams today:

The Grand Forks Herald was at the Headwaters Friday night and yesterday morning. They had a reporter and a cameraman to pick up the story. I suspect the story is in today's paper. They usually do a great job on this sort of thing, especially since Clark is northern Minnesota native--it will have wide-spread local appeal. You can reach their website at www.gfherald.com.

All are safe and well. They all said they are "having fun."
END OF SAFETY REPORT

Mary Potter (webmaster) writes... To get a better "detailed" idea of the where the paddlers were, you can search online today give the city/state/river mile, or you can look at river charts of the Mississippi River in Minnesota from the MN Department of Natural Resources. The current charts that best show the area the paddlers are travelling in is "Map 1, Mississippi State River Trail Lake Itasca to Cass Lake and Cass Lake to Vermillion River. These maps show great detail of the Mississippi river, including the river mile numbers and the lakes. Note that river miles start around 1341.6 on this chart and count down. River Miles and numbering changes when the Mississippi River intersects with other rivers. The length of the Mississippi River was considered 2,348 for purposes of this race, based on information from the Mississippi Headwaters Board. Remember during this race we were using Charts from 1990, so they may not be "exactly" the same as river charts today - river miles change over time as the river changes, and newer charts may be slightly different .

May 6, 2001, Sunday, Day 2 Safety Check in: 5-7 PM

Team Name	Time Called	River Mile	Nearest City/State	Estimated Position
Alaska MSC	7 PM		East end of Cass Lake, MN	5th approximately
Amazons	8:10 PM		Getting boat out of Cass Lake	4th approximately
Double Helix	5 PM	Mile 1245		2nd
Kruger	4:30 PM		Left Lake Winnibigoshish	1st
Rebels	6:50 PM		On Lake Winnibigoshish	3rd approximatly

The current charts that best show the area the paddlers are travelling in is "Map 1, Mississippi State River Trail Lake Itasca to Cass Lake and Cass Lake to Vermillion River.

Updates/Comments Recieved for May 6, 2001, Sunday PM:

From Jeffrey Pastir, Medical Officer, taking calls Sunday PM from all teams:
Alaska MSC called at 7 PM, they were on the east end of Lake Cass.
Amazon just checked in at 2010 CDT. They are just getting their boat out of Lake Cass and will be heading toward Winnibigoshish
Double Helix was at mile 1245 at 5 PM - Expecting to be at Winnibigoshish dam tonight (this is after Lake Winnibigoshish
Kruger left Lake Winnibigoshish dam at 430 PM (this is after the lake).
Rebels called at 650 PM and were on Lake Winnibigoshish.
All teams present and accounted for. No problems. Everyone is having fun. Got a little wet last night but nothing concerning.

END OF SAFETY REPORT

Webmaster/Mary Potter writes..... I do not have detailed information from all teams, but I do have some notes from logs.... I'll report what I can...

Team Kruger - Bob Bradford's Daily Log, Enhanced by Capt Stan Hanson - May 6, 2001, Sunday
The paddle to the dam in the dawn on May 5th was a piece of cake. We portagedon the left, because it was only a few feet of grassy area. We arrived at the opening of Lake Winnibigoshish at 10:10 AM). The wind was blowing hard and the wind chill was very cold. You could see the waves stacking up. The lake is wide enough that you can't see across. We ate lunch on the left bank of the river at the opening to Lake "Winnie". We needed to decide what to do -- stay put, or go without a support boat and stay on the southern shore all the way. This last choice would make the 14-mile trip more like 23 miles. On the other hand, if we stayed put, it could get worse. Verlen, in his trip 17 years ago, had spent part of the night in a camper at this point because of high wind and snow. We opted to paddle the south shore and the support crew would follow along the west shore as much as possible then meet us at the dam.

When we got all the way around to Tamarack Point, we not only had wind, but also a cold, driving rain. We cut across the bay heading for the dam. When we reached the dam, it stopped raining. We loaded the canoe on the Heavy Duty Paddle Boy, and with Verlen riding in his seat, I pulled the canoe down to the put-in. It was all down hill and blacktop. The crew had another hot meal. I ate 5,000 calories every day. The food was excellent. I'll never know how Stan could think up so many different varieties of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and rice.

Verlen and I saw several more eagles in the stretch from Winnie Dam to U.S. #2. It rained off and on the rest of the day. On May 5th at 8:35 p.m., we pulled into the landing prior to County Road 3. We were wet and a little cold. We ate in the trailer and decided to sleep until 4:00 a.m. Some Indian trappers had left some skinned and rotting carcasses of beaver and otter along side the river just upstream from where we stopped for the night.
End of Team Kruger - Bob Bradford's Daily Log, Enhanced by Capt Stan Hanson - May 6, 2001, Sunday

Team Amazons of the Mississippi, By Cynthia Belbin, May 6, 2001, Sunday
We thought we were clear of the bogs and difficult navigation when we started this morning only to find an even messier situation ahead. We ended up going through a winding and twisting river maneuvering around downed trees and debris. We were so glad we stopped when we did on Day 1, if we would have tried to go through this stuff in the dark we would have been two emotionally and physically wrecked women. It was bad enough in the daylight; at night we may have gotten stranded. We heard Alaska continued on and didn't make it to Bemidji until 3 AM.

We met the road crew on Lake Bemidji behind schedule. They were happy to see us at Lake Irving. We headed across the lakes at Bemidji. It was cold and spitting rain most of the day. We came upon our first official portage at Ottertail Power Co. Dam. The portage was difficult. Megan was strong and appeared unstoppable. We had to be careful here as there was a fish hatchery at this portage. Eric bought some subway sandwiches for himself and Tony. Megan and I ate one like there was no tomorrow, and it sure tasted good! A fisherman on shore thought he was being funny when he asked "Where are you going, New Orleans?" He did not know how to respond when we said "YES!"

After this portage we hit some shallow water and damaged our rudder; we lost our steering. We were lucky enough to still be in radio contact with Eric and he met us 2 miles downstream to help fix it. I think we ate more of their lunch here. It was cold when we were stopped on shore. It was better once we got in the boat and started paddling.

When we reached Cass Lake the conditions were severe. Up to this point we were protected from the wind and waves, on Cass Lake there was a terrible head wind and waves that went over Megan's head and seemed to get worst as time went by. It was a terrible, long trek; it seemed to take forever and we felt like we were going nowhere. Megan was getting the waves in the face quite badly, I felt terrible sitting in the back (we alternated our seating positions each day). Tony and Eric were in the support boat for the first time. I was very concerned for them as they are not that comfortable with water, the motorboat and the conditions were not the ideal for getting familiar with these things. Tony seemed to be hanging onto the boat for dear life. It had already been a long day and it was incredibly tough but we made it.

We made it across Cass Lake and found Team Alaska's support crew waiting for their paddlers. We ate a bit, talked with Alaska and some locals.

We had a 200-meter portage when near tragedy struck. I dropped the boat on the rudder. As the boat slipped out of my hands I let out a blood-curdling scream, NOOOOO! It looked very bad for us. The rudder was cinched against the boat and we planned to have a two-hour paddle to our destination and it was after 6. We borrowed some tools from Team Alaska and fixed it as best we could and we were back in business, a bit shaken but at least we were back in the water. Still, we wasted an hour trying to repair the rudder.

The next leg of our journey was unnerving as we were again questioning the path we took through the bogs, thunderstorm warnings were coming over the radio and it was getting dark. We had been paddling for over 12 hours and it had been a very long day. We finally made radio contact with Eric and knew we were within 2 miles which was a big relief. Eric put the lights on the river where we would see them and honked the car horn. We were getting desperate. It was getting dark. Finally we saw the lights.

A nice man with a great cabin was nice enough to let us use his dock and offered to let us change and shower there but we just wanted to get to the RV. Eric drove us to the RV, which was set up on the side of the road, and Tony had dinner ready for us. We had put in a 14-hour day on the water and paddled 60 miles (72 km). We were pleased with the progress but in order to finish on time we had to average more than 80 miles/day.
End of Team Amazons of the Mississippi, By Cynthia Belbin, May 6, 2001, Sunday

May 5, 2001, Sat

May 7, 2001 Mon