Whitehorse Daily Star

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Photo by Marissa Tiel

HAKUNA MATATA – Marcus Savage, left, and Peter Tyrrell started the Yukon 1000 today. The Kenyan duo is paddling to raise money and awareness for Running for Rangers, a Kenyan charity that supports rangers fighting poaching in the East African nation.

Kenyan duo paddling for animal conservation

They’ve faced crocodiles, territorial hippos, cheeky monkeys, laughing hyenas and even a curious elephant,

By Marissa Tiel on July 18, 2016

They’ve faced crocodiles, territorial hippos, cheeky monkeys, laughing hyenas and even a curious elephant, but the thing that Kenyan paddlers Marcus Savage and Peter Tyrrell are most scared of?

Bears.

More specifically, bears making off with their food.

“It’s the only thing we’re scared about this whole trip. It’s not the injury,” says Savage. “We’re scared of bears eating our food and we’ve talked about it so much now that hopefully it doesn’t happen.”

Over warm drinks the morning before the race, Tyrrell knocks on the wood table.

The team has carefully calculated the equation of porridge, boiled eggs, oranges, energy bars, salami, cheese, dehydrated dinners with rice and tea that that will keep them fuelled on the 1,600-kilometre journey down the Yukon River as they tackle the Yukon 1000.

Savage estimates they’ll need about 4,000 calories a day, but neither of the men have eaten that much before.

“I don’t know if our bodies can physically take that much, so I think we’ve got to accept the fact that we’re going to lose weight and we can recoup when we get off.”

The race, which began in 2009 as a longer reaction to the Yukon River Quest has only run four times before.

Savage and Tyrell estimate that it’ll take them about 10 days to complete the feat.

The cause they’re paddling for is enough to keep them going.

Running for Rangers was started about five years ago and supports the rangers in Africa who patrol the wilderness to stop poaching.

“In the last 10 years the price of ivory and the rhino horn has skyrocketed because of the demand from the Far East,” says Tyrrell, 24, who also works in conservation research. “It really is putting a lot of pressure on people to protect wildlife.”

Tyrrell, who grew up in Kenya says that all of his free time growing up was centred around wildlife and spending time outdoors.

“You could camp along the river or go for a drive and see these magnificent creatures,” he says. “I don’t want to see that going.”

Savage says that wildlife doesn’t really get a shot to stick up to the humans destroying their homes and killing them.

“I love wildlife,” the 32-year-old says. “ I like to be in small groups and to be out in the bush, so that’s where I like to be. That’s what I want to see preserved.”

People they knew from Kenya had run a marathon in the desert and raised money for the charity.

Savage says he had always wanted to do an adventure race, but had never seen himself actually doing it.

“It wasn’t for me, it was for other people,” he says. “So when I saw that people I knew and the same age as me actually went ahead and did something ridiculous like running through a desert for six or seven days, I thought ‘well why can’t I do that? Of course I can.’”

Both Tyrrell and Savage are quick to quip that they would never run that far.

“We don’t run,” Savage deadpans.

But kayaking, no problem.

Friends of theirs had also won theYukon 1000 race in 2014.

“No pressure,” says Tyrrell.

So far they’ve raised about $3,000 for their cause, which they’ve branded Kayaking for Conservation.

Although the money all goes to Running for Rangers, Tyrrell says they didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

The charity might soon rebrand anyways. This year a number of athletes are undertaking challenges for it. Ultra marathons in the Amazon and Iceland, riding horses across Mongolia and kayaking from Whitehorse to Alaska.

Savage and Tyrrell met on the river in Kenya. Both are talented whitewater kayakers, though neither of them has attempted a race this long – or flat – before.

Tyrrell has been training on a sliver of water, about a 100-metre loop, and has done a lot of cross-training. Savage has been cross-training as well, although he has been in a tandem kayak a handful of times.

There’s one tandem kayak in Kenya, the pair says. But its owner won’t lend it out to them, if the boat is going out, the owner says, he must be one of the paddlers on the mission.

The first time Savage and Tyrrell were in a tandem kayak together was at Chadburn Lake on Saturday with some of the other racers. They made sure they could roll the boat and then paddled around making sure the outfitting was good and the boat was in working order.

Savage is in the front, while Tyrrell steers in the back.

“I just told him, ‘do you mind if I’m in the front, I don’t want to look at the back of your head the whole time?’ I thought I’d give him that pleasure,” says Savage.

“His balding head. I’ll have to wear my sunglasses to keep the reflection,” says Tyrell.

For the duo who is in the Yukon for the first time, they also enjoyed the scenery.

“You see it in all the magazines and stuff; the pristine lakes with the pine trees right up to the shore and then the lake in the background,” says Savage. “We’ve only ever seen them in magazines and we’re like yeah, ‘that can’t be real.’

“It’s stunning, absolutely stunning.”

Savage and Tyrrell are torn between wanting to post a competitive time and enjoying the scenery. They’re not sure when they might make it back again.

“We’ve been told we’re not going to break any records,” says Tyrrell. “We think it’s reflective of the water level rather than reflective of our ability.”

“We’ve come to conclusion that we’re not trying to necessarily win the race,” says Savage. “We want to go out there and post a really good time.”

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