Diehards will tell you that the orienteering season only really starts with the first State League of the year - and, boy, was that the case at the weekend when we travelled east of Canberra for a cracking double header.
ACT club Bushflyers hosted us on Saturday at Collector; a map not used since the 2010 Easter carnival. Pretty much the entire map was strewn with dead wood, making the going tough and slow. On the plus side there was wildlife galore: hundreds of kangaroos, a large red fox, a deer, and even a shingleback ambling its way through the assembly area.
The course difficulty was reflected in 56 people mispunching or not finishing, and temps that reached the high 20s but thankfully not the 33C predicted. Kudos to teenagers Andra Leung (Garingal) and Niamh Cassar (WHO) for completing their first Hard courses. Quite a baptism of fire and congratulations to them.
Thanks to ACT junior Patrick Miller for setting a great challenge for everyone. It certainly sharpened us for the next day.
Sunday's event was on Big Foot's awesome Snows Hill map between Bungendore and Braidwood. This is a huge area of forest with very few guiding features - just thousands of accurately mapped termite mounds which meant you could 'pinball' among them en route to each control.
With temps again forecast to hit 34C, and strong winds, competitors were allowed to start early and soon found themselves on typical Long courses, with few controls and lots of complex navigation providing a true test. Expertly set by Simon George and controlled by Cath Chalmers.
Newcastle prodigy Alvin Craig bounced back from an mp on Saturday to blitz Sunday's 5.5km Hard 5 course in just 42m43s - that's a km rate of under 8. Wow!
All the weekend results, Winsplits and Routegadget can be found on our SL web page. Please fill out the very brief Course Setter survey for Sunday, and you can provide feedback on Saturday's ACT courses here.
