Yukon Arctic Ultra

Thursday, 17 July 2008

 1 Challenge
4 Friends
6 Days
18 Hours of sleep
20 Competitors
-30 Degrees Celsius
140 Hours on the course
515 Kilometres

This is the YUKON ARCTIC ULTRA.
The ‘YAU’ is considered by most adventure racers as the coldest and toughest foot race in the World.
Why is it so tough? Well, we ask you to re-read the above FACTS about the event. That’s it in a pretty cold nutshell. Take a moment and properly digest it. How would your own body and mind would stand up to the distance, the elements, the pain, the fatigue and the lack of sleep?

Now you are no doubt thinking ‘why would you want to put yourself through that?’ That’s an easy one for TEAM HELMUT. Simply put, we really love adventure and pushing ourselves to discover our physical and mental limits. By doing so we hope that our brief pain will hopefully soften the longer-term pain for others less fortunate than us by raising life-changing mounts of money for charity.

We will be raising money from the YAU for Breast Cancer Care.

So at 10.30am on 15th February of 2009, TEAM HELMUT will set off along the infamous YUKON QUEST Trail. We will be running whilst pulling all of our provisions in snow ‘pulks’ the whole of the 515 km course. We are aiming to cover the course from Whitehorse to Pelly Farm in less than 6 days (target of 140 hours in total) in temperatures that seasonally average at -25C to -30C. We will burn in excess of 10,000 calories per day!
From the 11 competitors that started this crazy adventure in 2008, only 2 actually went onto complete the race. We will be expected to be on the move for more than 20 hours per day – stopping for rest and food for only 3 to 4 hours.
TEAM HELMUT will each be expected to pull a bivvy bag, sleeping bag, stove, food, water, clothing and emergency equipment.