Orienteering (Foot) 1:56:14 [3] 7.17 mi (16:13 / mi) +754m 12:13 / mi
weight:191.5lbs
Harper's Ferry, WV. Gary Smith and Karla Hewlett setup an interesting street-o score-o. Starting from Taylor St. we had a 1:15,000 map with mostly contours and roads. Some trails and buildings were on the map too but these were not comprehensive. They were enough to navigate by and we all (about 25 people participated) had fun. At first, I had trouble getting used to the map. I was intending to follow a trail in the forest--I'd found the trail but it didn't seem like the right one. Despite Gary saying we could run across the one personal property yard starting out, I wasn't comfortable. I went out to a side road, then back in. As I did, David Onkst was coming through. David looked like he might skip #15 so I cut across a reentrant; Max came in very near behind. From that point, Max and I stayed together. David caught up after we punched but somewhere along the next couple of controls, we separated. Max and I went low to do the controls counter-clockwise. We were largely efficient. As we got into the more historic parts of town, we used a 1:5,000 map that was also provided. At each control point, instead of finding a flag or streamer, we usually had to read a sign.. Most were historical and titled with something like "John Brown took aim here....". We had a control sheet with multiple choice questions that could only be answered by reading the sign. We worked our way through the town sometimes running into other orienteers taking different routes. This was quite a tour of Harper's Ferry--Gary's friend who live in the town helped Gary pick out the sites. Many had great views--everything from along the river, to river overlooks and the Bolivar Heights. Most of the controls were on national park maintained lands. There were some good hills to this. As we started out it was in the upper 90s F. Max and I carried water. I slowed for Max at times; initially it was because he would need to fumble with the map at each control for a while. He is much speedier but doesn't have the endurance I do right now, so I also slowed to wait for him as we got into the last hour. We had just passed Peggy going the other direction when we had 2 outlier controls left to get with less than 25 minutes. It would have been close if we went for them, but I decided we should head back. We picked up one last control on the way back before seeing David taking and unexpected route--he was checking out someplace where he has a friend. I figured we could run in from there, so Max and I waited for him to catch-up. David later felt he could have gotten the last control Max and I had gotten but we finished together anyway, and just under our 2 hour time limit. After finishing-up, about 15 of us ate at the White Horse Tavern and had more good times.