One of the items I continually struggle with as an orienteer/navigator for AR is route selection. It varies between; am I picking an efficient route, is this a route that has a higher probability of success, why did other competitors make those choices…surely I must be doing this wrong. I think that is the main reason I enjoy AR and orienteering, it is a live chess board where you make a move, think, check, move, and finally get a measureable result. The game lives on in your head for days.
August is a slow month for Minnesota AR, the perfect time for MNOC to hold its annual ROGAINE. A free for all point grab with no route…which means more decisions. This year’s ROGAINE was held at Jay Cooke State Park, just south of Duluth, a rugged tract bisected by the St. Louis River. My teammate, William Eddy, and I departed the Twin Cities early. Plenty of time to get organized, packed and fitted out for the trail. Two coffee stops and a restroom break later, and we are pushing it to get there by the start. We arrive with time to register, change, hastily throw our gear together and take two breaths before it’s time to go. A glance at the map gives me reason to pause. The start is in the center of the map, just like my first ROGAINE in 2007, but the river, with only two approved crossing points, splits the course into 6 points to the North, and 15 to the South. Additionally, there are three northern and four southern points that are placed at the very eastern periphery, a long distance from the start which is collocated with the eastern most river crossing. Looking closer at the eastern points, the contour lines look like a thumb print. Big hills and valleys in that direction. It was a distance runners course, or nightmare, depending on how you were feeling that morning. Do you go long and save some close points for picking up at the end if time allows, or do you grab the close points and see if you have enough in the tank to make a decision mid course. William and I decide on the latter.
The countdown to start begins and we concur that we should start north, work in a loop to the West, cross the river at the western bridge and work our way back east, zigzagging between points. I’ve got the map, William has the passport and clue sheet. I am not a big fan of following competitors to points, so we push out hard to get in front of the others who made the same decision to pursue CP3 first. We head east via the trail and find our attack point. I give William a direction; he heads in to the ferns with me close on his tail. Fifteen feet in I take a log to the shin and let loose with a colorful announcement of our location. We are ahead of the pack, but I think I will be limping/bleeding the remainder of the event. We find our first three CPs with no real problems. The park has some great terrain and elevation changes that make things a little easier to orient. We hit the road and head off to the bridge. It is still fairly early in the morning, 9:30 or so, and the heat is already pouring on. Running on the asphalt is not enjoyable. We cross the river, find our trail, and are back on the hunt. Nice distinctive ridges make great handrails and we quickly find our next point. We head to the nearby railroad track and start enjoying a snack. Two minutes later and I realize that I didn’t give William a distance to pace, and I didn’t start counting. Like I said, lots of terrain features to guide from…. Hmmm that ridge looks like it could be this one, or this one, or maybe this one. A quick jog 200 meters in each direction and I think I know where we are at. The next CP has a nice catching feature, so we should be OK. Turns out that we were correct and we quickly grab our 5th point about 90 minutes in to the course. Leaving the point behind us, we travel 150 yards and William stops me. He doesn’t have the passport! How do you backtrack through a field of ferns? We try, but it is impossible. So, we vet the course. We found point 21 three times. I can confidently state that it is in the correct location! However, we still have no passport. Today’s packs are really nice. They are light, comfortable, and have a lot of features like sleeves for water bladders, and lots of pockets…. Now we both feel a little sheepish. William for placing the passport in a “different” pocket, and me for not asking him if he was sure he put it in the correct pocket. Oh well, 15 minutes out of the 6 hour event isn’t too bad….
We push through another two points when I make my next small blunder. I broke Rule #1, don’t be a follower. We come to a ridge, I want to go North, where my gut tells me the point is located, but another team is coming from the South. There are no other points further south than this, but these are good orienteer’s. I head south and waste 5 minutes looking for a non-existent point. So we go North, quickly find the point and continue our journey until it is decision time. (The good orienteers admitted later they were a bit off course…) There are 4 points far to the east, and 5 in the direction of the start point. Looking at the terrain, we aren’t sure we can get out that far and back, plus we are low on water. Problem solved. We head North with me again questioning our initial route selection. We head for point 16, a stream intersection. As we near our attack point, the trail turns to water, then back to trail, then back to water. Odd. We reach our attack point and head in. Chin high ferns and brush…..and water, everywhere. Nothing that resembles a field with two small streams is anywhere in sight. More like a marsh sprinkled with hidden holes and a few gaps in the brush. We slog through our pace count, taking several baths and continually announcing our location with colorful language. I am lost, everything looks the same, and the brush is high enough that I can’t get a bearing on the surrounding features. Then someone colorfully announces their location, and we catch a glimpse of orange in there direction. Now we have the control, but are faced with the same problems getting out. Who chose this place for a park anyway… We emerge on our trail and find ourselves among competitors for the first time since the start. I don’t like that so we take off up the nearest hill and knock off the next three points before meandering to the water drop. We have 90 minutes remaining, one more close point, and then back to the start. We find the control, then back track, pick up the trash at the watering station and head to the bridge. What are we going to do? 65 minutes to go and nothing reasonably close. We stop on the bridge to enjoy the view. This is why they located the park here…. We head back to the start to check in. 15 out of 21 points, I guess that will have to do. It doesn’t seem right.
Jerritt confirms that it isn’t right…. We should try a little harder. I take some measurements and see that the closest control is a 4.5 mile loop with a lot of hills. We can do an 8k with some bushwhacking and control hunting in sixty minutes, can’t we??? We both know we are a bit goofy to try, but head out anyway. Long story short, we spent about 5 minutes longer than we should have looking for the control, but found it and stumbled back down the scorching asphalt, making it back with 90 seconds to spare. Sixteen controls and first place in the 2-person open category, a first time occurrence for us both. My legs are still bearing the bruises and scrapes, but it was well worth it.
Back to the issue of route selection; did we make the correct choices? It is really difficult to say. I think for our fitness level and ability, we made an initial choice that turned out to be correct. We maximized the number of points that we could collect and left everything out on the course. I don’t think that we could have collected an additional control if you eliminated our mistakes. Was that a factor in our placement? That is the beauty of orienteering; you never know what sort of difficulties the other teams have, or just how lucky you are. The only way to get resolution on that question is to compete again.
My thanks to the organizers for putting on another great MNOC event.
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