HUAIRASINCHI
An Everest to Climb in the Andes – Huairasinchi Hits The Heights
Rob Howard / 06.12.2020
Today, Sunday December 6th, at 07.00 local time, the Huairasinchi Movistar 2020 Expedition adventure race began. Thirty Five teams, and more than 120 participants, from Ecuador, France, Brazil, Canada, the United States, Colombia, Chile and Denmark set off on two courses. These are the ‘Expedition’ and ‘Adventure’ categories, with the Adventure being the shorter ... but all the racers will have both an expedition and an adventure in the 4 days ahead.
The elite Expedition race has a course of 259km, and the Adventure 130km, and these might seem quite short distances for an expedition race, but the high altitude, the mountain climate and lots of lung-busting and leg-stretching climbing has to be taken into account. The headline figure on the Expedition course is not the distance, it’s over 8000m of climbing – an Everest of a challenge.
Add into the mix the cold of the high Andes, and the often damp and misty conditions, the long equatorial nights, and the fact the teams are in remote areas so will not pass through any villages where they can get food or assistance, and it will, as usual, be a challenge just to finish Huairasinchi.
The course was deliberately designed to avoid villages this year, due to the Covid situation, and teams were set off from the start at one minute intervals, rather than the usual mass start. They will also use only two transition areas on a course which has 4 stages combining trekking and cycling. There is no paddling this year as the organisers were keeping away from populated areas, but a ropes section has been included.
The teams set off from the scenic location of the Hacienda El Porvenir hotel and ranch, which sits in open country below the Cotopaxi volcano, and their first stage is a 45km trek and ropes stage with almost 2000m of climbing. Given that the start is located at 3600m that means they are going to go high! There are 3 checkpoints on the first stage over 4300m as teams make a circuit of the Sincholahua Volcano.
Sometime between 14 and 22 hours later they will return to the start location to begin the first MTB stage, which is 52km with 1100m of climbing. This brings them to TA2 where the second trek of the race begins. This one is much shorter at 24km, but still has 1500m of climbing. They will return to TA2/3 to start the final ride to the finish, and it will test all the teams to their limits with 4000m of climbing in the 132km distance! (The Adventure course uses the same course layout and transitions, but with shorter distances.)
Dot watcher can follow the teams’ progress and see race updates on the live race page at
https://tracktherace.com/es/huairasinchi-2020-huairasinchi-expedition/live and we’ll have regular news on SleepMonsters and our Facebook page.
