Twenty-one teams from Quebec, Ontario and New York gathered at Mont Tremblant for the third Salomon Adventure Challenge Series event of 2002 on June 1st. Despite grim weather forecasts, the storms held off and competitors were treated to ideal adventure racing conditions.

From atop Pic White (Tremblant's windy peak) teams laughed off the 40 km/h gusts and begun the 51 km race on foot - barreling down the Duncan trails to their mountain bikes below. Team Gordo of Ottawa and Team RALC of Courcelette pushed the pace down the steep slopes and set off toward CP2/TA2 via the north shore of Lac Superior.

Traveling northwest along the dirt road to CP2/TA2, where teams' canoes awaited, teams were treated to a 20 km ride amongst the rolling hills of Parc du Mont Tremblant. During this section, the top riding teams pushed past the leaders to hit the canoes first - Teams Explore Tremblant, Banzai and Les Gros-Salomon.

The 9 km canoeing section from Petit Lac Monroe and along the Riviere du Diable tested both navigation skill and teams' ability to portage quickly. Colourful and always smiling Team Banzai of Hull maintained their lead through this section while Team Les Poules Sauvage of Montreal nabbed the e load fastest canoeing award.

Heading out of CP5/TA3 on bikes once again, Team Banzai was one minute ahead of Team Chelsea Chums and eight other teams remained within striking distance - only 26 minutes separated the top ten teams after racing for 2.5 hours.

After arriving at CP6/TA4, it was a 7 km trek to the finish at the base of Mont Tremblant via the North-South trail where a crowd of onlookers awaited the winning team. Meanwhile, trying to transition from biking to trekking as quickly as possible, Teams' Vermillon, Les Poules Sauvage, Gordo, and Smack the Ponies (an all female team) were battling to round out the top ten.

Like each of the last two checkpoints, it was a fight to be first and despite an unrelenting effort by Team Chelsea Chums, Team Banzai crossed into the finish line festival to take the Salomon Adventure Challenge Tremblant victory.

In all, 16 of 21 teams were officially ranked while two more teams finished unranked. Thanks again to Tremblant for hosting the event and we'll see you at Apex Mountain Resort in British Columbia on June 15th for our next Series event!