By Bruce Greenhalgh, our follicularly challenged correspondent
If you google ‘rogaine’ the results don’t relate to the sport of long distance cross-country navigation. Instead, you get a lot of links to a treatment for baldness that shares the name ‘rogaine’. I guess this is symptomatic of capitalist driven algorithms and such since there’s far more money to be made from flogging hair loss remedies than from the sport of rogaining. However, the coincidence of names is confusing and might lead to people thinking that the sport is, somehow, an effective treatment for baldness. The reverse is actually true; rogaining causes baldness. I present myself as a case study to support this assertion. When I took up rogaining I had a pretty full head of healthy hair. It had colour. It had ‘volume’. Baldness was something that happened to other people. Now after a rogaining career (admittedly of a good few years) my hair line is receding, my bald spot is expanding and what hair I have left is dull, lifeless and greying.
If only rogaining was a remedy for hair loss! Not only would I have an admirable head of hair, but rogaining would be a far more popular sport. Entries would be swollen by legions of follicly challenged middle-aged men subconsciously drawn to the heavily vegetated areas of the map.
Now, I know what you are thinking, ‘correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation’. In response to that I would point out that attending the Arcoota Creek rogaine (which was close to last year’s Three Creeks rogaine) involved driving through a countryside characterised by bald hills and bald plains. This classic rogaine country was clearly similarly denuded by our sport. It’s true that out on the course there were patches of ‘green’ (vegetation), but a lot of the green was provided by Callitris. To my eye this is a species of tree that spends most of its life dying, dropping branches like I shed hair. This has to be due to rogaine activity.
Finally, unlike a brand of shampoo that promises improved hair with the proviso that ‘It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen’, rogaines are at the opposite end of things and most definitely do happen overnight. That’s the whole point of the sport.
Alopecia, though, was the furthest thing from my mind, when, literally from the gun, we encountered something that rogaining does nurture, namely rocks, lots of rocks. 63 was our first control as we headed out on a basically anticlockwise navigation of the northern part of the map and it required a rocky climb and descent – a taste of things to come. At times open country and a few kilometres on the safety loop gave some respite from the rocks. However, as we made our way back to the Hash House via controls 46, 32, 94 and 44 the rocks were everywhere and seemingly intent on trying to trip me up, roll under my feet, slip or catch me painfully around the ankles. It was in this period that I started swearing at them (not a good look) and, yes, declaring that I would never rogaine again.
Of course, the very next day I was up at 4.30 to break my resolution and experience ‘breakfast by headlamp’, surely the antithesis of ‘dinner by candlelight’. At least the morning was only cold, as opposed to being painfully cold. As we set off, I looked forward to the temperature climbing and the removal of a layer or two of clothing. That didn’t happen. The morning remaining stubbornly cool ranging to cold when up high and in the wind. Wind chill was a feature of the rogaine and when out on course provided an approximate guide to elevation; the higher up and more exposed we were the colder we were. Rocks and wind chill, what more can you ask for? Perhaps some awe-inspiring views? They were also a feature of elevation and provided an opportunity for me to recalibrate my importance in the great scheme of things and relocate my place in the world. Good for the soul and worth a few lost hairs. And I have to admit that the rocks in the southern part of the map, which we traversed on Sunday, were less of a problem. I only hated them intermittently. By the time we finished off in the fairly benign country around controls 42 and 34 rocks had become, well, just rocks and nothing to tear my hair out about.
Speaking of follicular matters, the organisers had more than the standard number of grey hair inducing problems to overcome. A big thank you to Evelyn and Craig Colwell especially, and to all those involved in solving those problems and making it happen and happen overnight. Thanks also to both stations’ owners, Luke and Frances Warwick, and David and Carol and Fiona Warwick, for allowing us to explore their spectacular properties.
