Discussion: 3 things

1) Scalex is always going to be lower than actaul distance with a lose GPS track on the map and with a 1:50,000 scale. Not all the little wiggles are displayed on the map.

2) Tecnu made a wrong turn before the turn you mention that most top teams over shot. Because of our earlier error, we were at the turn you mentioned by ourselves without the pressure of the other fast guys and were the first ones to blaze the trail through the overgrown swampy section.

3) I was wanting to take that shortcut to cut off the 2 kms of riding, but was afraid it would be slower with the cliffs around the train tracks and swampy land, but sounds like neither was an issue.

1) I am wondering if we should have marked up more intermediate distances to sort of reset the accumulated error, that might have helped. Mostly glad we panicked when we did. I had some trouble with short distances at an Infiterra race in MI, but the map and terrain made it easy to keep track your location.

2) Thanks for knocking the grass down! That was tough to spot

3) If we were biking strong, we were probably going to go around. But I was happy to hike a bike. Plus we heard a team scouting that at least the way down was feasible, so we just had to hope for a way back up.

1)... Yeah with all the time we had with our maps we had 500m - 2km segments marked out.

Wow! What a crazy time, that's some amazing stuff. Good on ya for making it out alive. Here I am complaining about spider webs, sheesh. :)

They had those too! And rattlesnakes.

And bears.

Do you guys find the Scalex a useful tool, say compared to string, ruler or visual estimate? Is it worth the $45?