12 Hour Rogaine

12 Hour Rogaine
Once again our competition day started out very wet. When we left Maryland headed to PA and the Rogaine it was raining hard. It wouldn’t get any dryer as the day wore on. The rain was still coming down as we arrived at the park where the Hash House (HH) was located. We set up our tent in the rain and got organized. There were three versions of the Rogaine, 6 hour, 12 hour and 24 hour. We were doing the 12 hour.
	We checked in at the Hash House and received our maps. We went back to the tent and started planning our route. The maps were regular 7.5 minutes so it was going to be a challenge to find the controls and all the trails that were in these woods.
We were all smiles as we looked at the map and made our decisions on how to go about getting the most points possible. We made the decision to head to the south where the higher points were. Our plan was to do fewer controls that were further apart, but worth many more points then the ones close to the Hash House.
	The starting time was 12:00 noon. There were a group of teens doing the six-hour version and they didn’t look prepared at all. The temperature had dipped into the 60s and the rain was making it feel pretty cool. The teens were not dressed to well for the event. A lot of them only had t-shirts on with no rain gear at all. They were shivering before we even started.
At the start, we all headed down the road with a bunch of other teams. Our plan was to cross the highway and head up a hill until we found a power line and then follow the crest of the hill to the first control worth 40 points. We found it no problem and at that time thought we had this think licked and were going to kick ass. As we started towards our second control, which was along the same ridge line, we came across a path that had the blaze of the Appalachian Trail (AT). Of course this was not on the map we had as this was one of the many relocations of the trail. As we followed the trail, the ridge to our left was an amazing site. There were these huge rock formations that looked like a giant’s play blocks, stacked haphazardly along the ridge. Our plan was to continue following the ridge to the next control, but that plan was out now.
	As we headed through the woods, we started seeing other teams. We didn’t want to follow anyone too closely, but the map wasn’t telling us as much as we liked. We ended up missing our next control. We must have passed it without realizing it. This would come back to haunt us later.
We found the next control by keeping an eye on another very experienced team and purposely split from them after that to try to make our own progress. We headed to our next control that appeared to be in a small grove of woods, but couldn’t find it either. We came out to a grass road and thought we had missed the control and didn’t want to waste more time searching. We decided to head towards our next control and found out later that we had been very close to the control as it was just a little further down that grass road. We hit the next few controls rather well. They were rather far apart with lots of road travel, but we were now racking up the points.
As you can see from the pictures, it was still rather wet all about. Our clothes were soaked and our continued movement was all that kept us warm in the cool mountains of PA. And keep moving is what we did. We were also enjoying ourselves immensely and we were taking the time to look at the beautiful views even though it was constantly raining.
	As we planned our route to the next control, we saw that there was a power line that would cut out a lot of road travel, but it was rather up and down and you never know how passable a power line stretch will be. We have been on some that were nothing but thorn bushes, making it much slower going than a road or even a wooded area. The power line looked rather daunting when we were at the one end and could see how far we needed to go to our next control. As you can see, the grass was not too long and there was even a path most of the way. We continued to get wet from all sides, but we were able to travel rather fast.
As we were going along, we saw some dragonflies that were hunkered down in the grass waiting for some dryer weather. We just had to take the time to get a picture of them as they sat there and posed for us.
	Throughout the day we would see teams again and again as we crossed paths and we found ourselves with a team of three guys who were doing the 24 hour version. We talked a bit as we headed to the top of a hill where a control was waiting for us. At that point we had been out for quite a few hours and were planning to start heading back towards the Hash House and the thought of some hot food was starting to feel real inviting. We went off on our own and found the AT again and started to head back towards the HH.
	We were getting pretty tired by then and after lots of wet trail walking we came to a road that would lead us back to the HH. We had about 7 or 8 miles to go to get back to some hot food, so we just set our feet on the road and started walking. Running at this point was pretty much out of the question, but we would trot for a bit every once in a while. That ended up being a very long road. Our feet were starting to get pretty sore by then and Lisa discovered that she had lost her Steelers hat somewhere back on the trail.
We got back to the Hash House as the light was draining out of the day, got some nice hot grub, changed clothes and rubbed our aching feet. Our plan was to go out after dark to try and find a couple of the close controls. We went out half heartedly and walked around some. After an hour or so, we decided that we had enough points and headed back to the HH to wait for the end of our time. We ended up coming in second place in the 12-hour version. We received little Orienteering control replicas made of stained glass. We were quite proud of our accomplishment and the next morning after a great nights rest in our damp tent, we beamed with delight as we held up our awards for each other.