Walter White and Mike Terrell competed in the first annual Waverly North International Rogaine in the Scioto State Forest in southeastern Ohio on May 11-12, 2002.  For those unfamilar with the term, Rogaine in this context is an acronym for Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance.  Sounds pretty fancy but in effect it is a 24 hour endurance orienteering event.  It is not even remotely related to the fact that I have a reverse mohawk haircut (some would say follicly-challenged). In any event, we arrived at the campground the night before the event was to start and pitched out tent.  Over half of the participants were adventure racers so it was an opportunity to see some old friends and I was especially gratified to see one of the participants from the California who was one of the students that I had taught at one of Colorado Adventure Training's (CAT) adventure racing camps.  In fact, my partner was one of the students from a CAT Camp that Jan and I helped with last year in Arkansas.  The reason that we have all these students is that the adventure racing community is comprised of only a very small segment of sufficiently demented individuals and thus we have to go out and recruit and brainwash (I mean train) them if we want to expand the sport. 
 
The event started Saturday at noon and for the next 24 hours we slogged our way through the forest.  The rainfall over the previous week had been pretty heavy with some flooding in the Ohio River Valley and thus the terrain was pretty saturated.  Our navigation was actually pretty precise - we chose the hardest terrain first and set about collecting checkpoints very rapidly.  The mountains, though not high in elevation, had a fairly steep grade so we spent a lot of time going up and down.   Fortunately we had our Leki trekking poles.  These made a tremendous difference and really helped our legs.  For the most part the going was good except for a few times we became entangled in large bramble growths.  We crossed paths with a number of teams that I remember from last years North American Rogaine Championships.  In the end we came in sixth in the Men's Open Division, a very respectable showing given the caliber of the field. 
 

A kudo to the event organizers who put on a very good event.  For anyone wanting to hone their navigation skills I would recommend the Waverly North International Rogaine and I plan to go back next year.

The Team consisted of Captain Eric Jacobsen of Park City, UT; Lisa Barnes of Phoenix, AZ; and Kim & Jan Bear of Santa Fe, NM.  Blair Smith and his 3-year-old son, Colby rounded out the team as support.  Team Santa Fe arrived 2 days before the race and rented their new home, a 24-foot Ryder Van.  We drove to Harrisonburg for our first team meeting to plan our race and went on our first trek to Chili's for dinner to map out strategy and set goals.  The next day we organized our gear, put bikes together, and grocery shopped. We drove to the resort.  It began raining hard and we were a little worried.  We scoped out some of the course and the next day, the race began (for Team Santa Fe) at 10 am with the gear check where maps were handed out.  Plotting began.  At the race meeting the team was told about the "Prologue".  The racecourse already looked arduous and now we would be told 5 minutes before the race about a mystery event with check points.  We went back to finish plotting, had pizza, and got ready for the race start at 8pm.

The Prologue:  at 7:45 pm, we were given the Prologue map, which consisted of 2 checkpoints at the summit of the Massanutten ski slopes.  One checkpoint had a mandatory equipment check.  We returned on the access road, which took about an hour.  It would begin a fast start.
Bike Transition:  Donn Mann (the course director) met us at the bike transition and wished us luck.  Once on our bikes, it took us 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to top of the first mountain bike climb, Kaylor's Knob, and 2 hours to climb in the dark about 15-1600 feet on single track trails.  We then biked to New Market Gap and arrived at Massanutten Boat Launch at 0525. 

Canoe Transition:  (0525 - 0601) It was a dark zone until 0600, so we had a relaxed pace to transition to the canoes.  All teams in the transition started together.   Eric paired with Kim and Jan with Lisa in the two canoes; they left with the front of the pack on the Shenandoah River for 35 miles of paddling on a very low river.  It was uneventful and being the desert team we quickly lost sight of the other paddlers.  However, no one passed us.  We continued paddling with slow moving water and rocks scraping the canoe bottom.  We had 2 portages, one around a power station and the other a bridge early on in the venue.  We got into the next transition, Elizabeth Furnace Campground and at the river take-out and were again greeted and encouraged by Don Mann.

Hike/Rope Transition: (1318 - 1405) We prepared for hiking to the Buzzard Rock Rappel site. The hike was begun at an elevation of 554 feet and we would rappel from Buzzard Rock at 1300 feet.  The trail to Buzzard Rock seemed to go on forever traversing ridgelines for hours.  The rappel was quick, but at the bottom, it was a treacherous rock scramble with loose boulders and centipedes along the way.  The sun was just setting.  Once we reached the river, we headed back to transition.  At this point, the team decided to sleep for 4 hours and then leave at 2 am for the bike.

(Sleep transition: 2112 - 0228)
Bike:  We began our 38-mile bike in pitch black at 0228.  We climbed from an elevation of 741 to 1682, which made it a lot of hike-a-bike on a great single-track trail.  Reporter Bill Gifford from Outside Magazine joined us and we were eager for fresh conversation.  It was on this venue that we realized that if we wanted to be competitive, that we would not be able to sleep again for the race.  Lisa had an "endo" experience with her Litespeed and was jabbed by a tree.  In Lisa style...she was fine and continued riding like nothing had happened.  After reaching Edinburg Gap, we were sad to have Bill leave, as he had to return to get his car. We like having someone new along with us and he fit in very well with our group dynamics.   We had one more check point and it was there that we found Lisa's endo had damaged her shifter for the front rings.  She would now have to ride in a fixed front ring.   We proceeded through the town of Edinburg to Wolf Gap Campground.  We made a stop to get coffee and hot chocolate and then rode out of town to climb a steep paved road to the Transition (Wolf Gap Campground).

Hike and Rappel transition (1000 - 1051):  From Wolf Gap Campground, we would hike to the Big Schloss trail with our climbing gear.  We arrived at 1145 to find a traverse set up and 2 teams ahead of us.  The traverse was intense as no one had ascending devises and it took a lot of muscle to pull yourself over to the other side.  Once over we hiked a short distance to the rappel.  We would spend the rest of the daylight hours and night trekking, and bushwhacking.  Several events happened; the navigators got tired and the women, Lisa and Kim became the trail finders.  It was nice to be able to rest the navigators from the intensity of constantly finding the trail and this helped to keep the women awake.  As the men focused back on their task of navigating, the sun began to rise and we all pushed together to the next transition in Tomahawk Pond parking area.  (0832 - 0940) We had opted to omit the OCP (orienteering check points) and take the penalty.  We would later find out that only one pair opted for the OCP's.

Bike Transition (0832 - 0940): We ate well and headed out on our bikes.  It was sunny and the heat was intense as we biked to the Cavern entrance of the Endless Caverns.  The park had a nice store with ice cream and from there we headed into the park up a trail which climbed to the top of a summit.  It was all hike-a-bike which led you straight down the other side of the ridge to Roaring Run Road.  It was a bike bushwhack straight down with little or no trail.  At the bottom was a road, which led us to a never-ending single track.  This was enjoyed by all.    Along the way... we were fighting for 2nd place with LostWorldAdvenures.com.  We had known that they had a one-hour penalty for one team member missing a helmet at the climbing section.  We missed CP 17 and continued along a gravel road.  We were in third position.  We turned around to find the trail and as we headed up (having ridden 1 mile out of our way) we saw the other team coming down.  We were not entirely sure we were on the right track and the team did not help us.  It was interesting to note how our attitude immediately changed with our captain pushing us to try to catch up with this team at all costs (within reason).  We immediately increased our pace.  At the CP, the other team was 45 min ahead us.  (We also knew they had an hour penalty).  At CP 18 they were 10 min ahead of us.  At the transition to hike, the other team was still there.

Transition to hike: (2049 - 2059) We took little time to eat and jogged out of the transition ready for our last venue and the finish line.  At this point we were in 7th or 8th place overall and 3rd of the teams.  We found a road taking us up to the backside of the resort and headed off on a ridge trail that never ended.  We did not see the other team at this point.  The trail was climbing boulders and we stopped several times to check our navigation.  It was dark and it seemed that the resort was very far away.  We did not find the checkpoint until 2358.  We were now in 5th place, which surprised us.  We really felt we had chosen the wrong trail and that we had taken too long.  As we happily ran down the access trail for the second time this race (the other being in the Prologue), we ran into the team that we were pursuing.  We would later find out that they had turned off their lights and were trying to follow us, as they were confused about this last venue.  We told them they were on the right trail to the CP, and we took off running/jogging to the finish line arriving in 5th place in a time of 0032.  We would come in second place of the teams in a total time of 3 days, 13 hours, 32 minutes.  We qualified for the ARA championships to be held in November 2002.