Finding a Needle in the Briar Patch
posted Monday, July 10, 2006 by Team Checkpoint Zero @ 10:58 PM -
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Tim Abbott of Team Checkpoint Zero should have know what was coming when he and teammate Michele Hobson got lost trying to drive to the start of the 24-Hour Ultra O-gaine the weekend of July 8 at the Pine Log WMA north of Atlanta.
"The vegetation in Pine Log WMA seems to be unique in its intelligence and ability to find any part of exposed skin and shred it," says Tim.
Tim teamed up with Michele to run the course that proved particularly nasty. Team captain Jon Barker took to the woods as a soloist.
Says Jon:
It started well, but sunk quickly with a wasted 60 minutes after misplotting CP2. I joined forces with some old friends and rivals for a lot of the course. I would have happily quit after suffering with my feet at the fourteen hour mark. Stupidly hung in there through some classic dehydration, finished tied with Jim Farmer for first in the solo division and tied for third overall. We would have tied for second with our friends Kip & Jessica Koelsch who we had joined forces with for a large part of the course but Jim and I got greedy with 45 minutes left and tried to get one last needle from the haystack. All in all a successful and almost fun time.
The course was heinous; thick, thick brush, load of thorns & stickers. Nasty big snakes and spiders and 2" orienteering flags hidden 1/2" above the ground in the middle of a bush.
Will I be back next year? God, I hope not but I probably will. As always, thanks to Diane (the missus) and faithful pooch Monty for volunteering and making me smile in the middle of hell.
Says Tim:
Michele and I had an interesting time over the weekend fighting all types of prickly and thorny vegetation searching for hidden flags some of which you could not see when standing 5 feet away from them. The vegetation in Pine Log WMA seems to be unique in it's intelligence and ability to find any part of exposed skin and shred it.
The event started off badly for us as we got lost just trying to find the Pine Log WMA, made the mistake of only having a State map to guide us from Blue Ridge to White and we swear that someone had put up some signs pointing us in the wrong direction. So what should have been less than 1 hour trip took almost 2 hours and we arrived half way through the pre-race briefing and then we registered while everyone else was doing their maps and starting on the course.
On the whole the nav was challenging but enjoyable except for the hidden points that were either on the ground or surrounded by vegetation thus requiring significant searching which was particularly painful in the blackberry bushes. Both Michele and I decided to carry trekking poles which did come in useful though a particularly villainous briar stole both of Michele's poles somewhere between CP2 and CP3.
On the first section we gave up on CP7 as it did not look like it was on a very distinct feature and we skipped CP11 because we thought at that time that you could skip up to 3 CPs in each section and because the pre-race briefing advised that you should use up all your skips options - in hindsight I don't understand why they advised this. We later found out that you could only skip 3 CPs in the first three sections.
The second section was the memory section which was not too bad apart from the vegetation and we initially walked past the creak crossing way point to M3 as the creek was dry and we were looking for some water. In the third section we decided to skip CP16, had a prolonged search for CP18 in some more blackberry bushes and then gave up on CP20 pretty much because we were both fed up with the course by then and the idea of jumping in the car and heading back to Blue Ridge for some food and beer was much more appealing than wandering around in the woods searching for another CP buried in a hole in the ground somewhere.
Personally my favorite part of the course was the night navigation though the number of hidden flags made the course much less enjoyable then it could have been. I think we got back to the "Hash House" around 5pm and were on the road by 5:30pm and thankfully we did not get lost on the way back to Blue Ridge. Anyone know why it is called a "Hash House"?
Oh, and I'll add that both Michele and I repeatedly cursed our missing teammate Paul Cox who entered us for the race and then bagged it about a week before the race. Michele has saved some thorns to stick in his eye when we see him next.
"The vegetation in Pine Log WMA seems to be unique in its intelligence and ability to find any part of exposed skin and shred it," says Tim.
Tim teamed up with Michele to run the course that proved particularly nasty. Team captain Jon Barker took to the woods as a soloist.
Says Jon:
It started well, but sunk quickly with a wasted 60 minutes after misplotting CP2. I joined forces with some old friends and rivals for a lot of the course. I would have happily quit after suffering with my feet at the fourteen hour mark. Stupidly hung in there through some classic dehydration, finished tied with Jim Farmer for first in the solo division and tied for third overall. We would have tied for second with our friends Kip & Jessica Koelsch who we had joined forces with for a large part of the course but Jim and I got greedy with 45 minutes left and tried to get one last needle from the haystack. All in all a successful and almost fun time.
The course was heinous; thick, thick brush, load of thorns & stickers. Nasty big snakes and spiders and 2" orienteering flags hidden 1/2" above the ground in the middle of a bush.
Will I be back next year? God, I hope not but I probably will. As always, thanks to Diane (the missus) and faithful pooch Monty for volunteering and making me smile in the middle of hell.
Says Tim:
Michele and I had an interesting time over the weekend fighting all types of prickly and thorny vegetation searching for hidden flags some of which you could not see when standing 5 feet away from them. The vegetation in Pine Log WMA seems to be unique in it's intelligence and ability to find any part of exposed skin and shred it.
The event started off badly for us as we got lost just trying to find the Pine Log WMA, made the mistake of only having a State map to guide us from Blue Ridge to White and we swear that someone had put up some signs pointing us in the wrong direction. So what should have been less than 1 hour trip took almost 2 hours and we arrived half way through the pre-race briefing and then we registered while everyone else was doing their maps and starting on the course.
On the whole the nav was challenging but enjoyable except for the hidden points that were either on the ground or surrounded by vegetation thus requiring significant searching which was particularly painful in the blackberry bushes. Both Michele and I decided to carry trekking poles which did come in useful though a particularly villainous briar stole both of Michele's poles somewhere between CP2 and CP3.
On the first section we gave up on CP7 as it did not look like it was on a very distinct feature and we skipped CP11 because we thought at that time that you could skip up to 3 CPs in each section and because the pre-race briefing advised that you should use up all your skips options - in hindsight I don't understand why they advised this. We later found out that you could only skip 3 CPs in the first three sections.
The second section was the memory section which was not too bad apart from the vegetation and we initially walked past the creak crossing way point to M3 as the creek was dry and we were looking for some water. In the third section we decided to skip CP16, had a prolonged search for CP18 in some more blackberry bushes and then gave up on CP20 pretty much because we were both fed up with the course by then and the idea of jumping in the car and heading back to Blue Ridge for some food and beer was much more appealing than wandering around in the woods searching for another CP buried in a hole in the ground somewhere.
Personally my favorite part of the course was the night navigation though the number of hidden flags made the course much less enjoyable then it could have been. I think we got back to the "Hash House" around 5pm and were on the road by 5:30pm and thankfully we did not get lost on the way back to Blue Ridge. Anyone know why it is called a "Hash House"?
Oh, and I'll add that both Michele and I repeatedly cursed our missing teammate Paul Cox who entered us for the race and then bagged it about a week before the race. Michele has saved some thorns to stick in his eye when we see him next.
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