Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Snowshoe Raid - Blue Mountain, Collingwood
After five great years at Horseshoe Resort, the Snowshoe Raid moved to a new venue. It's fun to navigate in different places and Collingwood is a great place to spend a weekend, so a record 117 teams signed up. Half the participants were women, which was nice to see. Many thanks to Dee and Logie for hosting us at their beautiful chalet.
Dee and I raced together again this year and planned our route with mapboard, pins and string. We weren't the only ones to do it but as usual, we got a few comments!
(This is one of Frankenjack's excellent photos that I've "borrowed".)
Dee doesn't look at the map much while we're racing but she reviews it carefully beforehand. She asks good questions and challenges our assumptions so we definitely end up planning a better course together than we would separately.
Harps and Logie got some outside assistance from Harps' daughter Sara, who is clearly a budding orienteer.
The challenge this year was that it was a rogaine-style 3-hour course where we also had to get a fair distance from point to point. We started in Loree Forest where there were a number of checkpoints to find in hilly terrain, then we had at least 7.5 km of running on roads and trails to get to the finish line, not counting any extra distance to look for a few CPs along the way.
Hammer and 'Bent
About 70% of the points were in Loree Forest and it would take good planning and will power to leave that area soon enough to get back to the finish within the 3-hour time limit. I predicted that 1 out of 6 teams would be overtime but I was insanely optimistic. Less than one third of teams finished the course within 3 hours!
We were bussed up (up, up, up) to the starting line. Dee and I ran a clockwise loop around Loree, dropping the three northernmost CPs, including the highly valuable #62 (a choice we struggled with and still aren't sure about). We also dropped 74 & 75, which were low value. We'd set a couple of cut-off times where we might have gone for additional controls but we were running a few minutes behind there so we kept going. We left the aid station near the southeast corner of Loree Forest with 80 minutes to go, right on our plan.
With a 3-month-old baby keeping her up at night, Dee had worried about her return to fitness but she was strong today. In the snowy hills, we moved at a similar pace but on the flats, she pushed the pace higher than I would have gone on my own. I felt sluggish for some reason so this was really helpful.
My nav was fine but not stellar - no disasters but a little sloppy in places. Snowshoe navigation is different because you have to balance the benefits of your personal route preference vs. the ease of following tracks that help you move faster, even if they aren't going exactly in the direction you want. A couple of times, I got careless and we had to move along a narrow ridge looking into re-entrants on both sides until we spotted our flag, since I wasn't 100% sure which ridge we'd ended up on. Dee asked good questions, shared local knowledge and spotted flags in the distance.
The last section of the course was a 5-CP Matrix that travelled downhill through an unused ski area. We could have split up to get CPs separately but elected to work together and get four of them. We finished with 9 minutes to go so we probably had time for another control but if the time had been tighter, we probably wouldn't have had the nerve to stay out in the Matrix for as long as we did. We defended our title in the female division with 520 of 740 points. Thanks for a fun day of playing in the snow, Dee!
Hammer and 'Bent won Masters, and Phatty and Leanimal won Coed, so there was a good showing from the Caledon contingent.
Congrats to Nick and Feet for winning overall (again)!
Great to see so many friends. Big thanks to Getawaystix for all his hard work in organizing another excellent event!
Harps (3rd overall with Logie), Sara, Amy
Tiny and M&M - 2nd Coed
Rick and Keith - 2nd Masters
Ace Photographer, Frankenjack
Mrs. Tiny, volunteering for two
AdventureGirl! - 1st Junior with grandparents Mr. & Mrs. GHOSLO
Etoile and GHOSLO
BugsinTeeth, Simpy (unable to smile after coming in overtime) and Funderstorm (who had a great race with Marcus)
I started sneezing in the car and by the time we arrived home a few hours after the Snowshoe Raid, I had a full-blown cold with no forewarning. It's no fun to be sick but it's nice to know that there may have been a reason for the lack of zip in my legs today.