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Taking from three to six hours to complete, Hi-Tec races attract a diverse field of athletes, from weekend warriors to professional adventurers. While a good number of the three-person teams present were comprised of first-time adventure racers, 20 teams were made up of the genre's best, among them 1998 Eco-Challenge winner and multiple mountain bike world champion Sara Ballantyne (Team Women's Sports and Fitness), Hawaii Ironman veteran Corky Ewing (Team Balance Bar), and jungle expert Doug Crytzer (Team Fogdog). The Playboy Extreme Team was also on hand (coached by perhaps adventure racing's foremost authority Blain Reeves) once again showing that there's more to a centerfold body than hi-gloss.

"Athletes who had raced here last year had expected a ride on the park's relatively easy fire roads, but if there's a rule in the world of adventure racing it is expect anything..."

Every Hi-Tec race features kayak, mountain bike and run segments, augmented by a series of "Special Tests," from orienteering to rope climbs, which athletes find out about mid-course. The desire for challenge seems to be the common denominator among adventure athletes, and the Special Tests have become the deciding factor in short-course events. A minute prior to race start, the co-ed teams received their first envelope, which on this day instructed them to first head for an orienteering problem. This was the first time a Hi-Tec race started with orienteering, and the firing of the race gun witnessed a mad scramble away from the lake shore and through the trees.

The top teams completed the first test in little more than 10 minutes, before heading for the 10.5 mile mountain bike course. Athletes who had raced here last year had expected a ride on the park's relatively easy fire roads, but if there's a rule in the world of adventure racing it is expect anything. Race organizers employed Castaic's steepest, most technical trails. Team Women's Sports and Fitness' Ballantyne, Nick Moore and Jack Dunn made quick work of the mountain biking course, arriving in the transition area a good two minutes ahead of Team Nature's Garden (Butch Ulrich, Cassy Byrne, and Steve Kramer), Team Hi-Tec (Karen Lundgren, Paul Romero and last-minute substitute Dan Barger. Barger replaced David Kelly who was injured in a pre-race bike crash that left him and his teammate with a good dose of road rash), Team Balance Bar (Bob Schulz, Ewing and Sylvia Corbett), and BMC Software (Julie Dauphine, Mac Brown and Joshua Allen).

Team Women's Sports and Fitness made the SOS Cargo Net traverse and Mud Pit crossing look easy before heading out for the 2.4 mile kayak leg just as the sun set. Team Hi-Tec moved into second place during the kayak segment, run along the perimeter of Lake Castaic which was interspersed with several portages across the sand and one steep hill, but the top teams were all within a few minutes of each other.

It would be the next Special Test, Slippery Mountain, a seemingly more comical than adventurous test piece — a wooden wall slicked down with Crisco shortening which would provide the race's first shake up. Team Women's Sports and Fitness arrived first, quickly figuring out that they would need to form a human chain to help each other up and over the obstacle. Theory and practice are two different animals however, and the team's amused smiles disappeared as Ballantyne clung to the top of the wall while her teammates tried in vain to get a firm grip on her legs in order to boost themselves up the slippery expanse. As they struggled, Team Balance Bar ran in and cracked the code of the messy test, taking the lead. They were followed by Team Hi-Tec and BMC, who headed out for the 7.75 mile run with headlamps on, as Women's Sports and Fitness struggled for another 10 minutes.

Team Balance Bar came off the run course in first, a good five minutes in front of BMC-Software and Team Hi-Tec to face the Muze, a military-inspired test requiring athletes to cross a series of cement blocks with three wood beams. If the wood, or an athlete,were to touch the ground the team would be required to start over. Amid some confusion over this rule, Team Balance Bar puzzled over the problem before them while BMC-Software made short work of settling the beams onto the blocks in a modified t-bar fashion. "It was Mac Brown using his brain and figuring out the Muze that made up six minutes," said BMC's teammate Allen at the finish line. After getting across the Muze, the last Special Test, an ascent over a vertical wall of cargo netting was a piece of cake for the North Carolina-based team who claimed its first Hi-Tec national championship.

— Deborah Crooks, MountainZone.com Correspondent