Training Log Archive: TomN

Anza-Borrego Day 1 Green. Second place, despite 8-10 minutes of errors. On #2, I poked around in all the canyons off the main wash before it occurred to me to look up. There it was, about 50 feet up in a little slot. Oh, right, welcome to Anza-Borrego. Overly cautious on 3, then made a 180 error leaving 4. Hit the road instead of the little trail. I think I'm more susceptible to this mistake in a place like this, where everything looks pretty much the same. Then I had a very good sequence 5-6-7-8-9-10-11, navigating well with good route choices. Back out of 11 the way I came in, then a long slog up to 12. Overall highly enjoyable. Scrambling in steep terrain is right up my alley, and I'm happy to find myself having enough navigational skills to get around in this place.

Anza-Borrego Maze-O. Control sequence: 33-32-36-37-38-35-34-31-39. I have to say, I was barely competent in this event. I intended to go from 32 to 31, then around clockwise, but I got lost on the way to 31, and relocated back to 32. Then some others were headed towards 36, so I went that way too. I was never certain of my position on the rough orienteering stretches, but I picked up the cues inside the circles and found the controls pretty well.

What a great place for orienteering! Forget about taking a bearing, because you'll run into a potential death fall every 20 feet. You have to work your way around the cliffs or into the slots instead. I found the cliff markings on the map distracting, and wasn't able to orient by them, so I ignored them (except as roadblocks) and read the contours for navigation. In the areas relatively free of cliffs I had much better location ability.