Green Corn Moon Rogaine – 08/05/2017

Stats:  time – 6:10:29 (10 minutes late); distance: 22.25Km; Total Ascent: 882m. 630 points (730 minus 100 penalty).

 

GPS route (long arrows mark moving direction; time splits shown)

2017 was the third straight year I was doing the 6h half-light, half-dark Green Corn moon Rogaine by NSF Adventures, and the first time I soloed. The first two times, I did it with my son, Gomeh, who is not interested in navigation, just in the companionship.

This Rogaine takes place in Great Seal State Park, just outside Chillicothe, OH, about 40 minutes south of Columbus. The park is small and can be roughly divided into a compact north part and a somewhat vaster south part, which are connected by a narrow, steep bottleneck in the middle. The start/finish shelter is located roughly in the middle of the north part, and crossing to collect controls in the south part requires a steep climb through that bottleneck, as does the return to the north afterwards. And each of the parts has its share of hilly hills, which make for an arduous collection of ups and downs.

 

Last rites before the start

In the two previous years, we took different, humble strategies that concentrated on attainable controls in the north, center, and proximal areas of the south part. The advantage was that we could collect surefire controls near the hash house at a decent pace before heading south for dessert. The problem each time was that it is a rather long way back from the south (>1h), and we had to give up and go earlier than later in order not to arrive late.

Based on these past experiences, my rationale this time was to conquer the whole south early enough (within ≤4h) and then come back north (~1h) and collect controls until quarter to. Being within 10-15 minutes of the hash house near finish time, I thought, would allow me maximum flexibility to collect as many controls as time permits without having to overestimate a prolonged retreat. My strategy, as always, was to chart a sweep – the planned control sequence is written in red at the top and right edges of the map – and then drop everything when time is running out and hurry to the finish. I could say “little did I know”, but I really know that this is an unrealistic plan for my fitness level. However, it is my best way to test my limits.

An important comment: many of the trails on the map are drawn tentatively if not haphazardly, as we learned in past years and as the gps track here shows, again. Some run parallel at a different contour, as far as 50-75m off the mapped feature, some bends are subtler on the ground compared to the map and vice versa, and some junctions are mispositioned, as well. That means that trail features should be used as attack points at your own peril. Whenever possible, trust only terrain features. Easier said than done, and then some…

62 – a disastrous first control.  The plan was simple: take a direct bearing and step count from the start, ignore trails, just go for contour features, identify reentrant at the approximate pace count, climb up, punch. In and out, right? My problem, which I must correct once and for all, is that instead of sticking to tried and true math and geometry, when I see other teams heading in a direction different than mine, I lose confidence in my skill and “correct” towards their trajectory; and I never seem to learn that most don’t know better, and my compass does not lie.  And so it happened that several teams headed in several directions that categorically did not agree with mine, and I chose to abandon my methodical approach midway and “goat” them. At the end it took many futile ups and downs along several parallel reentrants and spurs and 23m for what should have been a 4m quickie. Live and learn; or don’t… 19 minutes lost, and I didn’t even warm up.

43, 53, 72, 42, 52 – After the botched first control, I sobered up and actually got into rhythm, knocking down the next planned controls at a steady clip. Still made minor errors that kept adding up lost time; this will bite me in the rear towards the end.  A quick recap:

43 – Perhaps I should have collected 32 on the way, but I skipped for now, as it seemed more in flow with the back end, which never happened due to lateness. On the way, missed the straight uphill and ended up on the serpentine road up, adding distance; the control itself, on the spur directly opposite the trail jxn, was a quick in’n’out spike.

53 – Once reaching the summit, I saw Todd (COAR) with his dogs, looking for the control below the steep contours on the other side, and followed; the control ended up much closer to the summit, making the initial descent and corrective steep ascent wasteful. Note how the gps track going up runs 100m parallel to the trail on the map, a major mapping discrepancy.

 

Doggies at 53

72 – took two attacks to find: one on the way in – I was too high; a second one from the trail jxn to the east, joined shortly by the Mintos (Large Orange Hedge). The gps shows that the control was roughly within 20m of the center of the circle, so it was likely a combination of sloppy bearing and unwillingness to go too low to look for the control and then climb all the way back.

 

72

A Large Orange Hedge at 72

42 – an easy attack from the trail junction. However, on the ground, there were many parallel mini-spurs. This time, I stuck to my bearing and spiked it, hidden in thick vegetation, leaving other teams in the area to make their mistakes w/o following them. Note the incongruity of the trails north of the control with the gps track; the turn south indeed appeared about 100m short on the pace count. The gps tracks from previous years confirm the inaccurate mapping.

42

52 – Easy nav. A perennial control/water station in every one of the races we did here at the absolute bottleneck of the course. Just a nasty 260ft (80m) climb.

 

Tony (NSF Adventures) keeping vigil at 52

Punching 52

Going south – In the two previous years, our southern ventures in the park have been limited to whatever we could capture on the SE. This time, I decided to go big. The idea was to descend the steep hill on the northeast side, move south and to the road, collecting all nearby controls, crossing the road to sweep the SW section and retreat through Rocky Road.

71 – South on Tower Road to the triple jxn/private property boundary. From there, a bearing down the hill/reentrant, straight at the control at the bottom of a streamside spur.

61 – The streamside trail is, again, slightly mismapped. I first took a rough bearing to reach it, hitting it right down from a bend. The upper arrow points to where the gps track changes color from red – slow bushwhack – to blue and yellow – faster ambulation by trail – which I mistook for the 90° east-to-south bend north of the control. A coed team of three were also looking for the control, and I was again tempted by their misjudged off-trail foray, searching in vain for a short while. I quickly realized that I needed to trust only myself, and descended back to the trail, this time hitting the correct bend (lower arrow; although notice how the trail on the ground goes in a different direction than on the map. Together with another two-girl team, we counted two reentrants – one big and one not too shabby either –and climbed the next spur, almost immediately spotting the control up ahead.

 

Me at 61

30 –  Jogged the streamside trail south (green/blue track). At the 2nd trail jxn, frog serenades disclosed the pond’s location. I veered off trail, circled the pond, and punched.

35 – A quick descent to Lick Run Road. Jogged up west to the south trailhead parking lot. Up a short climb one spur too west (I could see trail #11 just below me). The raised edges to my east disclosed the pond’s location. Control was on its southern shore.

 

35

70 – Crossed Lick Run to the parking lot. A direct bearing from the trailhead. Halfway up the spur, mistook the bearing to suggest that the control is on the next spur to the NW, and changed spurs. Gps track now shows that this was a mistaken calculation. Anyhow, climbed up some more on the wrong spur only to hear clatter from the original spur I climbed earlier. Looked back and saw the control. There was the same coed trio that co-misjudged 61 w/ me earlier.

 

The tortuous route to 70. Arrows clarify direction of movement 

The light-headed descend on 70

80, no cigar and a major time-sucking blunder – It was now time for the highlight of the evening, and major bragging rights. I originally estimated that if I get #80 within 3h of the start, I have a good chance of actually close to clearing the course. When I left 70, it was just 2h:37m in, so the dream was still alive. But it was getting dark fast and that’s a game changer for me for the worst. I still had to climb up a few trails to get to the P jxn and head to 80. The coed trio was also headed that way, but not for 80, just to the northern 60 and 50. In a slight misstep, we climbed the southern serpentine trail, instead of the northern straightahead one, but other than that, uneventful. At the top, they took north and I headed towards 80, half jogging. Halfway through this last trail, it was 3h in. Right on time. A coed duo was jogging up back from 80.

The coed trio run ahead of me on the trail after 70. 

The idea was to count reentrants from the point the trail turns south, and hit the small spur after the second reentrant down to its bottom end, where the control should be. As the track shows, the trail was not that badly mapped, but I had several problems that doomed this leg. First, I misjudged where the trail turns from west to south. The gps track shows that the bend was distinct, but for an unknown reason, on the ground with a compass, I only noticed it about 100-150m in, and was therefore shifted one reentrant to the south. Second, with complete dark hitting, it was very hard for me to visually determine reentrants. Based on the trail shown to cross the top part of the reentrants, I was counting on each to reflect as a dip in the trail, and every subsequent spur as a crest. However, on the ground, the trail ran above the reentrant line and the slight dips and rises were suggestive at best. Long story short, I headed down a spur too far. Three things that should have alerted me to my mistake were: 1. This spur was much flatter and wider than it should be – I noticed that, but ignored the interpretation. 2. The compass direction down the spur was significantly off – I attributed that to the width of the spur and my inability to tell the crest line in the dark.  3. If nothing else, the spur continued and flattened out far beyond the step count to its expected exchange into a deep reentrant – I misinterpreted this too.

When I finally realized I was off, my plan was to head down to the pondside trail network to the west and reorient from the dead end of the eastern trail. However, having been distracted by my error, I continued to veer south and hit a No Trespass sign, meaning I was at the park boundary. By the direction of the sign, facing north, it was clear that I hit the south boundary, which confused me; I did not expect being that far south. Moreover, the track shows that I was considerably east of the trails, but I wrongly assumed I must be west of them. So I headed east, but no trail, just dense vegetation; in hindsight, of course… In short, I was totally lost, and to top it off, my quads started cramping. At this point, I decided to simply head back. Knowing I was near the south boundary, I headed north. When I hit the east-pointing reentrant, I thought for a second I am back in the hunt, but to my detriment second-guessed myself and argued that it might equally be the one further to the north. The track shows that on my way up the reentrant, I passed no more than 40m from the control, but I was too deflated to look around and check; anyhow, the whole area was steep-walled and hard to move or see around; if I only kept some level head…

 

The blunder at 80. Horizontal arrows depict direction of movement. The set of vertical arrows on the right recaps the back and forth indecision after returning to the trail.

Not to make it easy on myself, when I finally got back to the trail, I thought I’d give this a second chance. I ran back to the curve, and then counted reentrants again. The spur looked too familiar, undermining my confidence, so I repeated the back to the curve-back to the spur once more. Still unsure, and with the depth of the descent ahead of me plus the lateness – it was now 3h:50m in –I finally gave up. Based on my analysis of the track, I estimate that I wasted 50 minutes on this control with nothing to show. At this point, I started to realize that the northern controls are a pipe dream.

50 – I was still determined to collect the remaining controls on the SW section. If anything, they were not that far off from the road out of that block anyhow. First to 50. Based on my measurement w/ the compass, I expected the control to be about 40m from the trail jxn on the east. A quick bearing from the intersection, but nothing. I really had no gas to go further down than I need and then up, but I cautiously continued further down. It was ~80m from the jxn. Based on the gps track, this is probably a combination of the trail being ~20m up from where it is mapped, and the control being ~20 down than the circle on the map.

60 – Another 600m NW on the trail, another jxn, a quick bearing into the reentrant bank.

40, a game-time forfeit – In the intro to the race NSF warned to be very careful if attacking 40 from above due to a dangerous cliffy situation. There were three ways to go: 1. Clockwise around the hillside trail, not gaining elevation; however, the distance was prohibitive – scratch. 2. Not to repeat oneself, take the ridge trail; however, that involved an unnecessary ascent to the summit before descending again to the saddle – scratch. 3. A dogleg back to 50, then a climb up the trail, a short hike south and then cutting shortly off-trail to the returning part of the trail on the ridgeline – √.

When I arrived at the ridgeline trail and peered down, it was scary-steep. That alone would be a route choice killer at nighttime, and combined with the cliff warning, it was a scratch. So I continued a short while north and took the spur sloping east to the hillside trail. I then hiked this trail SW to the point it bent south. As can be seen, this bend was about 75m off where it was mapped. In any case, I took a presumptive bearing and headed off to 40, only to be walled off by dense vegetation. I tried three times, with the same outcome. So with the time crunch already being more than I could afford, and considering that this could be another off-trail wanderlust, I scratched that. I was later told by Aidan Minto that they simply took a bearing from the ridgeline trail bend – the same one I used to descend the spur – and saw no evidence of dangerous cliffs. Oh, well. I ran back to the spur and headed down to Lick Run Road. In my haste, I did not pay attention, and headed down SE instead of east, probably losing me another 3 minutes… Combined with the 9 minutes lost circling around to 40, the three off-trail attempts, and back, this misadventure at 40 was a 100pt-worth miscalculation (penalty for being 10.5 minutes late).

 

40. Shown are the three route options discussed and the actual location of the trail bend below the control. 

Home stretch – It was time to retreat at the fastest possible pace. A grueling task. I still collected 51 on an easy bearing from the trail jxn below. Another micro error was attempting to save elevation by contouring from 51 to a higher point on the trail. However, deadfall was too thick, and I eventually had to descend to the trail anyhow, losing me even more time I did not have. Trail #7 went around the hill forever and then Rocky Road was a leg-busting steady uphill. In hindsight, perhaps going straight up through the ridgeline, even picking 41 on the way, would have been more time-efficient. It involved a slightly shorter route and two brutal, but shorter ascents compared to the moderate, but frustratingly protracted ascent through #7 and Rocky Road.  Finally, the long downhill slog to the finish was upon me. I still tried to smart out sections, like cutting straight through the serpentine trail between G and E. This saved about 2.5 minutes compared to the full descent on the trail last year. However, with more focus I could have saved more, as at several points, I was concerned that I might have already hit the main intersecting trail and further descent will get me deep in the stream below, so I had to run checks to the switchbacks and back. In addition, I was able to avoid the other serpentine trail near 43, saving me a few more minutes.  This did not suffice. I was still late by 10.5 minutes.