Pelican Bay

Posted Sat, September 5, 2009 - 1:21 PM
orienteering, navigation, wyoming

Skipping a day here - yesterday (Friday) we did a crazy course at the Toe, but I'll have to wait until I take a picture of the map to post it. One leg had a 160 meter climb, all at once. There was another way around, but quite a bit longer.

So anyway, here was today's "real" race course at Pelican Bay. Each day this week, more and more people have showed up. There were quite a few faces from Colorado this time, including the whole Baird family who are out visiting Graham.

September 5, 2009 Red course at Pelican Bay, near Laramie, WY. Click to enlarge.

Pelican Bay is fairly flat but has a rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. #1 was a gimme control for everyone, because you could almost see it from the start, and if you missed seeing the flag you could see runners pausing where it was. I started east towards #2 and wormed my way (slowly) through the rocks. I was trying not to read the map in too much detail since it would slow things down too much, instead just simplifying the legs as much as was possible. I ran in between the two large outcrops, both about 3-4 meters high, if not more, and then continued to find the rocky spur pointing east on my right. I descended a bit and spotted the open area on my left, with aspens dead ahead, and went a little ways farther to spike #2. #3 wasn't too hard to find, since there were two prominent outcrops directly on the line. However, I did end up getting pulled west into the wrong boulder cluster anyway, and had to backtrack east to hit the control, but it wasn't that much time lost. #4 was similar, almost but not quite a spike. The rocky knob north of the line and the aspen cluster west of the control were my guides.

Then on #5 I made my big mistake, taking a bad compass bearing out and ending up at the jumble of rocks about 200 meters northwest of the control. I wandered around a bit trying to match up the map, and the stoppage allowed me to relocate fairly quickly, at which point I sprinted past the aspens and around to the boulder just as Greg Balter and Alex Kora ran to it. Still, I'd guess about a 2-3 minute mistake here.

I kept pace with Greg and Alex through the quick succession of 6-7-8-9. Since they were close together and all on hilltops, fairly visible, a rough bearing was sufficient to get within sight, and since the other two were just ahead of me it added confidence that we all were going in the same direction. For #10, I again followed the line pretty closely, went over the rocky spur and wove around the western portion of the marsh. The green was pretty thick lower down. This allowed me to rock-hop into the partially open area and spike #10. I felt a little slow to #11, and started to drift S after passing through the green, but Greg and Alex kept me going the right way. They both pulled away as I headed SE and uphill towards #12. Again, I rock hopped and also used the two parallel cuts of open ground, which were quite distinct. I ran to the control, looked at the code - 52 - DAMN - I had 53. Perhaps I was on the other hill several dozen meters WSW. I trotted to the east, but wasn't finding what I thought I would. So I stopped, looked at my card, then fished into my pocket for the clue sheet. Guess what code was printed there? Oops, run back and punch at 52, and remind myself to double check the code-copying onto the punch card next time. I was a little perturbed by the mistake and paid for it going into #13, which I missed to the south, but when I saw the road I knew how to correct.

One thing I noticed on this course (and others, but this one particularly) is that my distance estimation is pretty good - even when I drift to one side or the other, my corrections usually end up being 90-degree turns, so I'm not overrunning controls. A 180-degree turn is not a good one to make!

14 was straight but a little slow, as there was no real easy route through and I had to read features the whole way. It got better as I went through the top of the reentrant S of the control, and ran around the rocky hilltop to the spur on the other side. And now the leg to #15 presented an easier option - cut through about 300 meters of mixed forest and rocks, then stay close to the creek and run the open area SW until it opened up to the S. I executed this one nicely, and with regained confidence, ran across to #16 (although I approached from the E side of the rocks, not ideal) and then a direct bearing up to #17. Again, I ran the open areas and counted rocks as I passed them, then made sure to identify the rocky knob just inside the pine woods and went to its right, which funneled me straight into the control at the base of a cliff. It was visible from about 50 meters away as I approached, which helped matters.

Then I felt my way north and a little east around the large hill on the edge of the map, and thrashed through the green aspens and ground juniper to catch up with Orlyn and Roger, who were battling on the green course. We punched #18 all in a row, and I overtook them crossing the swamp (now dry) and going up the hill on the other side. I almost veered too far west, but corrected when I got around the patch of white and spotted the crest of the hill. Then it was just a faast run down to the finish for a time of 54:57.

My mistakes were the big one on #5, and then maybe 45 seconds on #12, 30 seconds on #13, and some general areas where I could have run faster and more confidently than I did. But it was pretty good - Eric Bone ran 42:30, Greg Balter had low 49s, and Owen ran 52:47. Relative to the people I know, the times played out just like a local meet would have!