Karn't Breakout Rogaine - maharetr & prk

[samvara]

maharetr and I packed most of our backpacks before we picked up prk and headed for the event. We arrived with 1.5 hours to plan our route and planned a fantastically ambitious one (aim high!) that we revised down hastily once we worked out how fast we really could travel. The bush was quite thick in places. We did 13.9km in 6 hours (3pm to 9pm) and maharetr's new boots did her proud. Our day navigating was top notch, we hit everything we aimed for with very little faffing about (5 controls in 2.5 hours). Night nav not so much, we drifted East and overshot our first night control and then had to scramble to get back in time so we abandoned our plans and grabbed one more control on the road back because it was there.

Had a bit of a smug moment just after control 104 when we met people approaching it from the East who had to walk *up* the 130m drop that we got to scramble down. I really enjoyed not walking up that hill.

Weather was cool for March and overcast but never quite rained which was great for the day part and a bit dark for the night part. Back at Admin it turned out there was a fair chunk of the UWA OutDoor Club resting up after their first event - I'd met them while paddling so we hung about and compared notes.

All in all, happy to be back and looking forward to doing other events this year.

Comments

[sara]

Is this a thing like orienteering?

(Night orienteering! Wow, that sounds like fun. Okay, to me, probably not to most of the people I know.)

[samvara]

It's umh, long distance, cross country endurance orienteering done in teams of 2-5.

No, no it's AWESOME! I've been out for a couple of years but am going to try and make most of the 2010 events.

[sara]

Oh, I would be good at that. That sounds like a lot of fun.

I'd probably not be quite as good at it on a whole different continent as I would in my dear old dank woods, though. *grin*

[samvara]

I got introduced 15 years ago and have competed erratically ever since.

*g* Terrain varies so much! A friend, R. was talking about hiking in the UK and having to get used to the idea that watercourses have 'water' in them - ours are just ditches covered in scrub for most of the year - we assume they can be crossed ;p

[sara]

Bwah -- yeah, I was doing an archaeological pedestrian survey week before last and my notes say things like, "Soils visibility in ditch not bad for W. Valley in March, which is to say <10%."

[samvara]

Hee! I bet you'd *love* this as a sport.

[sara]

Although you'd have to call it something else in the U.S., because here "rogaine" is that stuff fellows put in their hair to keep it from falling out as they get older.

[samvara]

Heh, I didn't hear about the hair thingie until I'd been a Rogainer for a while - it still sounds so wrong!