Getawaystix and I met to review the final piece of course design for this summer's
Wilderness Traverse. Can't wait to test it out!
It was such a beautiful day that we couldn't spend it all indoors staring at maps, so we headed up to the starting line of January's
Dontgetlost.ca Icebreaker event. It was a Score-O and nobody made it to all the controls in less than 1 hour. GStix decided to give it a shot.
My ambitions were less lofty. I just wanted to get to the controls I hadn't visited before, plus any others I might hit along the way. (98-99-100-101-97-96-95-94)
It was a bluebird day. On days like this, I really feel sorry for people who stay indoors all winter, hiding from the cold.
Running on the packed snow trails went fairly quickly but travel off trail was slow as molasses. There is still plenty of snow and the recent rain has made it heavy and crusty in places. Unfortunately for GStix, he didn't take snowshoes and ended up postholing around much of the course in knee deep snow. So for now, Harps remains the IceBreaker course record holder.
I messed around a bit in the northwest of the map. I confess that I was having so much fun skidding down steep slopes and admiring snow laden tree branches that I didn't always stay focused on training my navigation skills. Oh well, we won't have too many more amazing winter days like this so I might as well have fun.
After the final control, I ran off the map (on purpose!) to take the Switchback Trail back to GStix's place. Really nice place for hill training. I should go there to do repeats one day before APEX.