Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Watatic with Patti.

Ahern State Park, Green, 4.0 km, probably 6th. Ugh. Maybe thrown a little by the 1:5000 scale on #1 because I overshot a bit, then came upon #2 long before I was expecting it. #3 I just had minor trouble because parallel contours separating two marshes made it confusing which way was uphill, and #4 I missed slightly and had to circle around.

Then a full-blown disaster on #5. This part of the map wasn't actually fieldchecked (Jim sent the wrong version of the file to the meet director), but that had nothing to do with the fact that I missed way to the left and ran completely off the map. After a little floundering around, I decided I need to bail out to something solid, and ran 300+ meters to a stone wall, and had no trouble attacking from there. Nearly 20 minutes lost. And the rest went fine, but the damage was already done.

My location is listed as Island Pond, VT, but that's because the only way to specify a location is with a ZIP code, and there's no post office in Avery's Gore. I'd been planning to get up there at some point, a boondoggle not unlike the time in 1991 when I dragged three friends 38 miles up the Canol Road, but that kind of thing is tough to schedule. Today seemed like the day, though, and off I went.

The original plan was to try and climb the mountain, but there were a few problems with that. The first was that although I had printed out a topo map from the internet, it wasn't that good, and I really wasn't sure where I was starting (couldn't consult the phone because there was no signal up there). The second was that there was the not insignificant possibility that I might head off into the woods and then be unable to find my car again. But the biggest issue was that the woods really sucked. I had no desire to venture into them, so I stopped the car in some arbitrary spot and just continued up the road/trail on foot.

Another reason not to go into the woods was that you don't know what might be in there. Or maybe you do. About halfway up I spotted a bear about 100 m up ahead. Last time something like that happened, I turned around and went elsewhere, but this time I just called out, "Hey bear, how ya doing?", he skedaddled, and I continued on, but tried to keep up a conversation with myself. I did not see any mooses, but I did see a healthy supply of moose tracks.


Turns out that the spot where I parked was just about ideal, because not far beyond it was an impassable washout. I wasn't too energetic on this hike, at least on the way up, and was slowed down some by the fact that the trail was pretty muddy for a while. Although the gore is uninhabited, there are a few cabins, including one with a sign reading "Whittiers" that was beyond the washout, on the edge of Unknown Pond. I was thinking that they must be bummed about the washout making their camp inaccessible, but I think most of the traffic up there is probably snowmobiles, and maybe they only use the place in the winter.

Looking at better resources now that I'm home, I see that the road/trail I was on doesn't even appear on the printed map I had, and I drove further than I had been imagining possible. Getting to the spot that I had in mind would have involved driving way around (or coming on off the paved road from a different access point, but it didn't really matter since going off-trail to climb the mountain really didn't have much appeal. I think I'd need a masochistic partner to try that one.

I made better time on the trip back to the car, and it's a strange coincidence that this took nearly the same time as the orienteering (8 seconds less) and the distance also matches to within less than 10 meters. I honestly didn't do that on purpose.

C • Postal code 6