Discussion: Feedback

Did I enjoy the event? I am speaking mostly for myself and Eric (ebone) is of course free to chime in.

Yes. It was clear to me as an organizer, well in advance of the event, that the event's budget was incommensurate with producing a Euro-standard map. The map that we got slightly exceeded my expectations and was sufficient for us to navigate cleanly. Contours were very good, better than interpolated 1/3" DEM can yield in some areas.

We had almost no problems navigating, losing no more than 20 minutes total to errors and hitting the vast majority of our 50 CPs dead on. We took some suboptimal-in-hindsight routes, where we could see another team lucking out on finding an easy way, usually an unmapped road, as we were bashing through deadwood a few tens of meters parallel to them. But the bulk of our time loss was due to inadequate training and to physical problems, and unrelated to the map.

There were two major items that should have been done differently; one is the results. The other one is placing CPs in deadwood. It is this latter one that in my view created the most unfairness and was the greatest obstacle to our enjoyment of the event, and to placing higher.

It was clear to us during planning that the north had the most point density and required mandatory cleaning, with the possible exception of a small number of 20- and 30-pointers. The south had an a priori lower point density per kilometer. Even assuming that the south had 20% better passability, it did not make up for the lower density, the resulting per-time point density was still lower. So we set out on the north first—you can't un-score the points that are already yours, and decided to take what we can get in the south afterwards.

We didn't get much in the south, stumbling upon some areas that were indeed 20% and 30% faster than the average north, but also upon several that yielded at best 1/3 of the speed. And it is this great disparity in speed that presented the most unfortunate obstacle to fairness. Over the course of 24 hours, many things have a chance to even out; teams will hit these patches of slower-going more or less at random, regardless of skill. But this is true only up to a point, only if these patches are indeed up to perhaps 40% slower than par. When you get into factors-of-several slower, it is no longer true and prior planning becomes irrelevant; you could have chosen an area with, say, 300 points over 6 km, but a different area with 200 points over the same 6 km may be well preferred if the travel in the former is only doable at 1/2 of the speed through the latter, and there is no way to have anticipated this in advance.

The north was universally uniform (to within about 20%) as far as speed. It seemed that by excluding a number of areas of dense deadfall in the south, by adding 10%–20% more CPs in the south, and perhaps by expanding the area to compensate for the lost square kilometerage, the unfairness could have been completely avoided. This should have been done based on feedback from the vetting crew.

All other aspects of the event? Brilliant. Safety is first, and the organizers were fully prepared. No amount of whining can outweigh a lost soul. The medical tent was ready (I got to test it, having overheated at 9 am; we bailed from that point). There was a serious, perhaps life-threatening, injury and it was dealt with as well as things can happen in a Western civilization in early 21st century during peacetime. Note to cheapies: A lot of your entry fee went to safety-related items, and you don't want to be the one bleeding out on the course without help, the $50 you could have saved on your fee is not worth your life.

Food was fine, check-in and start were prompt, staff was cheerful, showers had hot water. There was plenty of water on the course, and enough staff in the woods to deal with emergencies.

In all, perhaps the best that could have happened. Maybe there will be enough food for thought for the cheapies, maybe not. The best outcome would be for the majority to open their eyes and realize that all great things require great funding, you can only get so far by expecting people to create maps putting in hundreds of hours for free. For the next WRC in North America, perhaps in 2019, expectations are set and hopefully the understanding that fees have to cover expectations will be there. If not, then there are always wonderful events in Europe, to which y'all can go and pay your €80 for the entry and spend oodles more on kerosene to the Exxons and Rosnefts instead of on the efforts of your friends.

The "Euro-standard" map idea is a strawman. A couple of evenings tracing clearly visible roads from photos would have yielded a significantly more accurate (and therefore more fair) map. Perfection isn't required, but a reasonable effort is to be expected. I don't know what the source of the trail network info was, but it had signficant errors in both directions (also showing trails that did not exist).

I agree that it was a poor decision to place controls in very thick areas. For the record, my team spent most of its time in the south, and we lost virtually no time to navigational errors

J-J, care to indicate the errors? Where we went, we found all of the roads that were shown on the map, and they were exactly where they were shown. There were many more roads, to trace which would have taken many evenings.

From what I learned talking to orgainzers of other rogaines whose crews did just that, and from making one map myself with some help, I'd say there were between two weeks and a month's worth of tracing evenings just to get the visible stuff in.

It is very easy to say that something should be easy and to discount the need for professional help or for financial investment in the task, but I haven't seen proof from other successful rogaine organizers showing that it is indeed easy. From all I know, it's not that easy.

For fictional trails, the obvious one that we encountered was in the valley in the triangle between 46, 56, and 81. There's barely an intermittent cow track to be found there, and certainly nothing worth mapping. I don't know how far the fiction extends, because we came down from 46 (finding a rather small trail that did not turn SW into the reentrant) and the trail was large when we picked it up halfway between 81 and 64. PG also noted some nonexistent trails in his log. Large unmapped roads that are clearly visible in the photos were too widespread to list.

A worthwhile question: would a 1960 USGS marked up with private property actually have been better?

Right, that's about the only segment on our path that was on the map that didn't exist. I'm still waiting for "errors in both directions".

I looked at that southern area on the 1956 map and I can't see how a sensible person would ever imagine that the trail network depicted on it is anywhere closer to reality than what was on the competition map. The network on the competition map is just lacking, with very few instances of what's mapped not being there (one that we found). The network on the 1956 map (as well as on the 2012 map, to a smaller extent) is mostly fiction.

same here - that section appeared to be an old roadbed, but the road was not like the other mapped roads. we commented to each other that mapping that segment as an indistinct trail rather than a road might have been more appropriate. some might argue that it made little difference, but since the location was a key element of travel between the three controls, it was significant. that said, we had no trouble keeping map contact and hitting the controls involved, at night.
we did not find any other mapped road sections that were not there.

Vlad, as you said the event was well organized, and you mentioned the positives of food water safety. What could have gone better is the deadfall ununiformity between south and north, the SI snafu and the quality of the map. And are you kidding me about the roads.... I know enough never to care about roads on a rogaine map, and was not bothered by whatever was thrown at us, but almost every road that ends abruptly actually continues through. Many roads that we randomly encountered I looked up on google maps too.

And to JJ yes, USGS map with updated private properties would have been superior in contour details 6m vs 10m as well as road network. I would like to ask some of the organizers how was the road network created, or what was the source of it.

This is what I created one afternoon to familiarize myself with the map, once the final embargo area was announced: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1020341450...

Edit: I guess facebook does not keep the original size of the pictures, so not much detail can be seen, and I don't care to hunt for public file sharing sites that I might have had access to, just to argue the obvious :)

By "errors in both directions", I meant that there were trails shown that did not exist (as noted above) as well as roads that exist that were not shown (which I think are widely acknowledged). We were expecting this, but it does make the situation pretty bingo when the alternative may be slogging through deadfall. I've identified one spot in a casual look at the photos where we might have saved a lot of time exiting a control (and maybe getting to it) if we had known that the nearby road existed.

All I read about map, and problems on it... that's impossible to understand.

Here in Finland, we have excellent maps, you will see that next august in 13th WRC2015 on Saariselkä.

Here is one link: (original link on National Land Survey of Finland)

http://urly.fi/geS


Jari Kaaja
event manager
WRC2015, Saariselkä, Finland

wrc2015.rogaining.fi

OK here we go. Feel free.