Stage 5 - Night O Trek

The teams will want to view these pictures of the Stage 5 trek after the race because the teams arrived at this section after sunset. On this out and back nighttime trek, the top teams cleared it in under 2 hours. They needed to navigate along some bouldery streams to gain elevation to capture all 8 checkpoints. Without any trails in this area, the entire section was bushwhacking through thick Vermont forest.

“Dusty [Caseria] is doing awesome at nav,” said Max King of Bend Racing in reference to the team’s leaf navigator after they breezed into TA5 in first place.

Teams were required to get only one checkpoint in this section. For those following the dots on the tracker provided by Enabled Tracking, many teams made quick work of this section grabbing a few of the closer points. The limited number of required points helped bring the field back together, but the midpack teams now have to wonder if their strategy to drop points or go after just one more dramatically affected their position in the standings.

In the male division, Gear Junkie’s tracker showed them collecting 6 CPs, increasing their lead over Michigan Racing Addicts, who captured 5 CPs. However, Only Mostly Lost was 20 minutes ahead of Omaps arriving at TA4. Omaps collected 5 CPs to Only Mostly Lost’s 4 CPs, catapulting Omaps to third in the male division. The teams on the course do not know how many points the other teams have, so even though Only Mostly Lost was in front of Omaps on the course, Omaps was higher in the standings after Stage 4.