Training Log Archive: JanetT

PNWOF Day 4 at Saltese Uplands park near Liberty Lake, east of Spokane, WA. Though registered for Short Advanced, we didn't get course info until yesterday, and it turned out the Short Advanced was a 4.7km course with 240m climb, more like a green course than a brown.

Different weather today than the past few, with temps near 70, some breeze, and no rain!

I wanted to drop down to the Intermediate length, but they didn't have enough maps, so I took a Short Advanced map with the intent to only do ones I wanted to visit, so I went to 1-2-3-8-10-11-12. EDIT: This decision was in part influenced by the fact that I realized most of the way to #1 that I had forgotten my water.

I still managed to overshoot #2 and took an unplanned wide route to #8 (my fourth one visited), but otherwise was able to see controls from a distance away. Long grasses slowed everyone down a bit.

Drove down the road and parked to look for interesting birds in the wetlands visible from #8 and #10. Saw some ruddy ducks, killdeer, yellow-headed blackbirds (I even got an almost decent photo), and others. Someone said there was a Wilson's phalarope there, but I don't think I saw any wading birds.

Ran into Peter Goodwin also out there looking for birds and chatted with him for a bit.

Short Advanced - Splits

Brown Maps from the weekend:
Saturday Middle



Sunday Classic

PNWOF day 3, sprint (intermediate/medium length) on campus of Univ of Montana. 2.6 km, no climb (except for one staircase down and back up).

I had been signed up for the advanced sprint, but that was also the longest one (3.3km). Intermediate was enough fun for today. We'd signed up for starts shortly after 1pm (I started a few minutes ahead of that), which was serendipitous, as anyone who was on course at about 12:40 was running through a significant downpour. On the other hand, we had hardly any showers while we were running, and it only started up again as we were leaving the campus. The entire morning and early afternoon was blue sky foloowed by a shower followed by blue sky...repeat.

AP doesn't think I had any mistakes but my track reveals me heading in the wrong direction briefly after #1, before correcting and heading the other way. Maybe 20s lost. I didn't do quite the route choice I originally planned between 8 and 9 but it all worked out.

Thanks again to Boris and Alli and the rest of the Grizzly crew involved in the weekend's events. I hope you get to rest up and enjoy the rest of the week.

Map:

Monday sprint (note: splits don't include control 13--dead battery); map was 1:4000. Control 14 was along one edge of the school mascot's statue, but I never even looked at it to see what it was.

C • School mascot 2

Intermediate - Splits

AOWN notes (edited):

Besides the male yellow-headed blackbird that distracted me while driving up to Lubrecht yesterday, and which Glen saw again a couple of times as well in the open pastoral part of Rt 200 between Bonner and the meet site, followed by a family of big horn sheep (females) along the roadside on the way back to Missoula this afternoon, I saw some lovely wildflowers (website with pics at link):

Yellow broadleafed arnica and Oregon grape around the camp (and arrowleaf balsamroot in forests near the highway on the drive up), and several purple flowers in the woods including larkspur*, lupine, shooting star, and a slightly larger flower shaped like pasque flower but which was probably mountain clematis.
*maybe it was wild hyacinth; or maybe I saw both. I was on the course and didn't stop to take sufficient notes. :-D

No grizzlies, thankfully, except for the ones on the club shirts.

PNWOF Day 2, Brown classic back at Lubrecht. 4.6 km, 155m climb stated. Weather was a bit more favorable with fewer showers and temp reaching the low 60s before we left the meet site.

A mixed day, again. I did well on the long uphill leg to #1 (1.1km, or thereabouts), taking about 20 and a half minutes and covering 1.56km, and using clear features for navigation (after first making sure to head out of the start triangle in the correct direction). Fine to 2 and 3, but missed #4 and reattacked. Then I mismanaged the leg to 5.

I started off okay, heading east to cross the trail/reentrant, then started to climb the hill. I was skirting the darker green so thought I knew when I crossed the subtle reentrant, but then I neither followed the correct (NE) bearing, nor pace counted well enough, counting on seeing an obvious reentrant ahead of me with a spur behind it with the flag. My track shows I missed way left, and by the time I tried to relocate (thinking I'd head east to a trail), I hit a road running E-W instead. Uh oh. Found what I thought was a distinct bend in the road and reattacked from there, counting paces, but apparently just missed it. More quickly relocated and found it on the third try. 21+ minutes on what should have been about 5 or 6, I think (and 1.3km on a 300m leg).

North to cross the road and find the trail beyond it, which I did okay on, but struggled to find an attackpoint to leave it for #6. I left too early and found a control (201), but not my number (48). Couldn't place myself properly and wandered, even making an unmapped narrow clearing be the mapped narrow clearing NW of my point. Eventually I returned to the wrong control, wondering if they'd mishung it, so I punched there, but kept looking. Staying on the spur, I noticed a large pit in the reentrant north, found the pit on my map, and eventually found the correct control much farther down the spur than I had been looking. D'oh.

By this time Mary Lou Hogg who'd started 12 minutes behind had caught up (she found 6 first) but I got ahead on the way to 7, thought I was attacking it well from the trail bend and watching the reentrants, but it didn't work out that way. Wandered up a much more subtle reentrant to the NW before turning back east. Saw Mary Lou heading W and figured she was coming from it and found it shortly thereafter. Bearing again off heading to 8 but got there after getting too close to the trail. Reached 9 at about the same time as Mary Lou (she'd gone too far down the road; I angled in earlier), and stayed ahead through the end, but knew it wasn't enough to be ahead in total time. Sure enough, she finished ahead by 11 minutes, putting me in third today in F65 (Janet F had another decent run, and won the two-day) ... seconds ahead of fourth place.

Frustrating, but I often have problems in low-visibility forests when I'm trying to navigate by contour features I can't see. Happy with my navigation to 1-2-3.

C • Nice Tribute 3

Brown Long - Splits

Event: GrizO Lubrecht Two-Day and Sprint
 

Event: Pacific Northwest Orienteering Festival
 

Orienteering in Montana! New O state. ;-)

PNWOF day 1, Brown middle course, 3.1 km, 70m climb, at Lubrecht Experimental Forest off Rt 200 between Bonner and Greenough, MT Temps were in the low 50s at start and upper 50s later, with intermittent light showers throughout the day.

Subtle terrain in many parts of our course made for a good navigational challenge. I'd say I finally got "into" the map by, say, control #4. ;-)

My outing today was a comedy of errors at the start, and a rescue mission between #8 and 9, with some good navigation here and here. Course was a mix of short and slightly longer legs. Lots of trails exist but were crossed rather than followed to gain speed, except to the last control.

#1 Got to the start triangle and then proceeded to head due east instead of due west. I hadn't taken the time to double-check my heading leaving the start, at the start triangle, or on the way east when I should have been going west. When I got to a control in a depression that wasn't mine (#220), and hadn't yet hit a fence crossing, I knew something was wrong, figured it out, and headed back in the opposite direction, still confused by the multitude of trails from the triangle. 10:27; 7+ minutes lost.

#2 Crossed the trail, went around the S end of the earth bank, and was still a bit N of the elongated depression before the control but knew which way to look. 3:48

#3 Due S, but I drifted right to check out another flag... 2:46; 20s

#4 Good, catching up to competitors. 3:20
#5 First one of the pack to the flag. 2:33

#6 Ran NE on trail but never confirmed where I left it, and wandered in reentrants and depressions before relocating on a E-W trail, and in. 11:14; lost several minutes here

#7 Straight shot. 1:50

#8 NE toward the open area which I hit; went off the "middle" of the northern edge to try to line up my approach to the depression due N. 3:56

#9 Stayed in the western-headed reentrant until I was just about to turn left to find the depression, when I saw an older man on his knees struggling to stand up, off to my right. It wasn't a competitor but he was out collecting mushrooms and had lost his balance and was having trouble standing, so I did what I had to do and went to see if he needed help. Quickly figured it was Boris's dad Eugene (though it took me until when I was changing afterwards to remember his name), helped him stand and get his balance, and then supported one side while he used his cane on the other to get him back to the Start area which we weren't *too* far from. Once I knew he'd get assistance there I went back to #9, passing control #220--again--on the way and having a laugh (it was one depression west of our 9, #43), and continued on the rest of the course. 16:11; probably dropped ~13 minutes or more on the detour.

#10 Followed the beeline the best I could through the thicker vegetation till I got close and could read the spur and green blobs. 7:08

#11 Out to trail, run to the junction, say hi to Clint taking photos, and in. I think I forgot to take a split.
F - trying to avoid the logs, sticks and downfall in the finish chute(!). 5:08

Total on my watch 1:08:15, 4.81 km.

C • Good for you 4

Brown NRE - Splits

First flight delayed almost an hour leaving EWR; landed about 10 min before next flight was going to depart, on the opposite end of the airport. Jogged from C13 to F14 at MSP.

We made it!