Peterisoba

Peteris Ledins set up an Adventure Race for us this past weekend. With only four of us participating, however, it was more of an adventure than a race. We met 10 miles up a forest road north of North Bend.
Present were Nikolay Nachev, Tim Potter, Peteris and me.

Stage 1 was described as "Latvian Orienteering". Whether that means that other Latvians besides Peteris take responsibility for this format, I don't know. We were given a sheet of instructions with 60 distances and graphics representing intersections. We had to follow the road for a certain distance, at which point we hit an intersection. There, we went straight or turned according to the graphic (symbol). Along the way, we encountered 5 CPs. As we were on our bikes, we had cycle computers that could accurately track our distance, so the navigation was fairly straightforward. Our route took us up, up twisting forest roads to a fallen lookout tower at the top of a peak (3702') where a trace of snow still lingered from an early season snow a couple nights before.

Stage 2: We now opened our orienteering map and found our location. From here, we navigated to 8 CPs on our mountain bikes. The terrain occasionally matched up with the forest roads on the map. Some of the roads had been decommisioned and had huge ditches through them, while other roads were grassy with saplings growing through them. Fancy new roads appeared that looked like spur roads on the maps. It is apparent that active logging has gone on here since the maps were made. The day and the terrain are beautiful, however, and we have an enjoyable time. I took Tim on a gratuitous bike-whack down a steep slope (he and I were travelling as a team, as were Nikolay and Peteris), but managed to lose my map in the process. Good thing we stuck together! As we were behind Nikolay and Peteris, we were also tasked with collecting the orienteering markers used for CPs. Tim shuffled in his bike shoes across wet logs built into a pier out into Black Lake in order to collect one of the CPs. Our last CP was up a spur road filled with saplings that grabbed at your arms and face. We left our bikes here.

At this point, it was 3:15pm, six hours into our adventure. Tim decided he had enough, and so he headed home. He graciously gave me his orienteering map so that I could continue on the trekking leg myself and collect the CPs for Peteris. The trekking section was supposed to take three hours, so I was a little worried about fighting darkness. I decided to run whenever possible.

Stage 3: Trek. I bushwhacked down to a parallel road and quickly found CP14. I started off again up the road at a run, when the road ended in a giant clearcut. After a bit of wandering around, I headed back down the road to a grassy spur that I had previously seen. This dropped down to a parallel logging road, the one I wanted. I started north again on a road with saplings growing in it, crossed a stream going through the road, and continued, eventually popping out on a nice new road that went in two directions, only one of which was marked on my map. I passed an unmarked spur road that I didn't think I wanted. I had to make a choice of which road to take a couple more times as I came upon more unmarked roads, but when I came to the next CP, I knew I was still on course. The CP was 100 feet above me on top of a cliff, which presented its own challenges, however.

After climbing up and down some terribly steep slopes to retrieve the CP, I was off running again. Two more CPs followed easily, each one described as being at "a road not on the map from the main road which leads into the canyon". The last two trekking CPs were described as being "on the GPS path of the course setter", which was traced onto the map. Part of the GPS track was on an unmarked road (thankfully), but the rest of it put me on a forest road that was so out of commission it was barely visible through downed trees, and turned into a barely discernable footpath traversing between two steep slopes. I found the two CPs, and the foot path dwindled into a full-scale bushwhack through thorn bushes and across a stream, after which I popped out onto a road close to where our mountain bikes were, having completed a circuit around a series of small mountains and ridges. Total time for the trek was just over two hours.

Stage 4: "Ride back home, ASAP, you have seen everything". I collected my mountain bike and followed the map back to where we had left our cars eight hours earlier. I arrived while Peteris and Nikolay were still putting their gear away, and we all chatted about our adventures as the sun started to set.

On our way down the forest road, Nikolay shredded his tire after riding on a flat for five miles. That was the worst damage of the day. We were also stopped by some police that had set up a roadblock for hunters and lectured about not speeding. I had been a little worried about getting shot at during the day, after seeing several hunters in the morning on our way up the forest road; however, the only hunters we saw during the day were in their vehicles, and not out thrashing around through the woods at the same time I was. All in all, it was a good memorable day.