Saddle up for Expedition Oregon – The High Desert Edition!

Expedition Oregon: America’s Toughest Race, returns for its 6th edition from May 19-24th and this time it’s the ‘High Desert Edition’, with a cowboy western twist to the race and challenges.

The event is a World Championship Qualifier for the Adventure Racing World Series, and is the nearest to this year championship in British Columbia. Its organised by Bend Racing, with Jason and Chelsey Magness as Race Directors, and has a reputation as one of the hardest and most technically demanding races in the Series. The race website is uncompromising, asking ‘Are you Tough Enough?’ and carrying the quote, “A year of hard core adventuring crammed into 5 days!”

The race is once again based out of the towns of Bend and Redmond, where teams are now arriving to prepare their bikes, climbing and paddling gear, clothing and footwear for extreme conditions and all of their food for 5 days of non-stop, unsupported racing.

The 250 mile course will be open for 108 hours, with the winners predicted to take 72 hours to cross the finish line. It’s broken down into 11 stages of trekking, packrafting, mountain biking, orienteering and climbing, with the start and finish in the same location and will begin with a fun prologue stage before teams move onto the first 15 mile mountain bike stage.

It’s a wide open contest this year with 8 mixed teams of 4 racing in the ARWS category and there will be a strong US/Canada rivalry. (There are also pairs and solo racer categories.) Last year’s winners Bend Racing/4 Hour Fuel are not returning to defend their title, however there is a 4 Hour Fuel team and 3 of the team members are local Bend racers. They’ll have the home town support and local knowledge of the surrounding area and conditions, but won’t know the race route, which is kept secret from all teams until the night before the start when teams receive their maps.

Team Expedition Canada has a world ranking of #21 and the added incentive of racing for the qualifier place at their home World Championship in September. Some of the team raced in Oregon in 2022 as Team Peak Pursuit and finished 3rd. Other Canadian contenders will be the Disco Inferno team who were 7th at last year’s race and Jackalopes, who were 11th in 2024.

The most experienced Expedition Oregon racer in the field will be Tim Kuenster of the True North Adventure Team, who returns for his 6th Expedition Oregon – he’s raced them all! On many of those occasions he was racing with the Norcal team, who are also back for a 5th time, this time racing as Team Norcal Lucky Contours.

The unknown quantity in the race will be THE MAGNIficent team led by Andy Magness, who is co-Race Director with his twin brother Jason of the race of that name in New Zealand. He also founded and mentored the FEAR Youth team who have taken the adventure racing world by storm with their world class performances in the past couple of years. This time he leads a different team of young racers from New Zealand. Two are 17 year old students, and one is twenty, and it’s a first international race experience for all of them. (Two completed MAGNIficent earlier this year so do have one expedition race behind them.)

Although teams don’t know the course they can expect some exceptional views of the Cascades and their iconic volcanoes, single track and gravel road mountain biking, mountaineering, rock climbing, challenging trekking, tumultuous (but packraftable) white water paddling and difficult orienteering through stunning scenery and challenging terrain.

The race starts at an undisclosed location on Monday May 19th and can be followed through live satellite tracking available on https://www.bendracing.com/expeditionoregon2025

There will be regular news, photos and videos @americastoughestrace, @bendracing and @arworldseries.