Navigation practice

Over the Easter weekend, Nathan Faavae and I gave some of the countries top orienteer’s a fright as we battled it out for the wooden spoon in each event in the Elite section of the NZ orienteering championships.

The weekend was a complete success for Nathan and I, we both managed to avoid the wooden spoon in all of the events, it has to be said largely due to others managing to miss punch controls at each race days – cheers guys.

One thing it really highlighted for me was the difference between the navigation styles. Here we were running around in a forest looking for distinctive rocks, shallow depressions and other ridiculously small features, where as most of the time in Adventure racing we are just trying to find the right Valley, a fork in the river or a town. What a difference a detailed map makes. There are definitely guys (and girls) who are very good at both forms of navigating but it is easy to see why a lot of orienteer’s find the large-scale maps frustrating. On all of the orienteering maps, the scales were so small that in one case if it was 2.5 m high or more it was marked with a contour. Compare that with the 1:50 000 topo maps and unless it’s 20 metres high it’s not on there. A definite shift in thinking when you walk past a reasonable sized knoll and it looks like a Mountain on the O map but wouldn’t even be marked on a topo map.

So with my Orienteering experience literally doubled it was time to head for the hills and get some more relevant practise in for the coming AR season. Being based in Nelson now there is a completely new set of locations to go and explore. So off to the hills my girlfriend Elina and I headed. Our rather ambitious plan took us away from any tracks and into the Roaring Lion River in the Kahurangi National Park for about 4 days. The forecast was for a little rain on Sunday but generally clear.

I spent a whole day organising some new fishing gear, license, fly’s etc as the area is suppose to have fantastic trout fishing (because I like to think I can fish but the reality is spotties are the main thing I catch) and then we were off. The first day was uneventful, a good track for the majority and then a few hours across the tops to a secluded lake and first nights camp. The second day and things were still looking good, travel was slow as we dropped off a ridge through some scrub and finally into open beech forest and down towards the Roaring Lion river. It was really ala World Adventure Racing Championship being totally engulfed in the bush with no tracks or landmarks – fantastic. Once we hit the river, we realised that progress was a little slower than anticipated so when we passed the ultimate tent site, it didn’t take much persuasion to set up the tent for the night. We were about 5 km or 3 hours short of the objective for the day but we’d allowed for an extra day if needed so things were still looking good. That night just after dark the familiar pitter-patter of rain on the tent roof started, and within the hour had turned into a torrential downpour. By midnight we were monitoring the river to make sure we weren’t going to be washed away, and by the morning an ankle deep creek had turned into a raging torrent, completely impassable.

With no tracks within a day and a half walk and all on the other side of the river the decision was made to sit tight and wait for the rain to stop and river to recede – after all there was almost zero rain in the extended forecast. I think you see where this is heading? Our tent site was originally elevated from the river by about 4 metres, and had no signs of ever being flooded. That day the water gradually rose until it settled on a level about 2 metres below our site. Still no need to panic, but that night as the rain thundered down once more and the Roaring Lion river was roaring it’s head off we decided it was the sensible decision to move to higher ground. So in the pouring rain, 2 o’clock in the morning up we packed and moved to a tiny clearing in the forest with only cm’s to spare for our tent.

The next day and we decided to give the weather one last chance to co-operate and stop raining – but the rain continued all day and through the night.

By now we were rationing our food and planning alternative options. One thing is when there are no tracks it can be very slow travel so to plan to move at more than 2 km an hour is often unrealistic; often 1 kph is pushing it!

By now it’s morning 5 and we are already a day overdue. We set out in the morning to walk as close to the source of the river as needed to cross the river and then take a combination of ridge and bush travel back towards the car.

We got lucky only a few km’s up stream where the river slowed and crossed a wide shallow gravel bar where we were able to cross. What a relief to be on the homeward side of the river, but still many of the side creeks were so large it took time to find safe crossing points and putting a rope across to help when lugging 30kg packs across the swollen currents.

By the end of the day we had been tramping for 9 hours, gained and lost almost 3000 vertical metres and had travelled 15km back on the map. The majority of the day was spent in the beech forest travelling up catchments, over ridges and back into the forest to repeat the process.

Camping on a ridge at 1200m in dense scrub, it was comforting to hear only wind and rain but no river.

Day 6 and 10 km of off track travel before we hit the final 20 km of track. After a couple of tediously slow hours bashing through bush we finally popped out above the bush line. The final 8 km passed quickly with the only issue being the driving snow and wind trying to rip us from the ridge top.

As a comparison on travelling off track to on, the final 20km took us just over 3 hours to walk, the previous 40 km had taken over 30 hours.

It was with gusto that we stuffed a couple of pies down at the first service station we found and was also good to get out before Search and rescue set our locator beacon off!!

All in all a great trip although a little wet. We met several others who had been holed up in the huts by the surprise rain and it was great practise for the navigation in an AR race….. And just a little taste of the suffering that usually accompanies them.

Elina’s story might be a little different than mine but I know she enjoyed getting to know the Mountains, rivers and forest of NZ?

PS – After all the work putting the fishing gear together and dragging the damn rods in through the bush, they never even got used, and were the single biggest pain in the ass on the whole trip as they seemed to catch on 90% of all the low branches that my pack brushed past – next time fish!!