Saturday, April 18, 2009

Orienteering Sand Dunes State Forest

I did the red course, 13 controls 6.6 km as the crow flies. Super weather and leafless trees made this much easier than usual, but I was slow, as evidenced by the results. Nasty prickly ash brought some scratches on my forearms. Only had trouble with #10, which was only 200m from #9. I ended up starting over from #9 and carefully walking the stretch, counting steps. Even then it was not evident.

I used my new thumb compass for the first time. Until now, I had been using the Suunto Arrow 5. I did not like the Suunto because it would stick if not perfectly level. I decided to try the Moscompass Competitor Model 9 short thumb plate left (9XL). I found the short thumb plate very comfortable and after being taken aback by the size of the compass (it is "full" size, like a regular base-plate compass) liked that IT DID NOT STICK, which helped orienteering the map very much! Very happy with my purchase at http://www.866gaiters.com/, which also has a ton of links to useful and free orienteering information.


View Sand Dunes SF Orienteering in a larger map

No comments: