DVOA French Creek Mini-Rogaine

June 21^st, 2003

Ok, now for the Rogaine. A Rogaine is an orienteering event that lasts several hours (The real ones last 24 hrs) where you go out with your maps and compass as a team of 2 to 5 people and hit as many controls (little flags hidden in the forest) as you can to get points.

This was called a mini-rogaine. It was only slated to last 8 hours.

Lisa and I thought we would try this one out to get some practice with navigating through the woods with map and compass.

The day before it rained non stop. One of the roads on the way to Age's house was under water at one point.

The morning dawned grey and misty. We headed out around 7:30 and checked into the soggy camp site/Hash House/Start/Finish area. Parking our van in a nice muddy place that would take 4 strong guys to push out after the race.

We got our maps and had 40 minutes to figure out a route and plot it on the map. We made the rookie mistake of just picking one control after another that was close and didn't realize that they were worth different amounts of points.

The woods were wet, we had to cross a few creeks, all of which were running way higher than usual. Some of the paths were actually creeks with lots of water running down them.

We had a real fun part when we came on a creek where the banks were real steep. It took us awhile to find a place to cross. We lost a bit of time on that one.

But we made our way through the woods finding the controls and having a good time.

I had a scary instant when we were crossing a hugh bolder field and a rock shifted and I slowly lost my balance and fell with a splat and thump on the rocks. I was a mess for a bit.

After about 5 hours we started heading back towards the hash house and finished in 6 hours and 50 minutes. We got a score of 660, which is good for a beginner, but no where near the amount of the winners. We came in 5th of 8 in the COED division.

It was a good time.