At night, all the cars are grey
Adventurous nights in order to prepare the Raid GauloiseFour weeks ago we did our first night training: camping in an igloo together with some cross country skiing at night.
To further test our night resistence and also to try out our bivouac material we went for another night of happenings. This time we were in the hills around mount Chasseral. In the picture you see the glacier cave where we were eating our "diner". In expedition racing the calories - weight relation is extremely important. And also we do not really feel like eating just butter for a whole week long. Therefore the goal was to find rich but still easy digesting and varying food to eat. It is not quite easy to plan the "menu" for 6000kcal per day, without cooking possibilities, with temperature over 30°C as well as shipping it 6 weeks ahead of race start. Any kind of advice is welcome!!.. It is obvious that the preparation for the Raid Gauloise is not just physical but also logistic.
The bivouac was an experience for itself: we learned that sleeping on snow in a 2.5kg light tent (for 4 people) and 4 survival covers 50g each (which served us as sleeping bags) is not like holidays in tropical lands: after one hour of shaking of cold and burning important calories, we knew where we have to improve our preparation. All of us were appreciating each of the following steps in the snow in which the body movements kept us warm.
The highlight of our second mystic night was standing on top of Mount Chasseral during beautiful moon light. Now we are back around a warm stove thinking about how to improve our bivouac material.
