The race is named after a Bible story, so maybe it’s no surprise that Cain’s Quest subjected snowmobile enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies Rob Gardner and Rich Knipping to conditions straight out of an Old Testament plague.

Gardner and Knipping raced in torrential rain, pushed through four feet of new snow and braved temperatures of minus-40 while protective gear and clothing froze like super-glue to their defenseless skin.

“And all that was before the first checkpoint,” Knipping said.

Most of us consumed more than 5,000 calories and enjoyed two full nights of sleep during the time the two men rode their machines, non-stop, to complete either of their first two segments in a brutal, 1,500-mile journey through the hinterlands.

Never mind the two, 24-hour drives over choppy asphalt and unforgiving gravel roads just to get there and back.

More than $50,000 was spent, only to win back $32,000 and a two-foot cauldron that resembles a bowling trophy.

Oh, but win, they did.

Gardner, 38, of Norridgewock, and Knipping, 34, of Monmouth, became only the second American team — and the second in a row from Maine — to tame what is billed as Canada’s longest snowmobile endurance race.

After six days of bumps, bruises, injuries, hunger, thirst, changes in strategy and sleep deprivation, Team Maine Racing defeated a Labrador City-based challenger by two minutes shortly before sunset March 18.

They followed in the footsteps of Monmouth’s Tim Lessard and Jackman’s Eric Hall, who took top honors two years ago.

“It takes a lot of skill and a lot of crazy,” Gardner said. “We’re nuts to be doing this. We’re paying to do this.”

Team Maine Racing had been knocking on the door since catching the Cain’s Quest bug in 2007.

Knipping and Gardner finished fifth that year, fourth the next and second in 2009.

“We had it in ’09. Fatigue got me on the last day,” lamented Gardner. “I messed up the only hard climb in the route to the finish line. We got stuck there for 32 minutes and lost the race by six minutes.”

Cain’s Quest was cancelled in 2010 due to unseasonably warm weather, but the unexpected break didn’t help with preparation.

The team expanded to include a second duo, Mike Perrino of Freeport and Peter Ouellette of Portland. They finished sixth, rounding out a cluster of three Maine-based operations in the top six. That strength in numbers demanded more pre-race planning.

Race organizers also made a dramatic last-minute rules change, requiring each of the snowmobiles to drag a sleigh.

“I’d never even built my sleigh until Thursday, and we were racing Saturday,” Gardner said. “There was no way this was going to come together for us. Literally I was hoping just to finish.”

Heavy rain fell for the first 50 miles of the course. Then with all the immediacy of a light switch, it turned to blizzard conditions, transforming the terrain into soup and reducing visibility to a few feet.

Once the snow stopped, the wind lingered and the temperature plummeted.

“You’re still soaking wet from the starting line. You’re pushing three and four feet of snow day and night. The water is coming up from under the snow and you’re stuck like quicksand.,” Gardner said. “You’re wet to your knees. It wasn’t one thing, it was everything.”

Both riders are required to reach the first checkpoint before a required 18-hour layover.

Time elapsed between the starting line and Gardner and Knipping’s first dose of shut eye: More than 34 hours.

“We slept for about nine hours and got a couple of hot meals in us,” Knipping said. “Then it was off to Churchill Falls.”

That transition took 57 hours, a stretch so ridiculously grueling that Gardner and Knipping collaborated with six other teams to create their own checkpoint in the great outdoors.

“You start hallucinating and seeing (stuff). Finally I’m like, ‘Guys, we just can’t keep going.’ We finally pulled over at about 1:30 in the morning and rested a few hours,” Knipping said. “We built a fire and ate some granola bars. We didn’t sleep, but at least we were off the sleds for a while.”

In addition to those adrenaline crashes, two literal scrapes nearly knocked Gardner from contention late in the race.

He was the first of three riders to wreck at the same spot on the course. The impact delayed the team’s progress by more than 30 minutes, stripping the body panels from his snowmobile and dislodging the helmet from his head.

“We almost took ourselves out of the race racing each other, which was stupid. We’d been working together for a day,” Gardner said. “Rich did a radio interview and he told them that he came up on the scene, saw my helmet lying in the middle of the trail and he just hoped my head wasn’t still in it.”

Later, less than two hours from the finish, Gardner tried to avoid crashing into his teammate on an upgrade when the sudden twist and stop dislocated his knee.

Knipping’s day job came into play at that point. He’s a chiropractor.

“He yanked on it and got it back in. He patched me up and put me together a couple times,” Gardner said. “We were working with another team and we sent them along. They ended up eight or nine minutes ahead of us, and luckily we were able to gun them down. We got out on the good going where I didn’t have to be quite as mobile on the machine and we could have a little more top speed. It was only by luck.”

Riders are equipped with a trail map and a GPS.

Three support team members were permitted to shuttle fuel and parts only, never touching the sleds.

Back in Maine, Dana Blackstone ran race central, monitoring the race with a network of computers and cell phones from his kitchen.

It’s all contested on otherwise uncharted territory in Labrador and Newfoundland. The race received its name from a quote attributed to French explorer Jacques Cartier. He likened the uninhabitable land to “the land God gave to Cain,” a reference to the Biblical character’s punishment for murdering his brother Abel.

“This is by far the hardest Cain’s Quest they’ve ever had,” Gardner said. “I think they bit off more than they bargained for.”

Gardner, by his nature, can’t wait to return. Knipping, whom Gardner recruited as his teammate four years ago, may quit while he’s ahead.

“It seems like we don’t get to play around on the snowmobiles just for fun anymore,” Knipping said. “I love the race, but I don‘t have the passion for it that Rob does. He could talk about it all day, every day, all year long.”

Easy to understand how he’d never run out of stories.

koakes@sunjournal.com