Canyoneros entered FLO's orienteering event in hopes of fine tuning our navigation on foot. It is common to see the Pangea adventure racing elites attend these events, so what better than to do the same? We started off by eating the white course for warm-ups, completing it in 24min (I believe that was the fastest time of the day). You gotta remember, Canyoneros are built to race for weeks at a time. You can watch the entire race here:
Then we went the opposite route by taking on the blue course. This is the one that the best-of-the-best challenge themselves on. It is the toughest of five courses to choose from, both on a navigational stand-point, and on a physical level.
no hesitation
'Spooky Woods'
Canyoneros shove through vast fields of palmettos, higher than our heads
the alarming "oh shit" moments when you see a big spider right in front of your face
you died, if you tripped and got impaled by these stumps
Nate wrestles palmettos that get in his way. This is the Hulk Hogan leg drop finishing move.
new Canyonero, Stuart, finds a nice reclining chair here
My phone GPS tracker had us going roughly 10miles for both courses today. Don't worry, we don't cheat by busting out the phone. It's very interesting to view your course on Google maps afterwards. However, my GPS signal wasn't that great out here, so the route was broken and inaccurate in many places. This route traces both courses:
Great show. I liked that someone was always in view. Good explanation of how they are navigating and that leaves a lot to be desired. It matters not what is the bearing in degrees, just how the angle off the needle compares to the angle off the meridian line on the map.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Blue course photos read the map and go around the palmettos! Going through the creek: that's an AR move. The orienteers would look for the bridge. In this case you made the right choice.
Thanks for the tips. We're fairly new to orienteering, as you can see. It's very fun and great training to our adventure races. We tried going around the palmettos from CP9 to 10, but there was no clearing there, ha! We planned for going 150m NW and then 150m SW and could have easily gotten lost, but by the grace of our pace counting, we pinpointed CP10 with incredible accuracy.
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