Training Log Archive: JonD

Patuxent - I did red because I got to the meet late and wanted to ensure finishing by 3

biggest mistakes were on 6 and 10. 6 was supposed to be a distinctive tree in a small patch of woods between 2 fields. I thought the control description said it was a pine tree so I was looking for evergreen foliage. When I didn't find it, i lost confidence and went back out to the field only to return to nearly the same spot. finally found the tree, but if that was a pine tree it was completely dead as I saw no green on it. quite frankly I didn't see anything distinctive about this tree either.

10 was a metal water standpipe (or something like that) among other such items in the woods next to a field. I misread the map in an area around a trail that entered the field, and thus kept looking for the control in the wrong area. Kind of a dumb mistake because the mapped terrain was not matching what i was seeing so it should have been obvious I was in the wrong spot, but it was subtle rolling terrain which I am bad with. I like big obvious hills and reentrants. I think i made exactly the same mistake here at the A meet years ago.

My only other nav mistake was on 18, the last control, where a narrow strip of pine tree plantation between two open fields was mapped as a distinctive vegetation boundary surrounding an area colored like an open field (yellow). I guess that was shown as an 'open field' because it was easy to move between the pine trees because there was no undergrowth, but I still thought type of forest was shown as dark green in other spots on the map. that confused me for about 30 seconds, until I figured it out.

Red - Splits

the old island loop w/out gps

Arg - severe pain in right foot