Training Log Archive: mikeminium

Event: GPHXO Score-O at Buckeye Hills
 

Buckeye Hills - 2 hour score-O. Cleared the course, but not as efficiently as I should have. I was initially unsure whether it would be clearable, so headed out for higher point value controls instead of picking up the loop around the finish area. A pleasant area to orienteer, with the biggest challenge being to figure out what was mapped (basic contours and larger washes), and figuring out what was not (smaller contour features, boulders or rock piles smaller than a large car, vegetation density, lone trees or saguaros). Vegetation was pretty much all open, runnable desert, with a few strips of thicker vegetation along the larger washes, so the total lack of green on the map wasn't a problem. The wash mapping was very good - you could almost always tell instantly whether the one you were in or crossing was mapped as blue dots, thin blue line, or wider blue line.

As several legs took me and other runners fairly near to busy highway 85, I wondered if any passing motorists might think that the runners scurrying through the desert were escaping from the prison just off the south edge of the map.

Control pickup at Buckeye Hills and took a few photos.