National Treasure 3: Chase of Maginficent Distances

(Credit: Daniel Pineda, Special to Metromix)

“Let’s get this game on the road! Ready to go? I’m not hearing you!” It’s not yet 10:30 on a Saturday morning, but someone shouts the words, “Ready…set…go!” and the race is on.

No, this is not part of the Olympic Games. It’s the start of the Chase of Magnificent Distances, a two-day Ravenchase “adventure” in Washington, D.C. on August 9th and 10th. Ravenchase conducts scavenger hunts all over the United States and Europe and is the brainchild of Joshua Czarda, who started designing fun, complex courses for his family as a means of escapism when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. This particular outing in our nation’s capitol gruelingly tested eight teams both physically and mentally (despite being considered a beginner-to-intermediate course).

“It is always a challenge to gauge at how people are going to handle this as far as their thought process,” said Chris Dove, a regional director who helped create the D.C. course. “We don’t like tricking people; we like to challenge them.”

And challenging it is; try to wrap your head around these basic rules: Each team’s objective is to first solve three color-coded puzzles. Once that’s done, they get to open a black envelope with four more clues to solve, each of which leads the team to four locations. At each new spot is another color-coded chain. When a team has all four chains, the members need to put them together to uncover the final destination. If you get particularly stumped on a clue, you can call Dove for a hint, but there’s a severe 25 minute penalty.

The Chase of Maginificent Distances (which takes its name from a Charles Dickens quote) started Saturday morning in Banneker Circle in S.W. Washington. But even the teams didn’t know that; players were merely given a clue that revealed the start time and location of the scavenger hunt. From there, the hunt took them all over the D.C. area, encountering along the way ciphers, anagrams, and even actors ready to challenge them. Although clues led to places like the National Art Gallery, Dumbarton House, and the African American Civil War Memorial, most of the places involved were not typical tourist spots. One chain link that the teams had to find was located in Mount Zion’s Cemetery, specifically by the tombstone of one “J. Lynch.”

“Everybody wants to see the mall and with the museums there you can’t resist,” said Dove, “But I love using the art museums because they are always changing, adding, moving things around, and bringing things out of the collections. But beyond that we want to get out and see the rest of D.C.”

For the rigorous seven hour course on Saturday, Metromix tagged along with the veteran team “Urban Pirates.” (Runner up for best team name: “Happy Fairy Mushroom Princess.”) Each of the three members had a different role to fulfill; navigator; code breaker, and spotter. Their initial strategy was to figure out clues other teams wouldn’t tackle right away, in a bid to keep their enemies from following them. Unfortunately as the day progressed, the Pirates finished all the clues, but due to navigational problems could not find the last chain link needed to figure out the final destination. Thankfully, the last spot was located at Chinatown’s RFD Washington and everyone who participated got a free beer.

Pirates team captain Kristine Jenner was disappointed, but still had a good time. “My husband and I actually went to the first Ravenchase in Richmond, VA. We did terrible, but we had a lot of fun because it was like living in an alternative reality for a day. We got off the couch, got outside, and saw the city we lived in. So that was really the fun part for us; it wasn’t about winning or losing it, it was about going out and having fun.”

The majority of the teams that participated came from across the country, but Steve Hunter who represented the “Fellowship of the Van” is a D.C. local and led his team to overall victory on the two-day scavenger hunt. Given the difficult game play, you’d expect the final prizes to be amazing, but amazingly enough the “treasure” was modest. The first place team won a spray painted monkey, while second and third place won random memorabilia. Obviously, bragging rights were the real prize.

There is no date set at this point for the next Ravenchase Adventure in D.C., but there is expected to be at least one more this year. Stay tuned to Metromix for the latest treasure hunting news!