Orienteering 1:12:42 [4] 5.0 km (4.1 kph) +300m
H3 Course. Not much route choice on legs 1 & 2. Steep sided hill on the way to 2 made for slow work. 2 to 3 offered a steep climb out of a gully onto a ridge then down into another gully and back up to the top of another ridge to a cliff on the side of the ridge with no aiming off feature. So I headed south missing one gully and running up a gully to the west of 3 which was very open and fast. I got to the right spot finding no cliff. When I realised that the cliff was not in the bottom of the gully but perched above it I looked up to see the control. Still the best route choice even with the error. 3-4 should have been faster following the contours on an indistinct track. But I was uncertain and hesitated too much. The actual control 4 was very much in the open and no serious navigating was required. This could not be said for control 5. Despite being a 5m cliff it was hard to get to with serious unmapped vegetation standing in the way. Those that took the direct route would also have faced impassable cliffs. I took the northern route using the indistict tracks.
5-6 strait forward, could have gone harder but was cautious.
If I had decided early that control 7 was on the same cliff I used last year I could have saved 2 mins. Instead I fluffed around until it was inevitable. Nasty small cliff, hidden by a fallen log. Control 8 on the edge of a mining area with earthbanks and cliffs. The direct route was not on, another indistinct track took you right to it, after running south of the main disturbed area. 9& 10 straight forward. At 11 had a brain fade 20m from the control (after climbing up a hill) and for a while could not even orient a map. Track run home to find that craig had done the same course only 20m faster.