Race Evaluation
46th Blue Hills Traverse: Traverse
levitin
| 1. | Following Phil. | ||||||
| 2. | |||||||
| 3. | Lost Phil, navigated solo for parts. Straight to pipeline trail, right, then left on 2nd trail. Attacked when I noticed the rocky spur on my right. | ||||||
| 4. | SW to the 2nd trail (running N-S), to the road and across, then to the trail W of the line. I jumped off the trail at the index contour where the trail bent, and contoured across the hillside. | ||||||
| 5. | Mostly straight, but a bit R of the line until I hit the trail, which I took to almost the junction. I was with others at the control. | ||||||
| 6. | whom I followed on the short left from 5 to 6. | ||||||
| 7. | Solo. Trail N, then jumped off W to run adjacent to the stone wall until just past the T junction in the wall. Then I ran over the spur and down on a careful compass. | ||||||
| 8. | Crossed Rt 28 and got on the N-S trail west of the road. I descended from the trail when I saw a spur below me, but it was longer in the terrain than I thought it would be. I was closer to the SW curve of the swamp than I expected to be. As I neared the control, I heard movement in the swamp and pitied the poor orienteer trying to make progress through there. I wouldn't trust the vegetation boundary there, or the presence of the white area east of the control to imply that there is a frustration-free way of taking the road to within 100m of the flag. | ||||||
| 9. | Straight, behind others. Didn't notice the huge boulder on the map that was NOT the one with the flag until later. Punched after Ken W, near whom I ran a few legs. | ||||||
| 10. | At this control, I must have had a brain lapse because I thought I could pivot my Epunch out of the control. Instead, I sheared off the chip from the rest of the Epunch unit, leaving the control emitting a repeating beep-beep-beep. Then I figured it out, and wondered, what do I do with a (detachable, able-to-be-lost) chip in my hand rather than attached to me? | ||||||
| 11. | Up the path to 11, contoured over starting at the boulder. Ken was ahead but for some reason stayed on the trail longer. At the control, I put the chip into the hole, then could not remove it. So I uprooted the entire control stake, dumped the chip into my palm, and continued. I decided to put the chip into the finger of a glove. This worked well, but I worried about falling and gashing my fingertip. | ||||||
| 12. | Other runners went in multiple directions. Clint M said something about going uphill, which looked gnarly to me. I had seen Ken to NW, and decided also to go NW, though he was out of sight by the time I got the chip into the fingertip of the glove. I took the trail until it came close to the stone wall, then contoured across the hillside, counting cross-trails. One, two, three, then I ran on the 3rd trail, expecting to come to a Y-junction. There must be a new unmapped trail here because I found myself running in the U-shape on the wrong trail. Bushwhacked down across a stone wall that I couldn't see on the map and a rocky hillside until I found the blue-blazed (Skyline?) trail and reestablished contact. At the Trail X-junction near the numeral '6', I went S, then turned W at the Y-junction, jumped off at the bend and ran to the trail running N of #15. Then NW, past the swamp, where I saw Ken coming from the opposite side of the swamp ahead of me. I left the trail at the bend, taking a long time to hit the trail near 12. Ken stayed on and got to #12 before me. I saw him leaving 12 as I was approaching. | ||||||
| 13. | Followed Ken. | ||||||
| 14. | Followed Ken some more. | ||||||
| 15. | Followed Ken further, though I was losing him. | ||||||
| 16. | Ken, another guy, and I took slightly different micro-routes from 15 to 16, essentially the same leg time. | ||||||
| 17. | I passed Ken on the trail run to road, ran right of the pond and the other guy ran away from me, so I was solo by the time I reached the pond. We were close again at 17. | ||||||
| 18. | Once again behind Ken, though we were off to the right in a more major reentrant that I can't find on the map. We independently decided we were too low and found the control above and to the left of us. | ||||||
| 19. | Solo to 19, angling around the N side of the hill. At the almost 5-way junction, the other guy went left which I think was slower. I went mostly straight until the hilltop sloppy trail crossing, just N of the line, from which I went downhill on a compass and nailed the trail bend E of the control. | ||||||
| 20. | Attempted to go straight N, but missed to the W, so that when I saw the terrain to my right did not agree with what I expected near #20, I figured out that I was SW of the trail junction. Straight shot from the trail jct SW of 20, though I lost time carelessly. | ||||||
| 21. | Leaving 20, I noticed Ken ahead once again. I wasn't sure where he left the E-W trail, but I was pretty confident of my bearings. | ||||||
| 22. | Straight. | ||||||
| 23. | Leaving #22, I once again saw Ken ahead, but didn't see which way he went near the stone wall chaos. I managed to cross the fence where it was bowed to the ground S of the stone wall. Then, around on the tiny, almost invisible trail S of the control to the bend. | ||||||
| 24. | Around on the trails to the left, hugged the fence, then left the fence at a tiny yellow dot that I judged must correspond to a fire circle near a camping area. As I was going on a compass down the contours, I once again saw Ken coming in from the SE of the flag. | ||||||
| F. | Followed Ken to the finish, on a trail in the terrain that I could not see on the map. |
Total Time Lost - 00:00:00