Fall Camp Part II- Mountain Mania Horror

Sunday morning brought out a nicer day than the previous, as the rain had ceased. It also meant that it was time for mountain mania. For those unfamiliar with mountain mania, it is a roller ski race from the town of Duntroon, nearly completely uphill for 4.6 km to the top. This makes for a grueling long climb.



While this photo does not quite do mountain mania justice, this is about the gradient of the hills that are seen for about half of the course.

This year there were 10 participants willing to accept the challenge that mountain mania presented. Double poling was the most popular option this year, however no one is really sure why, as double poling is in no way the easiest way to transcend mountain mania. At points, it is very much a struggle to keep moving up the hill. There are also rumours that someone’s arms have in fact fallen off when double poling mountain mania, however unverified at this point. Even with this in mind Ryan summed up his reason for double poling as “Sometimes you just need to show the hill who is boss and conquer it without the use of your lower body.” (and sometimes you need to show Andrew JeffERY what’s up and beat his double pole time)

Everyone took off and managed to survive to the top without issue, only with the pain that mountain mania dishes out.

The results are seen below:


Impressively Natalie managed to take the win in 12:03, which appears to be a new record for the course. She also did this the day after beating dad, Justin, in the AHS fun run, where she narrowly lead him wire-to-wire and just outsprinted him at the end for the W.

Strick managed to set a new running record for the course by 1:10, while Tim Hughes also set a new road biking course record, taking down the previous time by 1:37.

One none participant was Head Coach Colin Rhodes, who wimped out of mountain mania for the much, much easier task of running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. He completed it in 3:06:09 and therefore crushing his personal best and qualifying for Boston! Congrats from all here at UWNN.

No one was up for round 2 of mountain mania, so all headed back to the farmhouse for the process of eating all of the remaining food. An impressive dent was made in the remaining food, however ultimately all were unsuccessful in this challenge. This was followed by cleaning up of the farmhouse and after some down time, it was time for the final activity of the camp, a trail hike on the Bruce Trail to visit the caves.

The caves give the opportunity for a little climbing, crawling and squeezing through a number of small crevices and cracks between the rocks.




Photo Credit: Heather Foley. File Photo.

After the caves, it was back to Waterloo, where everyone would proceed to crash and recover from the camp.