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Saturday Aug 5, 2017 #
Event: Green Corn Moon Rogaine
Note
Green Corn Moon Rogaine 6Hr - 6pm to Midnight. NSF Adventures
https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Green-Corn-Moon-Rog...
Made the trip down to Great Seal State Park with Amy B, BJ & Julie Foster and camped at the horse campground, which was sufficient, although no showers.
Checked in right at 4pm, received map, and began planning. So nice to have 2 hours to plan and get everything in order from food to clothes. Originally planned to wear long pants and carry a long sleeve, instead opted for shorts and long socks and not carry the long sleeve. I'm very thankful I made that decision, I would have been very hot otherwise. Also we found out later the park is about 85% nice white woods!
We measured about 16.5km to clear and with 6 hours, a ~3km per hour pace seemed very doable to clear not knowing the park and impending hill climbs. We planned to stay high where possible and take the trails which were very good throughout the park. Every intersection was marked with a letter and white post, so not only was it helpful and hard to get very lost, it was a big morale boost every time you got to the next letter.
We started by following the majority of the crowd south, little did we know at the time we got the first CP 62 ahead of Mister Wonderful!
62 - 53 (massive hill climb) 72 - 42 - (another massive hill climb) 52. No real issues out of the gate and hit our first time check of 7pm at 52's water station and the middle location of the course. By 52 the crowd had thinned out to just a couple teams and we could see folks, but not really following.
41- 51. Originally we had planned to climb back up to the trail and hit 51 from the top, but on the fly decided to take the lower trail all the way around and then climb back up to 51. Seemed like it worked in our favor as we followed the Topo Sports team who made the same decision.
40 - Again we had planned to take the trail around the long way, but instead with Topo Sports just blasted up the massive hill. Luckily it only took a short time. Although it was not at the top of the hill, so we had to climb to the next trail and then follow it around to the top of another hill, before descending to 60. Topo Sports did this faster than us, as they lost us. Hit our 2nd time check well ahead of 8pm at 730pm!
60 - We arrived to the nearby trail intersection to several teams searching what I could tell was the wrong area a bit north of the correct reentrant. We quietly made our way down the reentrant and snagged it without anyone picking up that we were onto it. Back to the trail and around to 50, another one not too far from a trail intersection. But guess who showed back up as we were searching. Topo Sports! I got a kick out of that as that meant they were fast to 60 than us, but we had better nav to it. We conversed for a second to each other about the big looming decision to hit 80 or not. It added a mile roundtrip just for one CP. Topo Sports decided against it and we did not see them again. Being we were ahead of time at about 8pm we decided to go for it! We passed BJ & Julie going the opposite way, a nice site that they were going for some CPs we didn't think they would go for as they had originally planned to not go south of the road. So we knew they were doing well also.
80 - We passed Mister Wonderful on his way back from 80 about 1/3 of the way down the trail. A little mental boost, knowing that we were doing well if we were maybe only 10 minutes behind him. We arrived to the reentrant system, but were unsure exactly where on the map we were. I was hesitant that we were not in the right spot for attacking from as the trail should have been bending southeast, but it was south. After a minute or so, of not being able to figure it out, some other teams arrived to the area, and we decided to head down and try it out. Our first big mistake! We ended up wandering about 100 meters too far south and had to climb back up and were about to bail on it. It was getting dark at this point, so made the decision to stop and gear up with lights and headlamps. I can't believe it still, but I took my handheld light shined it just to test it out and as I swung it around, I caught the reflector about 75 meters down the spur. We had lost about 20 minutes searching all around it and now we stopped about to bail on it nearly on it. What a moment! The team we had been searching with down lower had split off from us about 5 minutes earlier, and by the time we returned to the trail, I could see there headlamps about 150 meters too far north still. Wow we made a big decision in that we didn't keep following them!
70 - Trail back around near the MTB parking lot, it was a long way and not sure the trail was entirely accurate here. But there were several teams searching the hill side, which it was another pretty big climb up at least a 100 feet if not more. But luckily I shined the reflector from pretty far away and now we were about 10 minutes behind our 3rd time check at 910pm.
35 - 30 - A couple of easy ones and then the long trail back north to 61.
61 - We were a little thrown off here by an extra switch back in the trail, there were several other teams searching the hill side. We were all thinking why can't we see this one, it's only like 2 lines off the trail! After a few minutes fellow SMOC member Scott Dye, spotted it and gave it away to me by running towards it. I thanked him for the help that ended our search!
71 - Decided to stay high and take the safer route on the trail to the hairpin switchback than go low thru the reentrant. It worked out, but it was slow going it seemed like to work our way east. As we zeroed in on it, another team met up with us, which seemed to happen to us quite a bit, in that it gave some validation that we were on the right track many times with our nav. In this instance, the other team spotted it first, although I would have gotten in another minute or two without them. Then another massive hill climb back to the road. This climb was exhausting and brutal for some reason. But we made it back to the water station after a brief jog down the road and were back on track at our 4th time check at 10pm.
43 - 32. We made the long trail travel back without collecting any CPs, nearly 1.5 miles. Hit both of these dead center.
63 - Crossed thru some thicker veg to get to the horse trail and followed it around. Ahead of our 5th time check here at 11pm. But we made a major mistake of stopping about 100 meters too far south to begin our search. We met back up with BJ& Julie again here. We spent about 20 minutes in and out of thick thorny impenetrable veg. I had called it, that we need to bail and move on. I could not understand why we couldn't find the large water source. The curve of the trail was very deceiving here and I should have measured better. I was also looking for a drop in elevation, only to discover there was even more of a drop. As we came to an exercise station at the low point, I shined my handheld thru an opening and saw what seemed to be a massive clearing. It drew my attention for some reason, I stepped 10 feet of the trail and realized this was the water source, all dried up and firm marsh at the moment. I yelled to Amy, we were back on the hunt! We then finally got it, way too much time lost here!
54 - Another big mistake. I think I was rattled from making such a dumb mistake at 63, that I didn't pay attention to the direction of the trail after the intersection. We started heading west thinking we were still going north. I knew we need to cross the creek, and when I finally really we were going west, instead of going back, I made the wrong decision to just go north. Well we cross the creek, climbed the 2 contours that were on top of each other, not fun, and ended up in private property. I freaked a bit and knew we needed to get the heck out of there as we had to stick out in these people's backyards with lights. Then making it worse instead of just fighting east thru the thick veg, we crossed the creek back south and ended back up at the intersection. Oh no, we have gone in a circle! Man I was fuming. I can't believe I had done this. So we crossed the creek a 3rd time! Battled up the embankment again, which was even worse this time. But finally we found the horse trail on the other side and got this one near the road. Another 15 minutes lost.
Now we were starting to panic a bit, 5 CPs left and only 25 minutes to go. We made the decision to press on to 44, knowing we would not clear now. Disappointing, but now was about getting the last that we could and make it back on time.
81 - Right out the back of our campsite, so no problem, other than it was down a big reentrant again, which Amy trudged down and back up. We got this one with 12 minutes to go. I knew we were ok, as the campsite was exactly half a mile from the start, even by taking the roads. We decided to try to get 33 on the way to the finish, since it was basically on the way along the interior trails in the disc golf course. Luckily it was literally on the trail, the easy one of the night!
With about 3 minutes to go, I was getting nervous, but I knew we only had a few hundred meters to go. But we were going up and down, walking more than I wanted, cutting around disc golf baskets. Finally thru the woods, I saw some tail lights in the parking lot about 100 meters off. I called out to Amy we had 2 minutes to go, we can do this. We came out of the woods and hit the finish table with 30 seconds to spare!
A great race, we didn't clear, missing 64 and 34 due to our bad final hour. But it was good to know we could have cleared. We ended up with 23/25 CPs and 1180 points out of 1270, which was good enough for 6th overall. We covered about 27km / ~16 miles total, with 3300ft of gain! Very happy with that result!
https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Green-Corn-Moon-Rog...
Made the trip down to Great Seal State Park with Amy B, BJ & Julie Foster and camped at the horse campground, which was sufficient, although no showers.
Checked in right at 4pm, received map, and began planning. So nice to have 2 hours to plan and get everything in order from food to clothes. Originally planned to wear long pants and carry a long sleeve, instead opted for shorts and long socks and not carry the long sleeve. I'm very thankful I made that decision, I would have been very hot otherwise. Also we found out later the park is about 85% nice white woods!
We measured about 16.5km to clear and with 6 hours, a ~3km per hour pace seemed very doable to clear not knowing the park and impending hill climbs. We planned to stay high where possible and take the trails which were very good throughout the park. Every intersection was marked with a letter and white post, so not only was it helpful and hard to get very lost, it was a big morale boost every time you got to the next letter.
We started by following the majority of the crowd south, little did we know at the time we got the first CP 62 ahead of Mister Wonderful!
62 - 53 (massive hill climb) 72 - 42 - (another massive hill climb) 52. No real issues out of the gate and hit our first time check of 7pm at 52's water station and the middle location of the course. By 52 the crowd had thinned out to just a couple teams and we could see folks, but not really following.
41- 51. Originally we had planned to climb back up to the trail and hit 51 from the top, but on the fly decided to take the lower trail all the way around and then climb back up to 51. Seemed like it worked in our favor as we followed the Topo Sports team who made the same decision.
40 - Again we had planned to take the trail around the long way, but instead with Topo Sports just blasted up the massive hill. Luckily it only took a short time. Although it was not at the top of the hill, so we had to climb to the next trail and then follow it around to the top of another hill, before descending to 60. Topo Sports did this faster than us, as they lost us. Hit our 2nd time check well ahead of 8pm at 730pm!
60 - We arrived to the nearby trail intersection to several teams searching what I could tell was the wrong area a bit north of the correct reentrant. We quietly made our way down the reentrant and snagged it without anyone picking up that we were onto it. Back to the trail and around to 50, another one not too far from a trail intersection. But guess who showed back up as we were searching. Topo Sports! I got a kick out of that as that meant they were fast to 60 than us, but we had better nav to it. We conversed for a second to each other about the big looming decision to hit 80 or not. It added a mile roundtrip just for one CP. Topo Sports decided against it and we did not see them again. Being we were ahead of time at about 8pm we decided to go for it! We passed BJ & Julie going the opposite way, a nice site that they were going for some CPs we didn't think they would go for as they had originally planned to not go south of the road. So we knew they were doing well also.
80 - We passed Mister Wonderful on his way back from 80 about 1/3 of the way down the trail. A little mental boost, knowing that we were doing well if we were maybe only 10 minutes behind him. We arrived to the reentrant system, but were unsure exactly where on the map we were. I was hesitant that we were not in the right spot for attacking from as the trail should have been bending southeast, but it was south. After a minute or so, of not being able to figure it out, some other teams arrived to the area, and we decided to head down and try it out. Our first big mistake! We ended up wandering about 100 meters too far south and had to climb back up and were about to bail on it. It was getting dark at this point, so made the decision to stop and gear up with lights and headlamps. I can't believe it still, but I took my handheld light shined it just to test it out and as I swung it around, I caught the reflector about 75 meters down the spur. We had lost about 20 minutes searching all around it and now we stopped about to bail on it nearly on it. What a moment! The team we had been searching with down lower had split off from us about 5 minutes earlier, and by the time we returned to the trail, I could see there headlamps about 150 meters too far north still. Wow we made a big decision in that we didn't keep following them!
70 - Trail back around near the MTB parking lot, it was a long way and not sure the trail was entirely accurate here. But there were several teams searching the hill side, which it was another pretty big climb up at least a 100 feet if not more. But luckily I shined the reflector from pretty far away and now we were about 10 minutes behind our 3rd time check at 910pm.
35 - 30 - A couple of easy ones and then the long trail back north to 61.
61 - We were a little thrown off here by an extra switch back in the trail, there were several other teams searching the hill side. We were all thinking why can't we see this one, it's only like 2 lines off the trail! After a few minutes fellow SMOC member Scott Dye, spotted it and gave it away to me by running towards it. I thanked him for the help that ended our search!
71 - Decided to stay high and take the safer route on the trail to the hairpin switchback than go low thru the reentrant. It worked out, but it was slow going it seemed like to work our way east. As we zeroed in on it, another team met up with us, which seemed to happen to us quite a bit, in that it gave some validation that we were on the right track many times with our nav. In this instance, the other team spotted it first, although I would have gotten in another minute or two without them. Then another massive hill climb back to the road. This climb was exhausting and brutal for some reason. But we made it back to the water station after a brief jog down the road and were back on track at our 4th time check at 10pm.
43 - 32. We made the long trail travel back without collecting any CPs, nearly 1.5 miles. Hit both of these dead center.
63 - Crossed thru some thicker veg to get to the horse trail and followed it around. Ahead of our 5th time check here at 11pm. But we made a major mistake of stopping about 100 meters too far south to begin our search. We met back up with BJ& Julie again here. We spent about 20 minutes in and out of thick thorny impenetrable veg. I had called it, that we need to bail and move on. I could not understand why we couldn't find the large water source. The curve of the trail was very deceiving here and I should have measured better. I was also looking for a drop in elevation, only to discover there was even more of a drop. As we came to an exercise station at the low point, I shined my handheld thru an opening and saw what seemed to be a massive clearing. It drew my attention for some reason, I stepped 10 feet of the trail and realized this was the water source, all dried up and firm marsh at the moment. I yelled to Amy, we were back on the hunt! We then finally got it, way too much time lost here!
54 - Another big mistake. I think I was rattled from making such a dumb mistake at 63, that I didn't pay attention to the direction of the trail after the intersection. We started heading west thinking we were still going north. I knew we need to cross the creek, and when I finally really we were going west, instead of going back, I made the wrong decision to just go north. Well we cross the creek, climbed the 2 contours that were on top of each other, not fun, and ended up in private property. I freaked a bit and knew we needed to get the heck out of there as we had to stick out in these people's backyards with lights. Then making it worse instead of just fighting east thru the thick veg, we crossed the creek back south and ended back up at the intersection. Oh no, we have gone in a circle! Man I was fuming. I can't believe I had done this. So we crossed the creek a 3rd time! Battled up the embankment again, which was even worse this time. But finally we found the horse trail on the other side and got this one near the road. Another 15 minutes lost.
Now we were starting to panic a bit, 5 CPs left and only 25 minutes to go. We made the decision to press on to 44, knowing we would not clear now. Disappointing, but now was about getting the last that we could and make it back on time.
81 - Right out the back of our campsite, so no problem, other than it was down a big reentrant again, which Amy trudged down and back up. We got this one with 12 minutes to go. I knew we were ok, as the campsite was exactly half a mile from the start, even by taking the roads. We decided to try to get 33 on the way to the finish, since it was basically on the way along the interior trails in the disc golf course. Luckily it was literally on the trail, the easy one of the night!
With about 3 minutes to go, I was getting nervous, but I knew we only had a few hundred meters to go. But we were going up and down, walking more than I wanted, cutting around disc golf baskets. Finally thru the woods, I saw some tail lights in the parking lot about 100 meters off. I called out to Amy we had 2 minutes to go, we can do this. We came out of the woods and hit the finish table with 30 seconds to spare!
A great race, we didn't clear, missing 64 and 34 due to our bad final hour. But it was good to know we could have cleared. We ended up with 23/25 CPs and 1180 points out of 1270, which was good enough for 6th overall. We covered about 27km / ~16 miles total, with 3300ft of gain! Very happy with that result!