Hills, Hills, and More Hills

Posted Sat, May 2, 2009 - 8:39 PM
orienteering, navigation

Today was a perfect, sunny weekend day for a meet along the hills and bluffs at Afton. Today's setter was Gedas Adomavicius, who is starting to get a reputation as a setter of technically difficult courses. The steep relief at Afton added a physical challenge as well, with a 5.4% grade on the red course. I wore the Active Ankle again, over tucked-in pants to avoid ticks, and had a run I'd probably rate 6-of-10, with no major mistakes, some minor mistakes, and a considerable amount of walking up the steep parts.

May 2, 2009 Red course at Afton. Click to enlarge.

Just like last year at Sand Dunes, Gedas set a middle-distance style course. It was 6.6 km with 20 controls, divided into three clusters separated by long runs - one in the detailed terrain in the NE of the park, one in the reentrant system to the W, and one in the valleys near Trout Creek. We had a remote start at the bottom of the hill to reduce the overall length, and I started several minutes after Leif running up the trail towards the campground to catch the small trail along the base of the hill. I angled up and hit #1 in the second reentrant, then down to the north of the gullies, across the trail and up to #2. I attacked #3 from the trail bend, but accidentally entered one reentrant to the east, so I had to track back west, although I saw the control by the time I had climbed up out of the lower area. Instead of doglegging back to that reentrant on the way to #4, I ran the trail until just before the stream (really just a dry trench) and turned east along the south edge, staying up on the flat area. This had the advantage that I could spot #4 from a distance.

I ran along the edge of the open area north and turned into #5, with an easterly approach. On reflection, a westerly route would also have been good and saved some climb. I used the trail to get up the hill to #6, and then over the broad spur to #7. I was passing numerous people at this point, but didn't keep track of who most of them were. On the way to #8, I took a northerly approach and cut around as far as the E-W trail, since the vegetation west of the N-S trail was very thick. I could have also gone the south route and climbed up the reentrant, but the map showed (and I knew) that it was quite rocky, and at this point I also wasn't willing to throw out any elevation advantage I had. This split was just under 6 minutes.

#9 was also a little slow, because I chose to run NW along the south side of the reentrant and, cut the corner across the prairie over the N side of the hill at the trail junction. The prairie grasses were thicker and slower than I expected, and after getting more than halfway, I wished I had just taken the trail instead. But I was committed, so I continued on the route, caught the curving trail around the N-S reentrant, and spotted #9 easily together with Jim Mullin and a couple other runners. This was an 8-1/2 minute split.

#10 was straightforward but thick, and #11 was a very nice 2-minute run as I caught a deer trail through the open rough and approached the control from the NW. #12 had some interesting open reentrant/spur run that reminded me of Missouri terrain, but rapidly thickened up near the trail. So instead of thrashing on along the side-slope, I ran to the trail just behind Chuck and ran S through the four-way intersection until the next practical attack point. About 200 meters down I angled left off the trail to the base of the hill, spotted the mouth of the big reentrant system to my left and ran (blind) up and over the shoulder to within about 10 meters of the control. I was pretty happy with this leg, a total of 4:13 - but we'll have to see others' splits to see if it paid off.

I doglegged back south to get to the base of the hill ASAP, and then ran the trail to the end of the open area and crossed the creek to the base of the other hill. I was relying on the hill and the creek to funnel me to the correct re-entrant, which worked perfectly. Then it was a quick side-slope run to the end of the long spur and #15. But I faced another long leg with little route choice - it was mainly up the steep hill, or around? Since I was lagging at this point and wouldn't have been able to sustain a long run (although flat) at a pace I'd want, I opted for the hill. I basically had to walk most of the way up, not just from the slope, but also the fairly thick vegetation. Luckily, that meant there were a lot of trees to hang on to and use to recruit my arm strength for the ascent.

However, it was a flat leg once I got to the top of the hill, and I rapidly recovered a good pace along the trail, then cutting the corner on the prairie with much lower grass and very good speed. I passed Todd S on the trail going down to #16, put the burners on downhill but hit the wrong gully after leaving the trail and had to hop a few meters north to the control. Then I went down into the creek valley, ran along it for a short time and angled up to catch the almost-gully about 10 meters below the control. I punched a couple seconds before Matthias, and continued uphill across the trail to the open area, then used the tree line boundaries to estimate where to drop into #18. I hit the top of the dry ditch perfectly and half ran, half slid down through a mess of young trees to the control. I passed Waima coming the opposite direction, down the reentrant and across the trail, then aiming off slighly south to #19 at the creek. Then it was just a hump up the hill to the GO control on the power pylon. The run to the finish seemed like it was slow motion, but I survived to finish with a time of 1:09:17.

Leif has been profiting from his biathlon training, methinks - but that's not to disparage his orienteering ability too - he posted a time of 63 minutes and reported only a couple minor mistakes. Justin completed the course in a little over 67 minutes, but didn't have a record of punching #4 even though he must have run right by it. Stephen R continued his good performance this season with a 71-minute time, and Ian and Todd battled it out in the 73-74 minute range to round out the top five.

I really like this style of course, with a balance of short and long legs that force you to switch modes. I think I was actually slowed down by the switch needed at #7 and made some less than optimal route choices on my way over the the west side of the park. So that's something to work on.