Yeah it was a spectacular valley, a the line created with the dying highlighter is indeed where we planned to go
As spectacular as the valley was, it was no Grand Canyon, even if my legs afterwards felt like it was.
Very close! It’s a map for Rogaining, sport very similar to orienteering. It has a lot in common, navigation by map and compass only, you are only given the map right before the event starts, no electronic aids, finding control points, but they diverge in some key areas.
The biggest difference is in orienteering the goal is navigate to a list of control points in a specified order in the fastest time possible, while Rogaining instead specifies a time limit, gives each control point a point value, and the aim is to have the highest score at the end. Courses are purposely designed so that no matter how good you are you can’t reach even close to every control in the time period. The other big differences are duration, orienteering is more akin to long distance running, no more than 2 hours in the longest format, whereas the classic Rogines are more akin to hiking, the longest format being a whole 24 hours. The final key difference is Rogaining is a team sport, with teams of 2 to 5 members, I think out of safety due to the long event times and isolation of locations.
So this is the map I used for an 8 hour Rogaine! I haven’t done any longer ones yet, still working up to that. The red line was our planned route, the black circle was also out of bounds unexpectantly due to a fire going through there right before the event, which had the unfortunate effect of simplifying the planning process a bit. The control are with the points of in the tens of what their number is, so control 41 and 44 are both worth 40 points, the second number is just so you can tell them apart.
How did we come up with the plan to draw the map? We pinned the map to a cork board, stuck pins in every control point and used a string with to scale markings on it for every kilometer so we could test the distance of potential routes easily even with lots of curves. Then its a planning game of trying to optimize a route to collect most points for the distance you think you can cover in the time. A picture from the internet to illustrate:
Of course there’s lots of other factors too, how difficult is the terrain to traverse, how difficult will the navigations be? It may be worth following a path 2 or 3 times the distance of going in a straight line because it will work out quicker than trying to bash through the scrub.
Do you go for the big points off in the distance? Or are the clusters of smaller points actually more efficient? It’s such a fascinating game to play! Also you WILL have to adapt your route on the fly, as no plan survives contact with the real world!