My first orienteering race
I had never taken part in any adventure related to orienteering or navigation. Never, until January, 6th. There is a Christmas celebration on the night of January 6th in Russia. And, as usual, another local Christmas accelerated march happened that night.
I didn't plan to spend a Christmas night in the middle of nowhere; but my friend suggested taking part in it, and I immediately accepted the offer. We registered our team as “Hemingway” on January 3rd and began waiting for the race to start.
The idea of the race is to start in approximately 30 km from the finish line and to get back as fast as possible. You get a map with ten checkpoints marked on it. Your goal is to reach the finish line having visited as many of these checkpoints as you can find. Needless to say, you have to have orienteering or navigation skills. Moreover it is dark due to night and it is cold due to winter. My teammate and I were absolute novices in orienteering.
We got off the bus that had delivered us to the starting place, took a group photo and the race began. It was 7:30 pm.
We were chasing the leader pack during the first part of the route. Our only goal was not to lose them for more than 100 meters; otherwise we stood a chance of getting lost. We hadn’t even taken a compass or a map from our pockets. All our orienteering and navigation efforts were to keep the people in sight. That situation continued up to the third checkpoint. Then guys turned their headlamp off and disappeared in the dark. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only gear in their backpacks were ninja outfits which they put on straight away after the checkpoint.
When we were alone on the way to the fourth checkpoint we were peering at the footprints on the snow. Fortunately, a few people passed us and we were able to see their direction. As a result, we easily found the fourth checkpoint.
Crossing the road, we came across a road police road patrol. A couple of police officers stared at people running with backpacks somewhere in snow fields, disappointed that they couldn't write those freaks up for a major violation of common sense rules. They desperately got into their car and drove behind us for a while. Perhaps they hoped that one of those insane runners would want to take Uber. After that, they left us alone.
We got to the fifth checkpoint perfectly well by following the car tracks. We thought it was a car of one of the organizers. We didn’t know whether it was or not, but we easily found what we had been looking for.
We hadn’t used our compasses so far. We tried to look for any moving torches in the dark and went towards them. We mostly went across the fields. But after the fifth checkpoint we had to go through a small forest (woods). Then we needed to go across the field for a few kilometers until we would reach a ravine. The sixth checkpoint was there.
When we came out of the woods, we recognized we didn’t have a clue where we were. It was time to get the compass. I hadn’t used the compass since I was a child. At that time, I went around the school in geography class using the compass. And I have to admit I was great in that. I never got lost then.
We looked at the compass, then at the map, then at the place. Then we repeated that sequence, and we still didn’t have any idea where we were. We spent a lot of time making the decision in which direction we should go. We began to freeze. At last we made up our minds and went to the east.
That was the hardest time of that night. We had to slow down a lot. We continuously had to stop and correct our tracks. We weren’t sure that our direction was right. It didn’t add any optimism. At last we saw moving lights near remote bushes. Then we figured out how much we missed. It was about two kilometers from the lights. But they cheered us up and we run towards the sixth checkpoint.
There we met Ivan and combined our efforts. To tell the truth, we just followed Ivan. He had a huge backpack and seemed to be a man who knew where we could be. And there we finally ate some bread and cheese and drank tea.
Suddenly we saw a group of people up on the hill. We asked whether they had visited the sixth checkpoint. They had. But it turned out that the checkpoint was back in two kilometers from there. We decided not to get back there. We had already spent about three hours wandering around the ravines. We followed the group.
Since that moment, our adventure turned out to be just walking under the moon. We caught up with a group headed by two guys and together visited another temporarily inhabited checkpoint in the woods. There was one of the organizers, Dmitry, on the glade. He cheered us up and treated us to herbal tea boiled on the fire. We pigged out on tea with chocolate bar and went on our trip. We moved with a large group of 10-12 men. That part of the way we were walking quite slowly chatting with the others. We had little problem with finding the last tenth checkpoint. But we eventually found it and rushed towards the finish.
We ended up our race on 5:15 am. We had overcome 45 km in 9 hours 45 minutes. We didn’t visited one checkpoint and we showed our orienteering skills founding only two checkpoints by ourselves. And despite my tiredness at that moment I was really a happy camper.
Thanks a ton for the organizers for that unforgettable Christmas celebration.
Thanks for help with this text to PM_ME_BIRDS_OF_PREY, IsAlwaysAngry, Garrett and to my friend Bob Cable.
I didn't plan to spend a Christmas night in the middle of nowhere; but my friend suggested taking part in it, and I immediately accepted the offer. We registered our team as “Hemingway” on January 3rd and began waiting for the race to start.
The idea of the race is to start in approximately 30 km from the finish line and to get back as fast as possible. You get a map with ten checkpoints marked on it. Your goal is to reach the finish line having visited as many of these checkpoints as you can find. Needless to say, you have to have orienteering or navigation skills. Moreover it is dark due to night and it is cold due to winter. My teammate and I were absolute novices in orienteering.
We got off the bus that had delivered us to the starting place, took a group photo and the race began. It was 7:30 pm.
We were chasing the leader pack during the first part of the route. Our only goal was not to lose them for more than 100 meters; otherwise we stood a chance of getting lost. We hadn’t even taken a compass or a map from our pockets. All our orienteering and navigation efforts were to keep the people in sight. That situation continued up to the third checkpoint. Then guys turned their headlamp off and disappeared in the dark. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only gear in their backpacks were ninja outfits which they put on straight away after the checkpoint.
When we were alone on the way to the fourth checkpoint we were peering at the footprints on the snow. Fortunately, a few people passed us and we were able to see their direction. As a result, we easily found the fourth checkpoint.
Crossing the road, we came across a road police road patrol. A couple of police officers stared at people running with backpacks somewhere in snow fields, disappointed that they couldn't write those freaks up for a major violation of common sense rules. They desperately got into their car and drove behind us for a while. Perhaps they hoped that one of those insane runners would want to take Uber. After that, they left us alone.
We got to the fifth checkpoint perfectly well by following the car tracks. We thought it was a car of one of the organizers. We didn’t know whether it was or not, but we easily found what we had been looking for.
We hadn’t used our compasses so far. We tried to look for any moving torches in the dark and went towards them. We mostly went across the fields. But after the fifth checkpoint we had to go through a small forest (woods). Then we needed to go across the field for a few kilometers until we would reach a ravine. The sixth checkpoint was there.
When we came out of the woods, we recognized we didn’t have a clue where we were. It was time to get the compass. I hadn’t used the compass since I was a child. At that time, I went around the school in geography class using the compass. And I have to admit I was great in that. I never got lost then.
We looked at the compass, then at the map, then at the place. Then we repeated that sequence, and we still didn’t have any idea where we were. We spent a lot of time making the decision in which direction we should go. We began to freeze. At last we made up our minds and went to the east.
That was the hardest time of that night. We had to slow down a lot. We continuously had to stop and correct our tracks. We weren’t sure that our direction was right. It didn’t add any optimism. At last we saw moving lights near remote bushes. Then we figured out how much we missed. It was about two kilometers from the lights. But they cheered us up and we run towards the sixth checkpoint.
There we met Ivan and combined our efforts. To tell the truth, we just followed Ivan. He had a huge backpack and seemed to be a man who knew where we could be. And there we finally ate some bread and cheese and drank tea.
Suddenly we saw a group of people up on the hill. We asked whether they had visited the sixth checkpoint. They had. But it turned out that the checkpoint was back in two kilometers from there. We decided not to get back there. We had already spent about three hours wandering around the ravines. We followed the group.
Since that moment, our adventure turned out to be just walking under the moon. We caught up with a group headed by two guys and together visited another temporarily inhabited checkpoint in the woods. There was one of the organizers, Dmitry, on the glade. He cheered us up and treated us to herbal tea boiled on the fire. We pigged out on tea with chocolate bar and went on our trip. We moved with a large group of 10-12 men. That part of the way we were walking quite slowly chatting with the others. We had little problem with finding the last tenth checkpoint. But we eventually found it and rushed towards the finish.
We ended up our race on 5:15 am. We had overcome 45 km in 9 hours 45 minutes. We didn’t visited one checkpoint and we showed our orienteering skills founding only two checkpoints by ourselves. And despite my tiredness at that moment I was really a happy camper.
Thanks a ton for the organizers for that unforgettable Christmas celebration.
Thanks for help with this text to PM_ME_BIRDS_OF_PREY, IsAlwaysAngry, Garrett and to my friend Bob Cable.
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