The “Thunderbird” statue must have thought it was getting as famous as “Christo Redentor” in Rio de Janeiro or the Louvre’s “Winged Victory of Samothrace.”
A group of three pulled up to the Casper College mascot, posed for a photograph and dashed back to a vehicle. Three more groups repeated the scenario within 10 minutes.
These photo ops were part of the first Wyoming Natural Resources Conservation Center (NRCS) “Amazing Race.” The NRCS state office in Casper hosted the Aug. 9 event, modeled after the popular TV show and a similar event held in Buffalo, Wyo., for interns.
The race tested measuring and calculation skills, creativity and cooperation of eastern Wyoming employees during the agency’s east area training meeting.
“They have to rely on everyone’s expertise and they have to be very resourceful,” Brenda Ling said about members of the 18, three-person teams. The NRCS Wyoming public affairs specialist added that competitors would follow, in order, a list of stops with tasks to complete and break no laws on the way to the finish line.
Besides visiting local landmarks, tasks included measuring the cubic feet per second flow of the North Platte River with only a tape measure, to buying food for a food bank.
Wind whipped through a bridge over the North Platte River as teams determined the rate of water flow. A team of three Soil Conservation techs had some trouble with their data because wind helped along the blade of grass they tossed into the river to time its passage. But they eventually derived the correct answer, about 6,000 cubic feet per second, as storm clouds gathered.
Blane Christopherson, a Casper design engineer, checked to see that the teams correctly calculated the water runoff from a Casper Events Center parking lot based on a 25-year, 24-hour storm event, which in Casper amounts to about 2.6 inches of rainfall. Some of that rain began to fall, but the team carried on for all 15 stops. They didn’t know what kind of engineering equipment they’d find to measure elevation difference between a picnic area and Garden Creek at Nancy English Park. But the team found the necesarry tools and completed the task in minutes, including setting up and taking down the equipment.
Each team carried a packet of tasks with clues to find their stops and complete the challenges. Some directions came as coordinates they could find with a GPS system. Others were trickier. One stop simply gave a picture of the wooden oil derrick on Poplar and First streets.
No problem, for the team of three soil conservation technicians: Jo Ann Wade from Lusk, Adam Clark from Torrington and Allison George from Douglas. They spotted the structure after completing orders to take a photo of the youngest team member kissing a bronze horse sculpture at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center.
For perhaps the most challenging task, assistant state conservation engineer Lynn Cornia of Casper handed George a clinometer to determine the height of the oil derrick. After some calculations, the team came up with 80 feet, just four feet over Cornia’s estimation.
In a competition with only two participants from Casper — new residents at that — it became a game of wits and luck.
“Stop 10 is one of the two high schools in town, not Kelly Walsh. The school has a mascot, a mammal introduced by the Spanish conquistadores many years ago,” read one clue.
“Even though we know where some of these other sites are, we have to go in order, we can’t save time by not going from one side of town to the next,” Wade said. All teams made the same stops, but there were 14 different combinations so they couldn’t follow one another. NRCS employees assisted at stops if needed but also made sure contest rules were followed.
While George had to kiss a horse, the oldest members of the teams were spared no dignity either. At one point in the race, Wade smiled for the camera as she sat on a bronze sheep downtown.
In the final task, they picked up hamburgers and found the last spot, a barbecue on Casper Mountain. Just in time, the storm moved away to reveal warm evening sunshine.
Contact Elysia Conner at 266-0509 or by e-mail at elysia.conner@casperjournal.com.
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