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| © Andris Slavinskis |
This weekend I participated in ‘ERNA Matk’ a hiking
challenge held by the Estonian scout organization. This is an annual event open
to all who are interested in testing their mettle in two difficulty levels of
hiking – Tümleri (24 hours long) and Hauka (36 hours long). This year the hike
took place from Lehtse to Kautla, officially about 30 km apart but this did not
take into account checkpoint locations so the real hike would most likely be
longer. I first heard of this event when the one of the ESTCube leads, Mart
Noorma asked me if I was interested in participating since he knew I liked
hiking. Of course I agreed, not exactly knowing what I was getting into. We
eventually had two teams formed at the Tartu Observatory, ‘Eesti Kosmosekeskus’
with 5 members and ‘THR Teadusmalev’ which I joined with 5 other people.
When I first joined this hike I didn’t really know what to
expect from it. When I told my Canadian friends that I was participating, I was
mostly met with best wishes and not much more. Only after I shared the
information with my Estonian friends did it slowly start to dawn on me that
this was a pretty serious competition here, as a lot of people reacted with
shock! As if I’d gone crazy!
Well, I was already locked in with my decision, I would
participate in this competition. Besides, it seemed like a fun challenge! Of
course we needed to prepare for this hike as well. This mostly involved making
sure we had all the required orienteering and hiking gear for the competition
and we also had a practice hike from Tõravere to Tartu which was a distance of
about 30 km. This was an opportunity to test out hiking shoes and general
constitution.
And then it was time for the competition! Packed into 2 cars
with all our equipment we headed to the competition finish location the day
before. Our start time was 7:50am on August 9, and this would allow us to have
a good night’s rest before the competition. In the morning everyone packed back
into the observatory bus, leaving one car behind so we could retrieve the bus
later from the start location and we were on our way! It promised to be a rainy
day with potential thunder storms during the day but our spirits were high and
we were ready to go!
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| © Rommi Saar |
Heading towards the first control point, we kept up a good pace and although we made it on location pretty early, we still had quite a line-up ahead of us. This checkpoint activity was my personal favorite, we got to run around with paintball guns in a capture-the-flag game where we had to shoot all the enemy colored balloons on our way. It was really exciting and just plain fun. Based on our speed or skill, we would be rewarded a maximum of 10 points after completing each activity, and of course we got full points for this first activity.
Our hike to the second checkpoint ended up being the most
exciting. On an overgrown dirt road we met up with another team who warned us
of counter-activity forces in the field ahead, if we got caught by them we
would lose one of the 4 lives each team member was given at the start of the
competition. We were a bit skeptical so we sent a scout ahead of us to confirm
the information. A short while later and we hear a loud “HEY!” followed by our
scout sprinting back up the way he’d come. Our team leader took the lead,
jumping into the forest at the side of the road and we all followed. Eventually
we made it to the edge of a stream where another team had just finished
crossing with a bridge of branches. It was relatively shoddily made so it was
already completely fallen apart and we couldn’t use that. While looking for
some other way to cross I spied a young birch at the edge of the water and
figured that we could potentially hang off of it and let the tree bend over the
water so we could cross. I shared my idea and we were able to all make it
across alright, getting back on the road in a little while. We got careless
though and were caught by countermeasures jumping out of a bush and ambushing
us. After that we got a lot more careful and posted a scout ahead of us whenever
we were walking on roads so we were only risking one life and not the entire
team’s lives.
We made it to the second checkpoint after a little bit of
backtracking as we went a little too far north in the forest and had to sprint
to make it to the checkpoint on time. This was our worst scoring checkpoint, as
none of us could solve the rope-lock puzzle that we were presented. Later we
learned that only one team had gotten full points for this challenge. The
checkpoint coordinators also gave us a mysterious triangle and told us we had
to replicate it with natural materials, they gave us no other information so we
just took it with us. We briefly met with our other team at the checkpoint and
when we saw them again on the road we decided to walk together for a bit.
Unfortunately we were separated once again when one of our scouts spotted a
counter-activity agent and we all had to flee into the forest.
It turns out that we made it to the third checkpoint after
our other team and there was another long lineup. We held our lunch here as we
waited, refilling our water bottles and eating some of the quick noodle or
mashed potato meals we had brought with us. This checkpoint had three
activities, one log climbing challenge where we had to reach a tall bar, a
basketball challenge where we needed to shoot hoops from the top of a rope
ladder and finally a water aiming challenge where we got to fire a fireman’s
hose and try to shoot down some beach balls that had to be replaced by team
members willing to get sprayed. This was also the closest encounter we had with
the thunder storm, as we saw the clouds pass us very closely by but we only got
a few drops of rain.
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| © Andris Slavinskis |
After these activities, we decided to group together with
our Kosmosekeskus team and move as one unit. This made our orienteering a lot
easier and we were better able to plan our route. The hike to the fourth
checkpoint involved some more river crossing and railroad crossing at
non-official points so that we could avoid the most likely counter-activity
locations. This was fun as just after the railroad crossing we took a brief
break and there were wild blueberries everywhere which made me very happy as I
ended up just stuffing myself.
Making it to the fourth checkpoint we were told that we
needed to have our natural triangle ready. Luckily we had collected some
materials on our way and before the coordinator could say anything or take away
points I took my knife out and we rushed and cut a piece of birch bark to the
correct size. The challenge at this checkpoint, as we found out, was to combine
a bunch of shapes into 5 identical squares. Some of the shapes were hidden in
the forest and we would get points for finding all of those as well. This was
relatively easy but we weren’t able to make one square as one was the incorrect
pattern. Kosmosekeskus finished their challenge at the same time as us so we
kept moving together towards the fifth checkpoint.
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| © Rommi Saar |
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| © Rommi Saar |
The fifth checkpoint was interesting. We were presented with a gourmet challenge. Each member of the team had to consume 3 dishes: a black garlic, some lamb brain and Georgian mineral water. I personally am not very good with new foods but I did manage to finish my part along with the rest of the team. We got full points for this challenge and decided to stay a little longer in order to have dinner. It was slowly starting to get darker when we started to head out again. It was starting to get a little bit more dangerous to take a route through the forest but we figured it might be worth it one last time before it really gets dark and we’d have to stick to the roads. We ended up crossing another river and I would have to say we got really lucky with all of our river crossings, as each place we made it to was crossable without getting our feet wet.
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| © Rommi Saar |
This was the most difficult part of the hike for me. Not
that the darkness was scary in any way, but being tired and having my feet
hurting during this time was a real morale killer. The darkness really ate away
at my resolve and this is where I thank everyone that supported me through this
night. I could not have made it to the next checkpoint if I didn’t have team
members encouraging me and singing songs at night to keep our spirits somewhat
intact.
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| © Mart Noorma |
I could not have done this alone and the fact that we made
it to the seventh checkpoint was absolutely amazing for me. It was relatively
simple, as we just had to guess the height that a hidden tube was with a pale
of water and another tube next to it. We finished this challenge and then moved
on to the eight checkpoint right away in order to avoid falling asleep at this
place. The walk towards the last checkpoint was still difficult, it was still
dark and in order to alleviate some foot pain I decided to walk in my sandals
from now onwards. With the counter-activity potentially out again, we tended to
spook at every car that passed us by and run into the forest to hide on our way
there. We must have looked really suspicious to any non-participant cars that
were just passing by!
But in the end, we met no resistance and made it to the
eight checkpoint with the rest of our lives intact. We had another 3 challenges
to complete at this checkpoint: a guess-the-drawing game, first-aid training
test, and then a car pushing game that I sat out because of my feet and I doubt
I would have added much with 5 strong guys already behind the car! With these
last challenges out of the way, all that was left now was to get the
orienteering map and head to the finish!
This last part of the hike was the orienteering challenge,
we had to collect at least 5 points on the map of 20 locations in order to
complete the race and we only had about 4 hours left to go 15 km plus find the
points so time was finally starting to run out. Because of this, Teadusmalev
and Kosmosekeskus split up again and we headed out first. I knew that now is
the time that I would have to really make an effort to go forward. I couldn’t be
a burden on my team so I would have to ignore the pain in my feet and my
tiredness and just move. Thankfully we assigned a runner to be the one to find
the points while the rest of the team would just move towards the finish. This
helped as in order to move fast I would have to start moving/limping slow and
then slowly pick up the pace and move faster with longer steps. I was only
focused on breathing steadily at this point, using it as a focus to let my pain
out and falling into an almost meditative state. It seemed to work out well as
for most of the 15 km I was even leading the group, I didn’t even want to stop
since it would break me out of my concentration and I would have to start all
over with my pace building. I could almost taste the finish now, I wanted to
get there already!
Within the last km or so, we ended up splitting our team,
with the walking half going towards the finish and the runners out to get our
last points. We even had the Kosmosekeskus team missing their runner catch up
to us and so we walked to the finish together. And like that, it was over, our
runners caught up to us and we could officially call the hike completed. It was
amazing! 24 hours gone and we had come so far, done so much and what an
experience that was!
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| © Rommi Saar |
With the hike over, we were free to rest a couple of hours
until the ending ceremony where the winners were announced and acknowledgements
given. We learned that out of the 20 teams that competed on the Tümleri trail,
8 had dropped out. It was surprising, almost half the teams ended their hike
and I was so proud that we had made it, we may have gotten 10th place in the
hike but at least we finished! This experience was truly worth every grueling
moment! It was an amazing opportunity to learn about my limits and about how much
I can actually accomplish.
Each competing team also wore GPS trackers, and so we learned that our team had walked a total of 65.7 km. The entire trail and competitor movements can be watched at this link for anyone interested. Thank you to all my team and everyone else that made this hike happen, it was truly amazing and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! :)
Tubli tüdruk :)
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