Great Falls, MD - Nov 13, 2011

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The weather was perfect, much nicer than it has been the past few times I have orienteered at Great Falls.

There was a huge turnout. Over 200 people participated.

For the most part the controls didn't give me too much trouble. To be fair I had some help in the form of other competitors who, one way or another, led me to some of the controls.

When I was looking for control 6/112 I got off course. I was heading down the wrong side of a large reentrant. I thought I was headed in the right direction based on my compass but it felt wrong. So I took a chance and crossed the reentrant and quickly found the control flag. That experience gave me a boost of confidence.

I dropped my map when I was looking for control 12/114. It wasn't long before I realized it was missing. I had a good guess as to where I might have dropped it. In the process of heading back to the spot I found the control.

While looking for control 22/119 I'm pretty sure I wandered into the forbidden zone by accident. I should have headed southwest from the previous control in order to avoid the out of boundaries area but I headed south. The forbidden zone didn't cover a very large area. It was shaped kind of like the letter U. The control was right in the middle of the hollow of the U. I can't have the been only person to mistakenly cross into the forbidden zone. There were no signs of any sort to indicate the boundaries of the zone. It was just marked as such on the map. When I sketched my route on RouteGadget I lied about the actual route I took to get to control 22/119. I made it look as though I skirted the forbidden zone but did not cross into it.

Red [28 controls; 8.5 km; 345 m]
Time: 3:03:46 - winsplits - routegadget