PANORA, Iowa, Feb. 19, 2012 – The fifth annual membership banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association held here Saturday night was a huge success, bringing in a total of $21,179 to support marketing and promotion of the popular recreational trail in west central Iowa.  And nearly 240 people packed the Lake Panorama National Resort and Conference Center to a riveting and inspiring presentation on global adventure by Iowa native Charlie Wittmack.

In 2010 and 2011, Wittmack, who is now 34, completed the incredible “World Triathlon” he designed for himself.  He swam the Thames River through England and continued right on across the English Channel.  Then he rode a bicycle 7,700 miles from France to India, and followed that up by running through Nepal.  And finally, in early May last spring, he climbed 29,035-foot Mount Everest.  It was the second time he’d climbed Everest, the first having been in 2003.

Delivering his 50-minute speech while using eye-popping videos and photographs, Wittmack said he is often asked how someone who is from the flat land of Iowa would decide to undertake such a challenge — especially the mountain-climbing part of it. 

“One thing I’m going to tell you tonight is about how Iowa is a perfect place for someone like me to start off,” he said.  He said all the varied opportunities he had here in his boyhood expanded his horizons. “Actually, I was 14 years old when I came up with the idea for the World Triathlon,” he said. “I was young enough to dream big, but smart enough not to tell anybody about it.”
 

Adventurer, Mount Everest climber and bicyclist Charlie Wittmack, left, is shown here at the fifth annual membership banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, where he was guest speaker on Saturday, Feb. 18. He is shown here before his presentation with some old cycling friends Tom Schoelerman, of West Des Moines, and Phil and Cyrena Buschmann, of Sigourney.

But he began training and planning, even at that young age for the fantastic adventures he’s been having ever since.  “Expeditions change our lives,” he said.  He recounted how, at 17 in 1995, he became the mechanic for 308 cyclists who pedaled across America on the “Iowa 150 Bike Ride: A Sesquicentennial Expedition,” helping promote the then-upcoming celebration of 150 years of statehood.  Several of the cyclists who were with him on that event were in attendance Saturday night.

Wittmack told how he nearly died on Mount Everest in 2003, when the weather while he was climbing “was the worst ever in recorded history on the mountain.”  During his recent World Triathlon, his climb of Mount Everest was actually “a breeze” in perfect weather conditions, he noted.  But he had two other near-death experiences before he got to Nepal.  The first was when he was hit by a car the day after he completed a 2,300-mile bicycle ride across the desert in Kzakistan.  The other was in Kyrgyzstan, where after riding his bike more than 120 miles per day for three consecutive days, climbing more than 10,000 feet of mountains to a pass at 18,000 feet, he fell off his bike and blacked out suffering from pulmonary and cerebral edema.  The combination of physical effort at such an altitude made his brain swell dangerously, and his Russian support team probably saved him by getting him off the road and into a room where he could sleep and begin to recover.

He healed up enough to return to Iowa in December, 2011, and underwent a total physical and psychological work-up at Des Moines University. “I came home thinking my body was broken and I was probably done for finishing the World Tri,” Wittmack said. “The big surprise was that, after all the extreme exercise I’d done, I was actually in better physical shape than ever.”  He said after a few weeks of rest, “my wife Catie kicked me out the door and sent me back to Nepal to complete my mission,” he said.

He said it was exhilarating when he realized during his Everest training, the weather was undergoing a very rare moderation.  There came a moment, he said, when it seemed so perfect that he said to himself, “You know what, I’m going to go for this!”  He did and he reached the summit.  He “sat in the snow and reflected on it all,” he said.  Then he set-up and started a video camera and did a hilarious taping of himself solving a Rubik’s Cube puzzle, which he carried in his mountaineering suit, right there on the summit of Everest.  After 45 minutes up there, celebrating alone, he started his quick descent.

Wittmack, an attorney, is now executive director and doing advocacy for “Above and Beyond Cancer,” a non-profit organization in Des Moines founded by oncologist Dr. Richard Deming to encourage cancer patients to live-out their dreams, no matter their health challenges.  Deming took a group of cancer survivors to the Everest Base Camp last spring, to meet Wittmack there.  And Deming and Wittmack in January led another group of cancer survivors on a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in eastern Africa.

RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger said the full-measure of the success of this year’s banquet became clear on Sunday when she totaled the receipts.  She noted that besides income from live and silent auctions held Saturday night, the association benefitted from $4,740 in cash donations received from businesses, organizations and individuals in the weeks before the banquet.  That figure includes the sponsorship of Wittmack’s presentation by WDM Farms, LLC, of Panora, which made its donation “in honor of Timber Creek Therapies,” a program for people with special physical challenges that operates between Panora and Guthrie Center.

Offenburger said she expects that, with the $21,179 figure for total income, “our estimated expenses will probably bring the net proceeds down to about $17,000..”  All these figures are records for the association’s big annual event.

In her remarks to the crowd Saturday night, she said that 2012 “will be a banner year for the trail,” with completion planned on the new 33-mile “North Loop,” which will bring total mileage to 89.

“But we have more challenges ahead, too,” Offenburger continued.  “It has become clear that we are being challenged by funding, as far as maintaining or increasing levels of government support for trail maintenance and enhancements. In two of the three counties that own and operate the Raccoon River Valley Trail, the budgets of our conservation boards have been reduced substantially. In Dallas County by 30 percent — and this is the county that will be operating and maintaining the majority of the new loop.  This puts the RRVT Association, and all of our members, and all of you in this room tonight, in a challenging position.  We need to focus on increasing our advocacy for trail support within our counties.  We need to be vocal with our county supervisors, city councils and other officials.  We need to start pushing back (when funding is threatened).  Each of these three counties has a valuable asset in the trail, a piece of economic development infrastructure that is probably worth in excess of $20 million.  It needs to be maintained and enhanced this year – and in all years to come.”

You can learn more about the banquet in the photographs and captions just below here.  Photos are by Chuck Offenburger, of Cooper, and Randy Jensen, of Lake Panorama and West Des Moines.

Karen Sievers, right, a board member of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, is shown here supervising the check-in table at the association’s banquet. Nearly 240 people attended, packing the Lake Panorama National Resort and Conference Center banquet room.

Here’s what the table settings looked like for the banquet.

RRVT Association board members Jon Doll (left) and Jim Miller are shown here selling a raffle ticket to Becky Hoener, of Waukee, at the banquet. They sold 80 squares for $20 each, with three winners – one for a bicycle donated by Hiawatha Bicycle Company, of Perry; another for a $300 gift card at Scheels sporting goods in West Des Moines, and another for a $200 gift card at Scheels. The raffle was a sell-out.

Two cycling pals from Jefferson who were attending the RRVT Association banquet were Steve Haupert, left, and Jerry Peckumn.

Des Moines-area friends at the RRVT Association banquet included Kent and Lou Ann Sandburg (left) and Karen and Wes Ritchie.

Charlie Wittmack is shown here during a chat with Cindy Jensen, left, a member of the board of the RRVT Association, and her friend Gigi Nelson of Alta.

When it came time for dinner, our regular auctioneer had not yet arrived at the RRVT Association banquet, and we wanted to auction off the right to be the first table to go through the food line. So KCCI-TV news anchor Kevin Cooney, a trail user who is a member of the association and a former speaker at the banquet, volunteered to do the auctioneering, and he sold the first-in-line spot for $100 to Mark Vukovich and Char Vukovich, of Panora, and their tablemates. Mark Vukovich is on the board of the RRVT Association. With Cooney are two other RRVT Association board members Jon Doll and Jim Miller.

Chef Mike Harris, of the Lake Panorama National Resort and Conference Center, is shown here at the serving line for the banquet meal, which featured prime rib, chicken and all the trimmings.

One of the really fun events during the RRVT Association banquet is the “Heads or Tails Raffle,” which costs $5 to enter and had about 120 people playing. You choose to designate “heads” or “tails” by the way you place your hands on your body, then a coin is flipped. If you’re right, you continue on; if you’re wrong, you sit down. At this year’s banquet, the final three participants are shown here on the last flip of the coin. Carol Hillman, of Des Moines, picked “tails” while the two men picked “heads,” and she won. The winner splits the total take with the RRVT Association, and Hillman’s share was about $300. The man on the left is David Dickinson, of Peoria, Ill., and on the right is Ted Stephens, of Des Moines.

Carla Offenburger, president of the RRVT Association, is shown addressing the big crowd about how 2012 is going to be “a banner year but at the same time a challenging year” for all users of the RRVT. The new 33-mile “north loop” of the trail is to be completed this year, bringing total mileage to 89, but the budgets of the county conservation boards that own and operate the trail are being squeezed.

The RRVT Association contracted with Markey’s Rental & Staging for professional audio visual support for the banquet, to make sure we’d be able to have high-quality presentation of Charlie Wittmack’s photos and videos from his World Triathlon and Mount Everest adventures. Markey’s tech Craig Kaufman is shown here making sure the computers operated perfectly – and they did. Wittmack’s pictures were projected on two 8-foot-square screens, so all in the audience of nearly 240 could see them well.

Charlie Wittmack’s presentation was not only inspiring, it was a high-tech wonder. You can see here that as he spoke, he controlled the showing of photos and videos from the iPad he held in his hands.

Chad Daugherty, of Daugherty Auction Service based in Adel, is shown here crying the auction during the RRVT Association banquet. He not only made it fun, he also bought a couple items himself. Standing on the left is Mike Wallace, the Dallas County Conservation director and a member of the association’s board of directors.

Among fun items up for auction – either live or silent – was this attractive display of “Greene Beans and Bicycle Bling” from the Greene Bean Coffee Co., which does its own roasting in Jefferson.

Artist and cyclist Brian Duffy, of West Des Moines, a speaker at an earlier RRVT Association banquet, again donated an original work of art that features the trail. Duffy said he’s been intrigued how using vintage vehicles (like bicycles), trail users can go explore areas where no one has been for years (like abandoned railroad rights-of-way which have become the corridors for recreational trails). He also noted that, as always, he included a raccoon in his drawing for the RRVT Association, “but you have to look for it.” The piece was custom-framed for the banquet by the Ben Franklin Store’s “Frame Meister” in Perry.

Another fun item on the silent auction was the “Feasting Along the Trail” package, featuring gift certificates at a lot of the locally-owned restaurants located in RRVT towns.

The staff of the Guthrie County Conservation board makes these bird houses which have become popular with people who like to draw song birds to their yards – and they’re also located along the RRVT in that county. The birdhouses are always a popular auction item, too.

This beautiful foot-square original work in stained glass was donated for the auction by Jefferson artist Tammie Sobkowiak.

Another fun auction item, as in past years, was this iron skillet made at the Progressive Foundry in Perry and donated by the Vankirk family.

This beautiful, 9-foot kayak was auctioned and brought $550. That is RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger walking near it during the set-up for the banquet.

Another popular piece of art that was auctioned was this iron bell by Scott Deaver at “Art in Iron” studio in Dallas Center.

The single auction item that brought in the most money was a “Templeton Rye” package that featured two jugs of the famous booze from the town in Carroll County, a wood barrel used in the distilling, a flask, shot glasses, T-shirts and other accessories. It brought $600.

RRVT Association board member Jim Miller is shown here displaying the pork loins, donated by Tyson Fresh Meats of Perry, that were auctioned. Ten of the loins were sold for $40 apiece.

Two of the volunteers who make the RRVT Association auction go so well are Kathy and Alan Lenz, partners in Lenz Auction Clerking, based in Perry. Their experience and efficiency make the cash-out procedure go much easier. In the background, you can see RRVT Association president Carla Offenburger, who was using the new “Square” with her iPad to handle credit card payments.