Race Evaluation
LAOC B Meet, Mt. Piños: Day 1: Red
Tundra/Desert
| 1. | Spent some time folding the map and stuffing it into my own personal map case, running on a trail. As soon as I got to the business of navigating, I felt late responding to the terrain. But I went to where my first idea of where the countrol might be indicated, and it was there. | ||||||
| 2. |
Did not check features en route Underrated difficulty Confused parallel features Bad distance judgement Not thinking clearly Lacked concentration +03:35 | Two errors. Chose a high, easy, trail route, since I knew the sage on the slope was undermapped. While on the trail, I did not look much at the relief features. I was planning to attack from a trail bend, and as soon as one came with the correct direction, I did. Unfortunately, it was one bend, 150 m, and one major reentrant system too early. As soon as I got into the reentrant, I checked out most rock features I could see. then stood still, blaming myself for idiocy instead of working with the map. Kelly Wells was also there. Finally, I decided to speed-relocate and went up the reentrant, back to the trail I came from. This loop was about 3'10, judging by the HR. I found enough stuff to confirm my parallel error while doing the last portion of this loop. Then, I went to the next trail bend, next reentrant, and looked for the control at the first rock feature I saw (with Mark Blair). The bag was actually one down—another 25 seconds lost. | |||||
| 3. | |||||||
| 4. | Saw Hannu who was lost and upset. | ||||||
| 5. | Trail, up the mountain all the way, by #10, then down through the saddle. I chose this route because I had been lost on this hillside in 2001, and knew that going straight demanded a level of skill and luck above my navigational capability. I caught up with Joel Thomson after the saddle leading to #5. | ||||||
| 6. | Up, to the left of the marsh; climbed the hillside above the marsh because I knew from 2001 that the hillside was s_l_o_w. Then came into the control almost level. | ||||||
| 7. |
Underrated difficulty Did not like map +06:20 | Went E and noticed that I was over a minute ahead of Joel Thomson. Climbed up the hill, at the N tip of its topmost contour. So far so good. Then, a bit down; misinterpreted the (mismapped) open and went down a shallow reentrant N of the control, thinking that my spur was the one E of that reentrant. The spur was too shallow, so I went on, and on some more, and on. Finally I stopped, understanding nothing (but still short of the trail); I could see hills/knolls all around me and there weren't any on the map. I panicked and decided to relocate off the area to the N, thinking I'd find the steep onset of the slope. I did, found a rock pile and exactly where it was, and proceeded SW , SE, SW to the control. Joel Thomson told me he ended up N of #7 as well, and he made map corrections after Plamen and had set the 2001 event! | |||||
| 8. |
No attack point Did not check features en route +01:40 | Pissed, rushed to the spur #8 was on; did not read anything on approach and just dumped myself into the spur. Got there, found a little reentrant just NE of the circle but did not see it on the map. Went NE (should go somewhere...), saw the beginning of the dropoff in the spur, turned around, got it. | |||||
| 9. | |||||||
| 10. | |||||||
| 11. | Took the paved road and then trails into the control. Finally caught up with Joel Thomson, again. | ||||||
| 12. | The start people (Ron Hudson) were still there, waiting for me to finish and do my Green run! | ||||||
| 13. | |||||||
| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:11:35