The second event of the Sierra O-Fest was the Spooner Relay held on Sunday, July 30, 2000. This event was held on US Forest Service property west of Highway 28 from Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park at Spooner Lake.
There were two relays, a three person orange intermediate one and a four person advanced relay. The advanced relay had 3 categories, zero point, 4 point and 8 point. Points were determined by the participant's age and sex. Men between 21 and 34 received zero points, and there were increasing number of points if people were older or younger. Females received an additional point. The combined total of a team's points determined what category it was in.
Each leg of the advanced course consisted of two loops with a spectator control between the two loops. The first and third legs were two variations of the same leg, 3.5 km in length, with half of the teams going on variation A and the other half on variation C for the first leg, and then teams switching and doing the other variation for the third leg. The second leg was 4.9 km. in length, and the final leg was 6.65 km. There was a total of 26 teams with 100 participants.
The advanced race turned out to be very exciting. The BAOC Blue team had built up a 19-minute lead going into the final leg. Steve Gregg had led off and had the third fastest time on variation C, then Wyatt Riley had the second fastest time on the intermediate length leg, and Thorsten Graeve had the second fastest time on variation A for the third leg. Syd Reader took off for the final leg. Nineteen minutes later, the English JOC team started their final runner, Graeme Ackland (who had also run the first leg for his team) followed 21 seconds later by Eric Bone for the Cascade OC team. At the spectator control, Eric Bone was the first of the final leg runners to arrive, followed three and a half minutes later by Graeme, but no sight of Syd. Syd had made a 22-minute error on control number 8, and had run off the map.
Eric maintained his lead for much of the second loop, but Graeme was slowly catching up to him, perhaps partially because of his familiarity with the course from running the first leg which had a very similar final loop, but also because Eric had made a 1 and a half minute error on control 15. Graeme punched the final control 3 seconds before Eric, but as the two sprinted for the finish line, Eric was slowly gaining on Graeme, and the two crossed the line in a dead heat. Both of them did not realize at the time that they were racing for the win, but thought they were running for second place.
The final results were a tie for first place overall and the 4 point category between the Cascade team consisting of Don Atkinson, Bill Cusworth, Eileen Breseman, and Eric Bone and the JOC team of Graeme Ackland (1st and 4th legs), Peter Hedberg and Jane Ackland. Both teams took 193:28.
The BAOC Blue team came in first in the zero point category with a time of 201:58, and the Rocky Mountain team, with Sharon Crawford, Marie-Catherine Bruno, Robin Spriggs, and Mikell Platt came in first in the 8 point category with a time of 209:36. The FVO/Octavian Drooblers, made up of Mike Hampton, Chris Wood, and Doug Wood finished first in the intermediate relay with a time of 111:48.