Orienteering race 1:39:08*** 5.2 km (19:04 / km) +250m15:22 / km ahr:151 max:165 11c shoes: Salomon Speedcross CS
Georgia Navigator Cup, by GAOC, at Red Top Mountain State Park, set by Steve Houghton. Green Y. Distance from the clue sheet---My GPS died a bit after half way through the course.
Beautiful woods, so-so footing, and (mostly) very nice hills. I had a blast doing this, but I never did get going very fast.
Toward the end, I bailed out to low-climb routes.
A few bobbles and minor quality issues:
1 (145). I was left at the stream junction, and almost went one spur too far left, but I saw people going up "the spur" and double checked the stream details. Looking at the map now, I don't know what I was thinking regarding "going up the spur to the left of the actual one", but I do know I was definitely left.
2 (140). I overshot the gully. I had trouble reading the little contour details here, and I knew I was past because of the east-facing spur and the water level in the lake, but the contours and vegetation and ditches before the control didn't make sense in my head. I got really skeptical of the map at this point, although I can say the Sunday map seemed pretty spot on. I'm guessing this was a spot that wasn't updated as well as other places. I may be wrong---I was in a hurry.
4 (111). Misread the map: Crossing the bridge, I peeled a little right and left the trail, and was surprised to cross a trail in 15 or 20m. Stopped and realized I should have stayed on the trail up 15 or 20m and left at the bend. Felt like I was a little off focus.
4-5 (111-151): I went straight through the green, and decided the green on this map is wimpy compared to Cincinnati. (This is a compliment towards GAOC.) I did later see some scary green, but just a small area. I did hear Red and Blue got some serious greens.
6 (152). I felt the circle needed to be cut a bit more. My brain was seeing the index contour as another erosion gully, and I figured it out only when I got there and there was no extra gully. The circle is cut sort of 7:30-8:30. I would have cut 5:30 or 6:00 to 8:30.
6-7 (152-123): I was surprised to see the hilltop tanks mapped as manmade object circles. I'm used to these being mapped with solid black, as buildings or rock pillars. No real confusion. Just a style thing I guess.
7 (123). There was a second, nearly identical root stock just above the mapped (and flagged) root stock. Really threw me for 10 or 20 seconds, until I looked downhill and saw the other one.
7-8 (123-135): On the two-headed cove on the lake, where the stony ground is, I saw some crumbling rock. I've been reading geology books, and I picked up a piece of what I assumed was a sedimentary rock that had been split by wave action. It was about 8cm diameter and 1cm thick. I thought, I really need to hammer it open to see fresh, unweathered rock faces. So I threw it against a rock and picked up the biggest piece. (This all took like 8 seconds.) Really pretty. I showed it to Martha, a geologist, and she said it was Gneiss (nice), a metamorphic rock where the heat was so high you can't tell what the original sedimentary rock was, and very old, among the oldest rocks in the state.
9-10-11 (130-104-161): Sort of gratuitous climb. Knees were hurting from going downhill. Feet hurt from sidehilling. 9-10: Took the road. 10-11: Wide right, still really steep.
North line spacing was 5cm (500m at 1:10,000). It's a pain to have this much space between north lines. I felt like my bearings were approximate. 2.5cm, the normal spacing for 1:10,000, would be much nicer.
Just a wonderful course. Warm. Sunny. Nice route choices, mostly. Please keep improving this map and using it.