1. | +00:10 | Warm day so taking it a little easy out of the start. Missed just slightly low. | |||||
2. | +00:45 | Fast down to trail around dart in to really close, but missed right about 20 meters and checked out the dot knoll and boulder beyond it before coming back. It looks like Ron picked out a nicely faded bag for this one. | |||||
3. | Over hilltop, diagonal down, up left side of wide valley, then rough bearing in vaguely picking up rock lines. | ||||||
4. | Up toward road, trail looked good and I was sick of the green-white (little did I know how much more was to come...), trails to bend nearest bag, then careful bearing in. Looked for and didn't see platform to my right. Did see double shallow reentrant, and bearing sent me straight into the thicket. When I saw the bag, I thought it was misplaced, because there was no platform. But I guess, under the 4-8ft high briars, maybe there was... | ||||||
5. | Up, pushed right by veg. Along road a bit just to make sure I wasn't right of the big trail. Then up until I hit the big trail, then to the bend, then in. Saw Clem leaving area. | ||||||
6. | A few glimpses of Clem ahead, as he went a little left and me a little right. | ||||||
7. | +00:30 | Contoured out, down road. Not gaining much on Clem if at all. He stayed on road longer than I wanted to, so I cut in (late) for the little clearing (:15), then missed the angle to the ditches (:15) before following them down to the control. I thought I'd lose time to Clem here, but apparently he either lost some near the end, or hesitated, because I could again see him leaving the bag area. | |||||
8. | +00:15 | Nailed the platform as Clem missed left. Stood around scratching my head trying to figure out if it was mapped or not. Stepped off into reentrant to confirm the size/shape of the reentrant, and there was a bag hiding behind a thicket, not visible from the platform itself. While the bags were generally hard to find today, this one even violated the find-the-feature-first then-you-can-see-the-flag rule. | |||||
9. | +08:00 | Trails right. Might have been okay if forest hadn't been green removing cutoff options, and if the trail bend attackpoint hadn't been moved (trail was re-routed with multiple switchbacks. Where was the original bend???) Lots of looping on vague tracks through the briars trying to read stuff. Bailed toward 10 hoping to find the elephant trail leading back to 9. Found a track looked back, didn't see 9. Decided to keep bailing and there was a bag in front of me. | |||||
10. | Bearing out, very careful bearing (tree-sighting) and pace in. Stopped about 20 meters right of the bag, looked around, saw Orange. And Red. Clem was coming in, having made an 8 minute error on this one. It's rare for either of us to make a >2 minute error, but for two 8-minute errors, close enough to be back within seconds of our split delta two controls ago? Whoa. | ||||||
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F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:09:40