Planner Dave King had set about 50 control points and a time limit of three hours. With daylight saving there was more daylight than previous events in the afterwork series, which has been planned as a buildup for the World Rogaining Championships, to be held in Canterbury in January. However there was still a good hour and a half of darkness, which called for saving enough of the on-track controls to use the time effectively.
Mike Sheridan and Alan Stowell had a convincing win, 170 points ahead of John Randall/Mike Lowrie and 200 points ahead of Steve Knowles and Malcolm Chiles. Their route led from Happy Valley Park up the tip track to a cluster of controls overlooking Owhiro Bay. They descended through the stream which comes out by the quarry, and over another ridge to the stream which comes out just past Red Rocks, then up to 485m Te Kopahou. Along the top (in the mist and into the wind!) as far as time allowed, which was just past Hawkins Hill (495m); then down the tip track again to finish with 3min to spare.
Results are on the result page. Chris Tait and Tony Gazley have offered to run the next event in November, if you're not on the e-mailing list, ask Tony to let you know.
The planner Dave King comments as follows:
True to form the organiser showed up with all of 2 minutes to kick off. A very eager crowd of around 26 awaited their chance to pit their talents against the best the South Coast has to offer (read many hills!). After 15 minutes route planning they set off with the two favourite directions being either the Tip Track or the Bata Road.
Basically I gave everyone points if they marked something in the box next to the question. Unusual answers ranged from "I Saw it" to "3,4,5,6" for an answer of 3 and of course the standard "too dark to read"! The "bike inner tube" tied to the fence (37) seems to have been the hardest control to find after the infamous tree with differing number of branches depending on your shoulder height (101). I went to great pains to select a tree with only 3 branches no matter what your shoulder height! It was in a rather prickly position though intentionally, you have to work for 100 points that close to home.
The course was basically designed to have 3 possible routes of almost equal value. Two routes took people out to the western extent of the course (Te Kopahou, 102 or The Windmill, 103) and the third route actually centred around both sides of Happy Valley. Oddly no one collected the complete points on the east side of the course.
I have the completed question sheets and intention sheets if people are interested in having them returned. They make for good reading, some very ambitious courses set and deviated from! The top route was of course Mike Sheridan and Alan Stowell's route of basically up the Tip Track (13, 12, 11, 10) to Hawkins Hill (collecting 101,44, 50 on the way), along to Te Kopahou (102) and down into the gully (88, 31, 61, 33) and back via Haape Stream (19, 34, 52, 72). This was largely a very good variation on the Tip Track to Te Kopahou, return via the coast route which was one of the 3 designed as high scoring. (Webmaster's note, I think they went the other way round.)
Hopefully everyone found the course challenging. The goal was to concentrate on finding the precise location (hence clue controls) and route planning. I agree brown tape tied to a gorse bush in the dark is harder to find than a control flag but just think how easy you will find the world champs now!
Hope everyone had a blast (literally with the northerly wind).