It’s been 14 months since either of us have done any bush orienteering, and my last foray, the Victorian Long Distance Champs, ended in me abandoning the course after failing to find one of my controls midway through.  Since then, we’ve either been away, or the maps have been too steep, or it’s been bucketing rain (like Kings Birthday weekend last year was). So it was not without trepidation that I set off into the forest, at Mosquito Creek near Eppalock. Fortunately there were creeks, but no mosquitoes. 

I entered the moderate course, given my lack of match practice and general fitness. The course planner – who coincidentally was the same planner as for the aforementioned Vic Champs debacle – had thoughtfully placed most of my controls on the tops of hills, as there were no tracks or significant linear features to use. He figured that we wouldn’t get too lost that way.  The harder courses were all on much less obvious features, but I will get to that in a bit.

So feeling reasonably relaxed about finding the controls, I just had to get to them.  Currently my vestibular system is behaving quite well, but asking it to process rough ground covered in a multitude of sticks, leaves, branches, small rocks and other forest floor detritus, always takes a high level of concentration, and fatigues me quite quickly.  I was quite happy not to have to think overly much about navigating, other than take a compass bearing, follow it to the next hill, climb to the top, and there the flag would be.  And so it proved – 8 out of 8 controls hit cleanly, if slowly.  A nice confidence boost before tomorrow’s Hard course on similar terrain.

No such luck for Ian though.  His first leg went all the way across the map, and he was (rightly) pretty pleased with himself for navigating to it very accurately.  Then it all went wrong.  With terrain this vague, careful compass bearing is the only plan of attack, and if you go wrong, you can go VERY wrong, with no Plan B available.  He did several large loops looking for no 2 in vain, about 100 metres west of where it was.  It was only when he came across a deep pit  which he could clearly identify, that he finally knew where he was.  That leg took 30 minutes.  The next was better, but still not clean.  He’d fallen to the back of the pack, and even with much better navigating on the rest of the course, the damage was done.  It’s what we call “getting it out of your system before The Big One”, or “getting your money’s worth”.

Despite our suboptimal performances, it was a lovely sunny afternoon, the forest was pleasant, the courses well set, and we have fish and chips for tea. I call that a win.