KB6FNS

Tevis Cup 2004

I volunteered for the second time in two years to help with radio communications for the Tevis Cup on July 31, 2004. http://www.foothill.net/tevis. As last year, I was stationed with Kim Scheidel ( KE6RKX ) at the Dusty Corners checkpoint. This year we also had Mike Bach (WB6FFC) helping at the radio. Mike and I camped out Friday night, so we’d be ready early Saturday.
As last year, the instructions to Dusty Corners were very confusing. We could not find road 44 off of Mosquito Ridge Rd and finally took road 40 to see how that would work. Mike had a GPS connected to his laptop but only had the street atlas software. I brought my laptop with GPS and the topo software. My GPS was not receiving satellite information for some reason, so did us no good.
Finally, I took out my Garmin Rino 120 handheld that already had the Dusty Corners coordinates programmed into it. Using my handheld we successfully made it to the checkpoint , but we did so by actually driving along the Tevis Cup trail right where the horses would be coming down the next morning. We can now say we ran the Tevis in a suburban.
This year was the 50th year anniversary of the Tevis Cup 100 Miles One Day Western States Trail Ride. It was also the 30 year anniversary of the first time a person ran the Tevis Cup, which became the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run. In 1974 Gordon Ainsleigh was entered in the ride, but his horse became lame before the start. Gordon attempted and finished the Tevis Cup Run on foot in just under 24 hours. To commemorate this anniversary, 10 runners ran the 2004 Tevis Cup Ride along with the horses. See http://www.coolrunning.com.au/ultra/2003014.shtml for more about Gordon's first run.

Dusty Corners was the only stop besides the vet check stations that had water and nourishment for the runners. This check point is about 50 miles into the 100 mile ride. We had a big old ice chest full of water, gatorade and power bars. We had pretzels and Goo juice. The runners barely stopped to enjoy the goodies we had, thus we were left with lots of leftover liquids. We ended up giving a lot of it to the endurance riders.
Gordon's wife was waiting at our check point for at least 3 hours. She was getting very worried, other checkpoints were calling to see if Gordon and another runner had been seen. We were getting worried for them but Gordon did finally make it to Dusty Corners and boy was his wife happy to see him. Turns out they just had an extra long stop at Robinson Flat.
I found out on Sunday during the banquet that Tim Twietmeyer was one of the 10 runners on the trail. I remember Tim from when I was working at Hewlett-Packard, but I didn't know he was in the run.
After the sweepriders came through our checkpoint, we packed up and headed to the Foresthill stop to relieve any radio operators that needed it. Turns out there were quite a few operators there and we were not needed. So, Mike and I had a chance to see how a vet check stop works. Those huge IV fluid bags attached to dehydrated horses are huge. We watched the vets check the horses for lameness and watched the riders head onto the next checkpoint after the mandatory 1 hour rest period. The cutoff time for entry to the Foresthill stop was 8:30 pm, so we left at that time.
Sunday afternoon we went to the barbeque and awards banquet at the Auburn Fairgrounds. That is something not to be missed as well. Everyone who finished the ride under 24 hours received the prized Tevis belt buckle.
The contingent from the United Arab Emirites invited the winners of the Tevis Cup 2004 to ride in their endurance event - all expenses paid!

This was our Dusty Corners setup. We had a marine battery to run the radio and a solar panel to charge the battery. Vertical antenna in the back.

Mike Bach, WB6FFC and Janice Sutherland, KB6FNS at Dusty Corners

This is one of the riders that decided to run his horse down the steep hill into Dusty Corners

One of the 10 runners commemorating the 30th anniversary of Gordon Ainsleigh's running of the Tevis  ( this may be Tim Twietmeyer)

Another of the runners on the 2004 Tevis. Kim Scheidel is in the Fire Department shirt

Rider 6 coming into Dusty Corners. 50 miles into the ride

GIS Analysis of the Tevis Cup

For a class project in my geography class in data acquisition, I used the Tevis Cup Ride. You can view my paper at http://ic.arc.losrios.edu/~veiszep/12fall2004/Sutherland/G350_Sutherland_Project.htm

Also, this is what what I was able to plot on ArcMap towards the end of class. (This is a large bitmap, 2300KB, and will take a while to load via dial-up)

Tevis 2005

July 23, 2005 was the Tevis Ride. Again this year, I volunteered with radio communications. This year I was at the Last Chance checkpoint. This checkpoint is a gate and go vet check point. The vets check the respirations and fitness of the horse before it can leave. We had up to 10 vets continually checking horses to assure they were not in distress. We had a few pulled for lameness. One or two for respirations. One Colic. Otherwise after 50 miles,  most of the horses looked perky and ready to go the next leg up to Devils Thumb.  We heard early in the day around 9am that we already had an injured rider near Red Star I believe. She had broken her wrist and was walking back to the last checkpoint. Other than that, I didn't hear of any other medical issues.

Tevis 2007

Well, we did radio communications again this year for the Tevis Cup. We were again stationed at Last Chance which is a Vet Check stop.  We ended up with 14 pulled horses by the end of the day. There was some hard luck at the start of the ride. A woman had to put her horse down the day before the ride because he ended up breaking his leg up near the shoulder. She was able to borrow another horse for the ride only to have that horse kick her in the groin, very near her major leg artery. She ended up going to the hospital around 8 am.  A couple sprained ankles and wrists were added later in the day by other riders. We had 151 horses make their way to Last Chance.  One held up at Dusty Corners and 13 ended up being pulled by the Vets at Last Chance mostly for lameness.

Again, we have some pictures from the ride.

This is the Radio van belonging to KE6RKX

This is our station at Last Chance

A Rider Arriving at Last Chance

Tevis 2012

TEVIS 100 Mile Ride