Crooked Compass Adventure Trek

Aristes, PA, US
Apr 2, 2016

Type: Orienteering - Local

event website

added by: abiperk

Announcing the Crooked Compass Adventure Trek: part-adventure racing, part-rogaining, and part-walk in the woods!

The Inspiration:

Adventure Racers who cross over to race directing often compare racing to directing. Which is harder? Which is more stressful? Which do we find the more rewarding? Which is most enjoyable? There is no right answer to that question, but at Rootstock, we absolutely love scouting our race courses. The idea for the adventure trek came from one of our many scouting adventures, which often involve long rambles through unknown and sometimes unmapped woodlands, usually on foot. We always struggle when forced to accept that we cannot share every nook and cranny we find ourselves during our explorations, but with our adventure trek, we hope to share more of these treasures with our racers, allowing them to take in the landscape and enjoy a healthy dose of adventure and navigational challenge, without worrying about bikes and boats.

The Race:

The Crooked Compass Adventure Trek is part-adventure racing, part-rogaining, and part-walk in the woods! Solos and teams of 2-4 will travel by foot, on-trail and off, using pre-plotted maps and compass as they locate as many checkpoints as possible within the time allotted. The course will be linear in format with certain mandatory points and a number of optional ones for stronger, faster, more experienced teams. In addition, there will be some embedded navigation challenges in the course including:

-A mini-rogaine or two (i.e. a small area of the course with a number of closely-packed controls, maps of which will be distributed on the course)
-A short, easy memory-O
-A navigation challenge relying on directions rather than a map

To complete the entire trek and find all the checkpoints, racers can expect to cover approximately 18-20 miles. There will be a fair bit of travel on trails, with most of the checkpoints hidden off of them. The more adventurous will have opportunities to travel off trail more if they choose.

Maps will be pre-plotted and provided on water-resistant topographic maps. This year’s race takes place in historic coal country, so pace-counting/distance-estimating and compass use will be important since the unique terrain offers countless mounds, pits, and depressions from the coal miners. You don’t have to be an expert to have fun on this course, but some of the points might be more challenging if you don’t pay close attention to the maps! That said, it’s an amazing, beautiful landscape, reclaimed by nature after a long history of mining, and we hope you come out to explore it with us in April!

Registration: http://www.active.com/aristes-pa/adventure-racing/...

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79.9		BorisGr (log) sounds interesting
72.7		Joe (log) fools rogaine?
57.4		cmpbllv (log)
52.3		Len (log)
47.5		arthurd (log)
45.5		StrongMachine
		hfljazzguy
		Drisc (log)
		abiperk (log) Directing
		britty327 (log) Rev3 Koa Wahine
		JayXC (log)
		Snailtrail (log)
		Nova (log)
		Kelurc (log)
		Jerkface
		elavallee
		Double_Downon11 (log)
		fpb
		ErikEddy (log) sounds interesting but will be away
		sherpes (log) at Flying Pig
		mayer22 (log)