The Skyline Newspaper

Geology major and adventure racer Thomas Shiller. Photo by MaryAshley P. Gredell

Shiller Thrives on Adventure... Racing

By MaryAshley P. Gredell
Skyline Reporter

Thomas Shiller has an adventurous soul.

The 21 year old geology major spent months training for two and a half hours of trail running, mountain biking, and two completely surprise challenges.  Those two and a half hours were the time it took him and his teammate to complete the Eco Lone Star Adventure Race, his first (but not last) foray into the world of competitive adventure racing.

“I started training four or five months in advance, one to two hours of running, biking, or lifting weights in the morning. I did that pretty much every day, getting up at five, and making it to the gym by six,” said Shiller. “I ran Sul Ross hill a lot to prepare for the trail running event. It’s a great trail system for anybody, right behind the school, and I used it a lot to get ready for our race.”

After subjecting himself to more than the average athlete’s training regimen, Shiller was off to Marble Falls, Texas on a very chilly March 8 of this year. Key to any adventure race is trail running and mountain biking, two events which Shiller had specifically trained for.

“The run was 2.8 miles, and the biking was 13. It took us two and a half hours to compete,” said Shiller, talking about himself and his best friend, whom he refers to only as Harry, from Shiller’s hometown of Corpus Christi.  The two friends were inspired to pursue adventure racing years ago with the TV show “Eco Challenge.” The pair made up a two-man team, but co-ed and women’s teams also compete in the same race.

As with any risky competition, the Eco Lone Star race wasn’t without troubles on the trail. “We came in second place in the trail running, and overall, we placed eighth out of fifteen thanks to a lot of technical problems with my mountain bike. It wasn’t shifting quickly enough, the seat wasn’t very tight, among other things,” said Shiller. “We ended up chopping off the foot clips halfway through the race.”

Besides the biking and the running, adventure races often feature “mystery events,” which come as a complete surprise to competitors. For Shiller’s event, he and his teammate were required to drop their bikes in the middle of the bike race and scale a hill to retrieve a cork to present to the judges at the end in order to pass the test. At the very end of the race, with exhaustion levels running high, competitors were also challenged to an obstacle course made out of giant cable spools. Shiller’s team made it, and with enough enthusiasm to already start planning for more races this summer.

To the junior Sul Ross student, adventure and excitement won’t end at his new sport of racing.  His dream job also takes him into the proverbial wild side, this time with paleontology.

“I’m studying vertebrate paleontology; dinosaurs, that is. It’s an interesting career because you’re traveling around the world and going to remote places, so it really does connect in a way to adventure racing,” said Shiller.

Similarly daring people can look into the sport of adventure racing by visiting www.usara.com, the U.S. Adventure Racing Association. The site lists a calendar of events which features many upcoming Texas races.

“There’s a lot of people who just mountain bike, or just trail run. When you can do all of it and you have these mysteries that you don’t know what to expect, it’s unique,” said Shiller, adding, with a grin: “Plus, it’s just cool to say you ran an adventure race.”

The Forgotten River

By Mark Glover
SRSU Alumnus

Twenty-five miles west of a snow-covered Chinati Peak, where the pavement ends for Highway 170, near Candaleria, the writer watched a buzzard last week circle in the sky. Its extended black wings with white trailing edges soared sentiently against a mountainous back drop – the Cerros Colorados on the Mexican side of a trickling Rio Grande.

Known as the Forgotten River in this segment of its journey to the Gulf of Mexico, the slim waters of the Rio Grande slither past one of three gauging stations set up between Fort Quitman and Presidio, a one hundred and eighty six mile stretch that showed signs of a bigger flow in its past. The breadth of the river at the Candalaria Gauge is no more than ten feet but the valley width here is probably a thousand. Its been a dry winter, but more importantly, El Paso and Juarez, with a combined population in excess of two million humans, lies 250 miles up stream and suck up nearly every precious molecule of water released from the stingy Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico.

“The Rio Grande ends in El Paso,” Mike Hill, Regional Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife, said.

The Rio Grande starts in Colorado, absorbing the spring run-off of melting snow in the Rockies. It meanders through New Mexico where in 1916 the Elephant Butte Dam was built five miles east of Truth or Consequences to provide hydro-electric energy and irrigation water. Under a recently revised agreement, the Elephant Butte Reservoir is required to release more water to Texas. But even under this new agreement, this stretch of river is likely to remain forgotten and more ditch than river.

“It doesn’t start again until the Rio Conchos flows into it at Ojinaga,” Hill said.

The buzzard wings started to flap again. It seeks food and the next set of air currents to ride. It floats high above the river valley, steely eyed, combing the desert geography for the dead.

The Army Corp of Engineers reports that 101 arroyos feed the Forgotten River reach. Annual rainfall is said to be 14 inches, but the closet weather station is in El Paso. The evaporation rate is high, especially in the summer where temperatures bake over a hundred degrees for weeks straight and humidity, dried by west winds, can be as little a five per cent in the afternoons.

Salt cedars also known as tamarix cover the rocky valley in a swath of yellow-green. The tree, imported from Asia in the 19th century as an ornamental plant and spread nationwide by government programs to contain stream erosion, now devastates the native cottonwood and desert willow trees along the Forgotten River. It’s a thirsty tree too, guzzling water at perhaps a rate five times that of a native.

“The tamarix changes the PH of the soil,” Hill said. “It changes the ecosystem. The only way out may be fire or the beetle.”

The salt cedar has no natural predators in the area, and so its growth goes unchecked. But the crete beetle from Khazakstan has shown promising signs that it can slow the growth of the intrusive tree. Thousands of these beetles were released into the Forgotten River reach last year.

“It’ll take three years to get hard results on the beetle’s progress,” Hill said.

More buzzards join the scavenging circle high above. They swoop and pull up, riding waves of air like a giant roller coaster in the sky.

Farmers on both sides of the river divert water to irrigate crops. Thirsty pecan groves  and alfalfa hug the river on the USA side and on the Mexican side, where labor is cheaper, truck crops such as cantaloupe and onions grow.

“The river is completely plumbed,” Hill said. “It’s one sick puppy.”

One of the goals of Texas Parks and Wildlife in the Big Bend is to restore the state lands and watersheds to their pre-European form, “1491” as some refer to this condition. Bringing back the Rio Grande may be their biggest challenge.

Last week’s snow has melted from Chinati Peak. A little water has flowed down the San Antonio Valley and into the Forgotten River. Nature may be the only one who remembers.