Orienteering 6:00:00 [3] 30.0 km (12:00 / km)
WT Leg 2: Trek
Not really a lot to say about this one, just that it went very well. Bender wisely chose the longer, road route to CP #4 instead of trying to navigate to a trail end (which turned out impossible to find) and we were rewarded with climbing the ladder to 6th place and free beer.
Potentially scarey bearing leg on the way to CP #5 went perfectly, with us landing about 50m away from the northern tip of Beads Lake.
The one time my nav skills were needed was trying to locate the trail that would lead us to TA #2. We crossed Wilson Lake at a narrow section near a Hunt Camp and took a trail leading out of it which we hoped/presumed would lead to the road. It started to turn in a direction we didn't like with about 400m to go, so we took a safe bearing we presumed would allow us to hit the road.
After much longer than expected, there was no road and we started to descend into a valley, which we knew shouldn't be happening. Bender and I quickly determined where we were and realised we must have crossed the trail without realising it and turned, following the valley we were in towards Wilson Lake, hoping to cross the trail again. Once the lake was in sight, we still hadn't seen the trail and daylight was getting critical, we made one last ditch effort to locate it. Back up a spur to the top of the hill and finally, Bender calls out that he's found it. It's not super obvious, I imagine if it had been 10 minutes later we would have never found it. Spirits high, we jog the final 10km to TA2. It turns out a lot of the teams behind us had a lot of trouble on this final section of the trek in the dark, so we were very lucky here.
I think I enjoyed this leg the most out of all. Partially due to the comfort zone factor, but also the slower pace meant you got to appreciate the area we were in a little better (so many awesome lakes!). Still think there should be a mandatory 30 min rest zone where you get to have a relaxing swim and so some cliff jumping.