Training Log Archive: jennycasIn the 1 days ending Jun 25, 2018:
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Monday Jun 25, 2018 #
11 AM
orienteering (Chalet Fiat) 1:03:00 [2]
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
The 5-Days organisers had intended that the model event should be accessed by the chairlift which goes up to 2104m Monte Spinale from straight behind the event centre in Madonna di Campiglio, but of the 40+ chairlifts in this vicinity, only 3 are operating currently and that's not one of them. I was lucky enough to get a lift with some Finns via Stefanotaxi to the halfway point where I hid my gear behind a tree and hiked another vertical 300m up the ski run to the summit. Partway up, I began to hear cowbells, and the bovines were grazing all over the ski slope (with a guy and his 3 dogs sitting on a rock watching them) just like when Vanessa took me & G up to Schwialp in 2015!
The top part of this map, above the snowline, matches what the terrain will be like on Wed/Thur, but I'll be headed to Vienna by then, so it was lovely to get a chance to run in this terrain, even if I never got above a jog through the spongy rhododendrons and juniper, and the descent to the lower controls among the trees was a slippery slide (a bit of a chain of orienteers forming here and the people in front of me startled a big deer). Afterwards I sat on a rock in the sunshine and admired all the alpine flowers, So many things grow wild here which I would only ever see in a garden at home - ranunculus, forget-me-not, aquilegia.
Walked back to the town and was disappointed to find that nearly all the shops are closed over lunchtime, so I headed back to the hotel and made myself a cheese-and-jam sandwich! In the afternoon my tourguide took time out from his busy administrative schedule and we went to see a waterfall where snowmelt comes roaring down the cliff from a plateau above. Of course, it's not orienteering tourism without a map and so we critiqued the mapping from a previous event in this area. Also, I am usually a nervous passenger but I have been very good (by my standards anyway) about not panicking on narrow mountain roads or when there is a long tunnel. Maybe it's that my head is so weirded out already by being on the wrong side of the road...
The top part of this map, above the snowline, matches what the terrain will be like on Wed/Thur, but I'll be headed to Vienna by then, so it was lovely to get a chance to run in this terrain, even if I never got above a jog through the spongy rhododendrons and juniper, and the descent to the lower controls among the trees was a slippery slide (a bit of a chain of orienteers forming here and the people in front of me startled a big deer). Afterwards I sat on a rock in the sunshine and admired all the alpine flowers, So many things grow wild here which I would only ever see in a garden at home - ranunculus, forget-me-not, aquilegia.
Walked back to the town and was disappointed to find that nearly all the shops are closed over lunchtime, so I headed back to the hotel and made myself a cheese-and-jam sandwich! In the afternoon my tourguide took time out from his busy administrative schedule and we went to see a waterfall where snowmelt comes roaring down the cliff from a plateau above. Of course, it's not orienteering tourism without a map and so we critiqued the mapping from a previous event in this area. Also, I am usually a nervous passenger but I have been very good (by my standards anyway) about not panicking on narrow mountain roads or when there is a long tunnel. Maybe it's that my head is so weirded out already by being on the wrong side of the road...