Day 3 of the Rocky Mountain O' Festival dawned with great promise: overcast, cool, and a forecast of a few days ago of total sunshine altered to a forecast as of the morning paper of a day with high chances of scattered showers and such. Not exactly Rocky Mountain-like summer weather, but you go with the flow, right?
And so the great horde assembled for the Start anyway, and dutifully watched as the Daze clock designated that the appointed start time of 10:00 had arrived, and off the horde were (using Brexit language now)!
For a while a long train of runners remained visible, snaking its way towards #1. Then the lead runners disappeared out of site briefly and then reappeared, as they began crossing a marshy meadow of deep grass many hundreds of meters below the start/finish/spectating area (well, at least it seemed like they were hundreds of meters lower.) And then one of the spectators excitedly pointed towards control #2, which was visible in the distance on the opposing valley side; somehow one runner had broken free of the pack and had opened up a substantial lead of at least 600-700m. It seemed impossible, but then we could all see the power and grace of the runner as he moved up the hill, and so we understood. But then the lead runner took off in a direction that was quite bizarre and we started to wonder. And not too long after that it ran off the map, though it remained yet in plain sight of the spectators. It was about then that someone asked: "Is there any chance it could be a moose? It has 4 legs and it kind of looks like a moose. Maybe it's a moose and not the lead runner."
At that point it became clear: it was a moose.
Unfortunately, not all was merriment and fun: our Day 4 course setter, Graham Baird, injured himself on the way to #2 and had to abandon the course. He had hurt his ankle, and by the time he was back up top at parking, he had a knot on the side of his ankle about the size of a medium orange, accompanied by some considerable pain. So it was off to the hospital at once, where it was determined he had an avulsion fracture of the ankle, and not long after that he had a walking cast of the ankle. Very unfortunate, and Graham did some terrific work getting courses prepared for Day 4 (tomorrow.) You can send him well wishes via his AP log at X8A7.
From there, things became random, and eventually (but not related to X8A7's injury) the results service entered a zone of increasing chaos, culminating in total failure when the Daze Clock--which has given such good service for so many years--failed altogether. Thus, the partial results below must be viewed with considerable skepticism that any degree of accuracy or coherence has been retained.
Partial Results, Day 3 at Devils Claw, 7.7 km, 14 controls, mucho climbo, cool overcast conditions with some mosquito defeating breeze:
1 Nick Barrable 58.06
2 Eric Bone 61.07
3 Alison Crocker 64.43
4 Aidan Minto 71.07
5 Aron Walker 74.55
6 Ted Good 76.18
7 Pete Pacque 78.51
8 Rick Breseman 80.01
9 Ian Harding 83.11
12 Tom Herrnstein 91.22
13 Cristina Luis 91.38
14 Charlie Shahbazian 94.01
10 Sarah-Jane Barrable 97.44
11 Pete Curtis 98.21
15 Rob Minto 100.54
RMOC member Lisa Seaman took some great photos at Devil's Claw (and also at Saturday's National Event at Twin Boulders). Photo gallery links are posted on our
Results & Photos page.
ALSO -- Sverre Froyen has arranged for live results to be available in the download / snacks area on Saturday, Sunday & Monday. Look for the login details posted on the download van, and then direct your browser to 192.168.0.100.