Discussion: Day 2 blue

I'm interested in your comments, Greg, though I think you're a little hard on us. We certainly did not try and make the courses easy to keep people happy. I felt that there were considerable technical challenges there, and to make things harder would have meant putting controls in bland areas, vague slopes, or such, and given that we had considerable problems with the map, I don't think those sort of controls would have been fair. We all tend to design the sort of courses that we personally would like to run, and I freely admit that I enjoy twisting, turning, control picking sections of courses more than long route-choice legs, which I find rather dull. Most of all I enjoy variety, though. It is hard to come up with a course on the Dutchman map in which the majority of optimum routes are not straight. You have to set up a few route choice legs. That's what I was aiming to do, while keeping the courses in the more technical, runnable areas. Maybe I miscalculated some of the route choices, as it seems most people took the same routes. 13-14 had many options. 14-15 had three main options for passing the cinder cone, and I don't think that dropping to the meadow to the right, as most people did, was a good one. Having one option close to the edge of the map was a little naughty. 11-12 I miscalculated, as I don't know of anyone who climbed through the saddle, though this was not a bad choice (I've timed it). I thought some would use the road for an easier approach to 7, but I don't know of anyone who did, although several missed the control. Anyhow, I'd be very curious to see what you feel to be a good course on this map.