Day 5 Report...From Trout Rock Lodge

A quickie here tonight as 35 or so of the remaining Rock and Ice participants and staff chill out at Trout Rock Lodge - host of our stage 5 camp. Lucky for me they even have internet access!

I'll let you catch up on most of the action via the sleepmonsters.ca site - and make sure to check out all the cool photography as there are some incredible photos (and more to come as they filter through the thousands of shots they've taken).

A few words to recap the stages so far...

Day 1 - A long hard day. A brutal windchill, lots of frostbite victims and a crazy blizzard on Prelude lake which took Mike and I over 2.5hrs to cross (approx 14km). In the end, we figured it was such a hard day that we would cross the line together.

Day 2 - An amazing day on the trail, lots of bush skiing on a snowmobile wide 'single track'. Lots of soupy soft terrain that was kind of like skiing on quicksand - brutal. I ended up breaking away a bit for most of the first half with Mike hovering behind. At the 3/4 mark I ran out of energy and it was Mike's turn to take the lead. I finally caught back up near the end in sight of camp...so we call it even again.

Day 3 - We were flying today, covering the first part of the 40+ kms in 11km/h (fast for pulling a 30lb pulk!). The end came much faster than anticipated and we popped onto the ice road for the remaining 6km to Yellowknife (picture hwy 401 on bare ice!). I gapped Mike on the ice as my pulk was tracking perfectly on the glare ice, but Mike's was fishtailing like crazy. As he fumbled around skating on the side, he clipped his pole and broke the tip off! Unknowingly, I push on, building a 100m lead with 2km to go...Unfortunately (for me) he was holding his own skating and as my luge run ran out, he slowly clawed his way back since I couldn't skate due to a faulty binding. By the time we hit the finish line, we (once again) called it even...

Day 4 - Another zippy day, but this time out on Great Slave Lake. With our game faces on, there would be no mister nice guy from either party today! With 500m to go - and not really knowing where the finish line was, Mike attacked and pulled hard - I hung on...The pace slowed a bit until we rounded the corner with the tents in sight. Again he surged hard with me in tow. I sucked in behind as long as I could and actually managed to gain on him just enough to....tie once again! (not intentional this time)

Day 5 - Woke up to -26C with a relatively strong windchill. Despite it being the shortest stage, the extremely slow snow made it very difficult. Mike's Camelbak froze up before his first drink and when he lunged for the waterboy thermos(!), I made a break and held a 10 to 15second lead for 20min or so, but the early move was sapping my energy as it was hard to break trail on the sandpaper snow...so I pulled off and let Mike catch up. We exchanged the lead for the remaining kms until the final cat-track to Trout Rock Lodge. Again, since we didn't know where the finish line was, it was hard to figure out when to take the lead. The closer we got, the harder packed the trail became and we were able to skate to the finish. I tried to hold off Mike as long as I could (in the one lane track) but I could sense that he was chompin' at the bit. I pulled over hoping to get paced to a wide finish track, but he put on a final sustained burst that gapped me a few hundred metres out - he finished 32 seconds ahead.

Tomorrow is the final day, and it's another long one...39km on mostly bush trails. I'm down on Mike but 30sec is nothing in this race. Anything can happen...