The aim of
the course was to train route choice on the uphills, then to do quick control picking on the downhills (which indeed had control flags). I had warned Marc it would take me 2 hours for the course, with last year's
A meet Day 1 in mind. Starting at 15:38, I expected to finish just after it got really dark.
I caught up with the next-to-last starter, Viktoria, and it cost me a little. I got to the top of the ridge just as the sun hit the main ridge of Santa Cruz mountains, across Silicon Valley from the Mt. Hamilton range. The view of the valley was awesome. I proceeded on to the second downhill sprint, and then on the last route choice. I could see well enough on the long first leg (where I saw Andrew coming back, and in hindsight, should have just cut it short and joined him), but not so well on the next, short one; lost 3 or 4 minutes there. At the end of the next leg, a long uphill slog, it got dark enough that I could not see the map, so I called it a day just short of Control 19 (marked "21" on the map).
I then proceeded down to the finish/cars, a 385-meter drop. I steered well using the faint glow of Lake Joe Grant as my beacon, and sometimes could even see the taillights of Sandra's van in the parking lot. But, I kept running into swaths of chaparral and had to correct the course, and ended up one large spur to the left of the one I should have taken, accidentally running into one of the downhill controls and picking it up.
The spur I was on terminated into a streak of dark green that lay between the main creek and the road I had to take from the finish to the cars. Had I been one spur over to the right, the dark green obstacle would not be there; but, not being able to see the map or having enough map memory, I didn't realize the correct course. Upon hitting the swath of dark green, I somehow proceeded to the left, up the main creek, and poked three times into the dark green to find a way through, the first two times unsuccessfully.
The fight with the dark green took a while and also took me well out of the way, so when I hit the main road and headed to the cars, I was not surprised to see the Cheese (with a headlamp) looking for me. He sounded borderline concerned, but I was fine. As we got back, the ranger got there and was pretty anxious about us getting out of the park. She also demanded to know exactly where I "got lost". We told her everyone was OK, and proceeded to the nearest megamall just at the other end of Quimby Road to get more yellow R1800 cartridges.
I am just about to have the actual course measured and published, so hold on a bit... the climb is straight form the Polar.