Training Log Archive: Snailtrail

Event: Nitrogaine IV
 

5.5h drive each way. Racing all night, literally. Mosquitos galore. No marsh wading despite the warnings; feet got wet anyhow during a 1.5h torrential rain towards the end. Top that off with having to read a map through a rain-soaked protective sheet using a fading headlamp with drop-covered, fogged glasses. Call me crazy, but Rogaining is THE hobby to test your mental and physical limits.

Crazy or not, I am not crazy enough to do night rogaines solo. Neither is Phill Wadsworth, so we teamed up for this one. Drove up from Pittsburgh Saturday at noon, and we carpooled from Avon Lake, OH to Pontiac Lake, Michigan for the fourth installment of Nitrogaine – an 8h all-nighter from 10pm to 6am. We made a great team and got along great, despite my spank-worthy penchant for stupid errors (see below), and finished with spirits as high as we started. The icing was that despite at least 85 minutes lost to these unforced errors, we arrived 6th out of 16 with 1,430 points. Four teams were pretty untouchable, so I count that as 2nd place in the mortal division. Either the 6.5h of solid rogaining made up for the dismal 1.5h scrambles, or the others scrambled more than us; and there were a lot of scramblable opportunities.

Our start was very promising and error-free to the degree of inducing complacency. Within the first hour we covered 3.9Km and nabbed 8 (eight!) controls for 320 points: 29, 26, 65, 33, 81, 43, 35, 42 (ignore #27; it belongs to the quarter-Nitro course only). The first two were simple, trail-adjacent, but the other required solid, albeit not grueling off-trail skills, most with easy catchment features to alleviate the fear of missing or overshooting. I guess we chose good attack points and took decent bearings (in general, I think Phill’s were more accurate than mine). Also, all controls were pretty fluorescent, with a few extra markers hung in a 2-5m radius, so if you were close enough and your lights bright enough, you should see.

#75 was an easily spottable saddle on a direct bearing from 42. We had a minor error on the way from 75 to 73: since I was not 100% where on the trail we were coming out of 75, I thought we could head south to what seemed on the map like a localized crest of the trail. However, the trail just went down, so we decided to head back up to the bend and take a direct bearing from there. Zing! This overall insignificant hiccup should have nevertheless served as a warning signal to get focused and choose robust, rather than “cute”, but ephemeral attack points. Alas, we did not heed, and trouble was on the horizon. In any rate, 77 was still fine. We chose to wrap around the trail system, reach the top of the eastern “bunny ear” on the trail and take a bearing for less than 100m from there. In hindsight, we may have perhaps saved a few minutes by attacking from the trail on the north, but in the absence of a solid, unmistakable attack point on that trail, opted not to get lured into getting lost that early.

At this point, being as complacent as one can be, we were heading into a series of self-imposed errors that sucked up the next 1.5h for what should have been a 20-30 minute venture at most. First, 55. If there is anything such as too-many-trails, the area around 55 was it. We were explicitly warned about the imperfection of trail mapping in the area, and urged to rely first and foremost on topographic features. That went right out my left ear. The approach was decent. From 77 we found back the main trail, continued on it until it was ripe to cross a short, 20m off-trail to the parallel trail on the north. Our plan was to continue slightly west on this trail and identify what seemed like a prominent junction with another major trail and attack from there. I guess the multitude of mapped and unmapped trails, or maybe just complacency, caused us to completely miss the alleged jxn. Instead, our first attack was too far ahead and in any case in the wrong angle even if we were at the intended spot. Back to the trail, but at this point, the web of trails there was confusing enough, and so we scrambled, very soon losing grip of our real location. If not for another racer who came looking for 55 from a northern approach and appearing to know what he was doing, this could have been even worse. In hindsight, we would have been better off taking aim from the point where we crossed to the northern trail; I’m pretty sure this would have landed us on the control w/o a problem. But I was trying to be cute and save 50m of off-trail navigation, costing us the first 20 minutes of what would turn out to be an even more major time sink before getting our literal bearings back.

Depression? What depression? The whole Pontiac Lake area has probably been the bottom of an ancient lake, and so, there are a lot of full-blown depressions, which on the map, look like the diametric opposite of hills, contour-wise, with rounded bottoms; we do not have features like these in western PA or OH, the only close-edged contours standing for high ground. So my first instinct was, despite reading the control description, and despite it looking like this: (– –), as opposed to this: on the map, to completely ignore it and look for high ground. Granted, several earlier controls (65, 81, 35) were already depressions, and were indeed located on low ground. But none of this registered, since we found all very easily on direct bearing, without even reading the clue sheet by this point. The first depressing depression was #70. The primary issue, as the track shows, was a substantially wrong bearing taking, which landed us NE of the control; looking for high ground at that point was just the icing on a turdcake. So we regrouped back to the trail on the SE, chose the trail/pine line/semiopen jxn as a new attack point, and now found it. This one did not look like a big waste at the time, but my gps track indicates that we lost 25 minutes on it. Wow! On top of it, the fact that it was found on low ground did not register, which was the source of a much worse brouhaha to come.

Luckily, we spotted #80 (also a depression) on first attempt on a direct bearing from 70. However, the following control, #62, became the scourge of this race. We went on a direct bearing from 80 and before the full pace count hit high ground and started fanning out to search for the “depression”. Nothing. We collected back to the road on the north, found the little road notch on the map, took direct bearing, and again gravitated to high ground in futile search, even trying to use the coattails of another racer, who was similarly unable to find it, at least for the short duration we followed. Back to the road. I was ready to give up, but Phill, forever optimistic, suggested we try a third time. However, this time, the “depression” factoid finally sank in and we realized that we were simply looking at the worst place and should now look for a DEPRESSION. Which we did, and now found it posthaste. This one was 40 (FORTY!) minutes of scramble. So, in total, we lost 1:25h on three of the last 4 control, and I feel that this was mainly my responsibility, what with the “over-cuteness” of the attack on 55, and with totally misconstruing depressions at 70 and 62. I think this would have translated into at least 300 more points that we could have collected, but I am not complaining. This harsh lesson had us focused for most of the remainder of the race, with perhaps a few, mostly inconsequential, rain-induced glitches late. Plus, we ended up having some great navigational coups down the road to partially make up for it.

Now, that I finally conceptualized “depression”, we had a few of them coming in succession. #36 (depression) was an easy nab from the trail bend on the SW. #74 (depression) was not so hard attacking from a trail jxn on the north, even through semi-thick vegetation; it helped that as we had the control within eyeshot, another racer was just punching it. #58 (hilltop) was a two-stage approach, first reaching the SW tip of the pond and from there, taking a bearing and looking, for once justifiably, for high ground. #61 (depression) was another two-stager, first reaching the tip of the ear of the dragon-shaped pond and from there a bearing along the dragon’s back. #41 we got the bearing slightly wrong, but I kind of sensed that we missed to the west, so ogling eastwards, the reflectors were strong enough to orient us to the control.

#60 was interesting. We decided to take a risk and see if we can attack it along the rocky ground that intersects with the trail on the north. Suffice it to say that the so-called “rocky ground” was quite piddling, but since we also took a south bearing on top of it, we were lucky to stumble on a pond. A quick calculation of the step count suggested that, unless we developed into giants all of the sudden, or were employed by Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks, this could not be the one at the SE part of the figure “0” of 60. A close inspection of the map revealed a likelier suspect: a tiny marsh mostly hidden below the NW part of the same “0”. Gambling on that, we checked whether a correct bearing and pace count take us to the one the SE of the “0”; it did. So from there, we took an east bearing and quickly hit the control. This was a nice marsh-marsh-pond (duck-duck-goose) trifecta.

Encouraged by our newfound bearings, we headed to attack the west part of the map. The only problem was it was now 2:45am and the upper chamber of the hourglass was getting scarily emptier by the minute. Our main concern was not to get stuck out west with insfficient time to get back to the finish. First order of the day was 66. It was navigationally scary. Surrounded by a marsh on one side and heavy vegetation on the other, there was only a sliver of accessible approach, where an indistinct trail could lead us half way there. Problem was, the trail was not connected to the main road, so we had to guesstimate its location by counting steps from the road jxn, which we did. Venturing out into the vegetation, we did not find a clear trail, but the marsh, with its typical vegetation, was easily recognizable on our left. So we followed it, counting steps, and at the right place took a northern bearing, hoping to hit the pond just north of the control and take it from there, which we fortunately did. Interestingly, the gps track shows that our northern bearing was not that sharp and decisive and that we in fact continued to skirt the edge of the marsh and might have easily missed the pond. But we didn’t. We were so excited to have found this challenging control without scrambling.

#57 was easy enough from the open/trail intersection just north of the water station. Then it was 3:30am and time to start heading back. We decided to relinquish anything else west of the main road, as well as skip 47 and 39, which were off trail enough with insufficient points to justify the detour. Instead we headed straight to #72. It was at the eastern edge of a long semi-open land stretch and our main concern was having to wade through shoulder-high weeds across that semi-open. Luckily, there was a trail on the south of it from whose east-to-south bend you could cut to it with most of the semi-open out of the way. Which we did.

This is when a steady rain, turning soon into a downpour, started. The plan was to get 38, 32, 52, 31, 34, 24 and, if we have enough time at the finish line, 20. Perhaps we could have even squeezed #79? At that point, I worried it was too much of a risk. Moreover, the rain, combined with our weakening headlamps, reduced visibility of both the map and trail and terrain features, causing us to miss our intended attack point for #38. No worry, we refound ourselves at mile marker #8 of the bike loop, climbed the short connecting trail to the horse trail and attacked from there. However, back on the horse trail, we missed our cue for #32 and with finish time looming over our head, decide to skip it.

I initially thought that #52 was a stretch at that juncture, but since it did not take us significantly out of our way back, we decided to give it a go. First was a long slog on the road and past the “SHH!” area. Around 175m after the SHH! junction, there was supposed to be a connector trail taking us south to the horse trail and for an attack on 52. However, we saw no trail for ~250m, so we headed back and decided to cut south through the open area, which was a smart decision. From there, trail east, trail west, crest of trail, attack, bingo!

Now, it was exactly 5am and time to rush. We decided to skip #31, which would have required a time-costly wraparound through the north to a parallel trail and was not worth the risk of late penalty. We simply cut to the trail south of 52 and headed straight to the finish, plucking the gimmes of 34 and 24 on the way, and even having the time to leisurely pick up 20, 400 S of the finish and back.

An equal part of the fun in Rogaines, beyond the “brain game” and the physical aspects, is the company. Phill was a great companion on this one and I hope that he had as heckova time as I did.