More orienteering

Hi again,

Last Saturday, May 2, Patty and I went to the orienteering meet sponsored by the MN Orienteering Club at Afton State Park over looking the St. Croix River. For those of you not familiar with it, Afton Park is also referred to as Afton Alps. It's a major ski resort in Minnesota. It has some pretty drastic hills as you can imagine. However, unlike Sand Dunes Park where we were last time, it has lots of landmarks, so it is fairly easy to orient yourself.

After our Brown course debacle at Sand Dunes, we decided to throttle back a notch to the Orange course. It's still an intermediate/advanced course which requires good navigation skills and a decent level of physical fitness.

This particular course was 4.7 km as the crow flies with 14 points. That's a lot. We probably walked twice that in this terrain. Our navigation was dead on. If it hadn't been, we wouldn't have finished in the allotted time, which is what killed us last time.

Patty is getting quite good at map reading. Some of the points were tucked away very nicely and we didn't see them until we were on top of them. Our geocaching skills came in handy for that final search.

The weather was perfect - sunny, cool, windy - but it still got quite warm out on the trail. We had our CamelBaks with us filled with ice and water, so we had lots to drink. Also our walking sticks which are really useful for cross country movement and our walkie-talkies.

The handheld radios are a recent addition to our equipment list. Sometimes we split up to look for something. Other times, we just drift away from each other, which is easy to do in some of wilderness we travel in. The radios are great for staying in touch and really allow us to safely expand our outdoor activities on the fly. We take them out every time.

So the bottom line - mission accomplished. A good long walk, perfect navigation and we finished the course with 30 minutes to spare.

Next meet on May 17 at Lebanon Hills Park in Eagan, MN.

More later ..... Don aka Alpha6