Training Log Archive: barb

Hiked up to the orienteering site.

Physical, lovely. Made same error, almost, as 2 days ago. jumped ahead a leg.

hiked down

Zermatt street-O on a 1:4000 map. This was a BLAST! Small ancient town with tiny little alley ways and twisty streets; some legs on the outskirts on steep grassy slopes. I was in the top half today, and FOURTH on the run in from the last control! Tee hee :-)

Hiked up to Trift and back down. Got a good view of tomorrow's orienteering area across the valley. Couldn't get the song "Edelweiss" (from Sound of Music) out of my head so I tried singing it out loud. Bad idea.

C • Edelweiss? 1

A couple more photos from the week:




From our apartment balcony, we could look down on one of the controls for the elite sprint prolog, the day before Day 1.




Our street, Hinterdorfstrasse, has a bunch of old houses on it. The runner is one of the elite prologuers.

Hiked from Zermatt up to Schwarzsee, today's orienteering site. I memorized the control numbers and features as I walked. I came up with hand signs for the features so that I didn't have to say "foot of southwestern, 2-foot-high cliff" in my head along with the numbers.

Day 4. Schwarzsee, "the heavenly day". Made one big mistake. But it was way cool to know the control numbers and features by heart.

Hiked down to Zermatt after the orienteering.

I heard that there is going to be a rogaine in the Swiss alps next July! And some orienteering events leading up to it. That would be pretty awesome...

If PG took 1:53, I took at least 2:00. We went up to the base of the real Matterhorn climb together, but I couldn't keep up on the downhill run. I did get off the ground on the first vertical section of the climb, but only for a second, long enough to plant both feet in a crack.

We could see the Breithorn, but couldn't make out Dave and Sharon and Ursula and Dieter and Beatrice who were up there somewhere, roped together and carrying ice axes.




(This photo taken yesterday from Klein Matterhorn.)

I got to meet Tapio. As I came downhill, he was going up, and asked if I were me (I was) and said PG had told him I was a few minutes behind.

I guess PG would do for a rogaine partner.

Am slowly adding photos to the previous training entries.

Here is Dave & buddies on top of the Breithorn:





They're holding an O map of the Breithorn. It came in our packet along with other highest O maps of the world, including Happy Jack.

There is a minigolf place in Zermatt with many fun "bingo" holes. Here is a picture of one. The hole is at the top of that steep ramp.

Hiked up to Furi, and then took the gondola from there to the orienteering site.

Incredible terrain/view. Trockener Steg. A lot of the terrain was until recently covered with glacier. It was all rocky:
yellow = open, runnable, some alpine-y grassiness but also sand & glacier leavings
light yellow = gravel, rocks
lighter yellow = rock

I had a lot of fun, though I was not navigating well. I ended up at SIX controls that were not mine, and punched them all, just for the heck of it. I also forgot entirely to go to #8, so I DNFed. Dave had a great run and was on a total high afterwards. Which is right in keeping with the official SOW 2006 slogan: "Get high ...!" (Elipsis included.) (Which slogan made it absolutely necessary to obtain an official SOW shirt.)




Start/finish area for Day 3, Trockener Steg.

Hiked down to Furi from Trockener Steg.



On the way down we had a good view of the Riffelhorn, where Dave climbed on Saturday. Climbing the Riffelhorn is one way to get certified to climb the Matterhorn with a local guide. You can see it behind Dave in the photo below. (He didn't climb it from the very bottom - you start around on the right side most of the way up...)