MOMAR first to race Stawamus Chief

NEIL JUDSON/THE CHIEF

A First Descent

Gary Robbins enjoys the view while starting his rappel of the Chief during MOMAR on Saturday (May 23).

As more than 200 sweat-drenched MOMAR competitors hauled themselves up the natural stair climber that is the Stawamus Chief, the satisfaction of becoming part of history wasn’t likely as prominent as the pain.

Not yet, anyway.

The Coast Mountain Sports Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race became the first sanctioned race to use the monolith as part of its course on Saturday (May 23) thanks in part to local course designer Jen Segger.

And according to race director Bryan Tasaka, the Chief is likely going to become a MOMAR mainstay if permitting continues to be successful.

“Every year we try to make the rappel a little bit more spectacular but I don’t think we can top the rappel off the Chief that we did this year,” he said.

In the final stages of the 57-kilometre Enduro class, having already trekked, mountain biked, run and navigated across most of the course, racers hiked 610m to the South Peak and rappelled 50m before hiking the rest of the way down.

Overall winner Bart Jarmula, 31, was the first competitor to be greeted by Squamish Rock Guides at a sheer cliff overlooking the Howe Sound. The Revelstoke native acted relaxed as he prepared to lower himself over the edge, but he later admitted the descent got his adrenaline pumping.

“I’ve done a lot of rappels in these races but that was one of the better ones I’ve done because you’re on the very top of the Chief, and you look over, and the sensation you get is that this rappel is going to go all the way to the bottom and the cliff doesn’t stop so that was really cool,” he said while resting near the finish area at Pavilion Park.

Jarmula had a big lead descending the Chief and finished with a winning time of four hours 53 minutes 47 seconds.

Former Squamish resident Gary Robbins, who now lives in North Vancouver, made a valiant recovery from losing time during the orienteering section to place second with a time of five hours 12 minutes 28 seconds.

Robbins dropped the lead and ended up about 20 minutes behind fifth place after drifting off course. But in an amazing show of endurance, he reached fourth place by the rappel, charged down the Chief to take third, and achieved second during the final biking section.

Robbins placed second in last year’s Squamish MOMAR and first in the Cumberland MOMAR with teammate and navigation specialist Todd Nowack last year. He was determined to overcome his greatest weakness as a solo racer this year by resisting the temptation to follow anyone through the orienteering section. Despite getting lost, he redeemed himself by pure act of will.

“When I was coming down the Chief I was on the verge of blacking out. I was that exhausted, I was pushing that hard that I literally thought to myself, ‘there’s hikers out here so I should be okay but I don’t want to collapse right now,’” he said.

“All the times I’ve raced with Todd I’ve always been very happy with everything but I think I’m more proud of this second place than a lot of the first places because I was so far out of it at one point that I was on the verge of quitting on myself.”

Other local competitors were very successful. LJ Wilson teamed up with Whistler’s Kevin Hodder to place seventh overall and first in the Team of Two Male category. MOMAR veterans Live To Tell, made up of Rob Macleod, Graham Schulz, Malcolm Schulz and Chris Bishop, placed eighth overall and first in the Team of Four Male category.

When you compete as a team, the unit is only as fast as the slowest member. It takes a lot of mutual support from each member to be successful, said Graham Schulz.

“I think the biggest challenge is that throughout the whole race everybody has their high and their low so it’s just motivating each other to keep going,” he said.

“At some point somebody is suffering all the time.”

For more results visit www.mindovermountain.com.

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