For the week of August 8 - 14, 2001

Pat Harper is back adventure racing

Discovery Channel contest

---

World-class adventure racer Pat Harper, 33, is training at Vail, Co. for the 2001 Discovery Channel World Championships to be staged Aug. 31-Sept. 8 over a course measuring up to 450 kilometers in Switzerland.

A Ketchum native who lives in Bellevue, Harper grew up as a member of the Sun Valley Junior Nordic ski team. He has been a river guide for the last 18 years and is now a member of the Men’s National Champion Whitewater Rafting Team.

On the Team Pearl Izumi/SealSkinz team are captain Rebecca Rusch along with navigators Harper and Billy Mattison. They qualified by winning the Appalachian Extreme Adventure Race in May.

As of July 8, there were 42 teams registered for the world championships—a test of mountain biking, hiking, glacier travel, rafting and abseiling through some of Europe’s most challenging terrain. Entry is $7,000 per team, limited to 50 teams.

The Discovery Channel World Championship Adventure Race is the first race to offer a world champion title to an adventure racing team. It is sponsored by The Discovery Channel and Southern Traverse Ltd. based in Queenstown, New Zealand.

The non-stop competition will be filmed for a four-hour television mini-series on The Discovery Channel. Course details will remain a closely guarded secret until the day before the race begins.

Harper was a competitor in the 1998 and 2000 Eco-Challenge adventure races in Morocco and Malaysian Borneo.

Last May in Tibet, Harper and nationally ranked outrigger canoe paddler Rusch finished seventh in the Raid Galoises race—highest placing in the history of the race for an All-American team.

Mattison, the team’s other navigator, has a whitewater career spanning 30 years. He has completed four Eco-Challenges, including the first-ever American team victory in 1998. Mattison, foreman and avalanche director of the Vail Ski Patrol, is a skilled climber and skier.

"I’m feeling great about his team," Rusch said. "We’ve made a big commitment to this race and will be training together this summer. We know the competition in Switzerland will be super-tight, so we’re going to make sure we’re as ready as we can possibly be."

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.