Discussion: Consensus on Control 19 ??

What's the consensus on control 19, cliff, 1m, top of ? I attacked this point 5 times from 4-5 different places, and missed each time. I succeeded only after finding from dness that he had punched at a control where the code did, indeed match. I had found the green control (#135) several times.

Looking at my QR track, I cannot even determine what mapped feature the green control was on, even though my track starts and stops there like a butterfly.

For those of you who found it without wasted effort, what strategy did you use? I saw a couple of QR tracks, but the strategy was not immediately apparent.

For those who lost time, what didn't work, and what finally worked?

The conventional wisdom I've heard is that for checking a control location, it should be reachable from 3 different attack points. (The implications of the converse, I guess, are that if different attack points don't lead you to the control, the map is not suitable for a control at that point.) I wonder from what points this control is reachable confidently (matching features, pace count, rise/fall from attackpoint, etc).

The green control was on a distinct tree. There were some issues regarding map versions between the rec/traverse courses. The map version that the rec courses were set on had the tree mapped, the newer version that was used for the traverse, and for printing no longer had the tree mapped on it.

I left the trail early, ostensibly to avoid the dark green mapped and try to hit the theoretically lighter green woods and wound up missing R and winding up by #135 (the green course control). Trying to correlate the mapped open area with what I was seeing didn't help much so I moved downhill a little bit to better 'see' the contours in open woods, then proceeded uphill to where the control actually was, and there was a lot of greenbrier in there which made the going pretty slow.

I probably would have thrown out that control site just based upon crappy woods, not on absolute accuracy of the feature, but I also understand that Jeff was constrained by using previous Traverse controls and some of the more logical control sites had apparently never been used for a traverse.

So I lost a bit of time up there, but I also realized that was a distinct possibility as I was moving through the crappy woods, so I was quite relieved to have lost less than 3 minutes.

I went up through the white woods and passed lots of features that looked kind of like the mapped one, but that weren't on the map. Eventually I got to the Green control, had no idea what feature it might be on, and just went up to the trail, followed it to the short trail stub, and went directly to the control from there. In retrospect, I can't see any reason not to have just taken the trail the whole way (although I guess I wasn't that confident that the trail stub would actually be something I could find). I did lose time on the control, but that was probably due mostly to my trudging up the hill in an unmotivated manner.

(Jeff may have been constrained to previous control locations, but I don't think that stopped him on #21.)

the control in question:


i don't have much of a nose for what should be a control, but this seemed fair to me. a big step up in technical difficult and terrain challenge than anything else on the course, but still fair.

that said, i screwed it up royally. peeled off the trail after some medium green, thinking the white gap was the trail after the dark green. didn't work so well.

#21 was the 2012 traverse control. There was no way I could find any reasonable route to the where the finish could be without putting that control there.
I am pretty convinced the map around 19 is accurate, but I have no idea why the map used did not have the distinct trees (nor any of the mapped rootstocks) on it which were used for the Green control.
The only thing I would liked to have changed was the "9" of "19" covering the trail stub intersection.

The conventional wisdom I've heard is that for checking a control location, it should be reachable from 3 different attack points

Never heard that before. Don't think I like it. How about "should be reachable from all attackpoints"? I just don't get the "3". Maybe it should be "at least three" but that isn't right either - one attack point is enough, if that is all there is.

No, the more I think about it, the less I like that rule of thumb.

I was coming up the trail with Earl, thinking I would go over the knoll on the trail and then come off the trail bend on compass. But I wasn't paying all that much attention, instead rather busy sucking the thumb I had jammed when I fell near 18. Suddenly realized I had gone too far and wasn't quite sure where I was. So Earl and I conferred and decided we were in the middle of the part of the trail where it is heading more directly south, with the darker green on the W side. The green didn't look all that forbidding, so we went due west, pace counting and looking for the knoll. We hit the knoll pretty directly, just a few steps off to our left. Around the knoll and there it was.

Knowing from experience that the vicinity of 19 regularly gives me trouble, I chose the trail stub as the most foolproof attack point. From there, pace count brought me to low-visibility woods, with no features in sight. Went a little farther and found control to my left, near a sort of a rock face to satisfy my mind (overconfident having earlier found 18 Traverse and no Recreational controls with no problem). Felt very successful until the download. I should be MP in the results.

I hung the control and had trouble finding it even though I was coming from the green control (tree, just 40 meters away!)

Jeff had streamered the base but the description was top, so I hung it high, which almost caused me to miss it during the Traverse -- I was leading bgallup to it (I left the trail at the bend and bashed through the crud -- I was planning to work from the tree, which I never saw. I went right by the rock face until Ben called me back.)

Here's a picture I took when hanging the control: https://plus.google.com/photos/instantupload/58119...

That sounds way nicer than me - I'm more of a cough-to-cover-the-SI-beep-and-slink-off type. Credit where credit is due - maybe you mean Ben Moore?

Also, it might just be me, but I can't see that picture without signing up for the googles plus.

And signing up to view a single photo is unreasonable. These days, too many requests to sign up/have user name & password. I'd have liked to see that pic & wanted to drop a comment on some blog account a while ago & the process involved with the latter was a deterrent, to say the least. Gave up in disgust.

Couldn't figure out how to see the picture. Apparently I am signed up for google+, and following the link got me to some pictures my daughter had sent me, but not to this one. Pretty weird.

Sorry -- I don't know how Google+ works even though I work for the darn company. I'll see if I can figure out how to make the picture viewable by all.

Also (sorry Ben) -- it was Keith Durand I was with, not bgallup.

- Dean

Tell me if there are problems with this link:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwxFYz8K_HVKX25sb...

That works. Control looks highly visible. Guess I needed to be there...

What would have ticked me off more about that control is that the participants had to climb 40 metres (50 if you went by the trail) and then immediately drop that elevation and probably more. Is that why they call it a 'hills traverse' - there is a lot of senseless climbing?

There was less climbing required in this Traverse than in virtually any other one I remember. Most of the controls could be navigated most easily by taking trails around. This particular climb wasn't so bad. There are plenty of much steeper places I've climbed in the BH.

Here is where the Green control was placed. One of my favorite control locations in the Blue Hills (I used it in one of the Traverses I set). Around 50 meters north of the Traverse control.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwxFYz8K_HVKdFBwR...