Written by Fred Flinstone sock wearer, Bruce Greenhalgh

The socks I usually wear on rogaines are of the high-end, adventure/outdoor variety. The sort of socks marketed as having special performance qualities (for which a premium is charged) and with names like ‘Summit’ or ‘Horizon’ or with logos depicting mountains. Habitués of outdoor gear shops will know what I mean. Despite wearing these state-of-the-art, world beating, outdoor socks my rogaine performances are generally pretty ordinary and my feet still hurt. And that had me thinking that in my quest for the ideal combination of shoes, socks, blisters and bruised toes I could consider any and all socks. And I did, trail testing various hosiery before finally deciding on a pair of socks for the Bendleby 24 hour that cost nothing (they were a give-away promotion from my local supermarket) and were decorated, not with inspiring adventure insignia, but with the cartoon figure of Fred Flintstone complete with his exultant catchcry of ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’

I gave a lot of thought to my sock selection, really agonised over it, but ten minutes into the rogaine all my ruminations felt like a complete waste of time. My shoes and socks were sodden, courtesy of the weeds that covered much of the ranges which were wet from recent rains and current fog. Yep, fog. In the ‘driest state in the driest continent’, north of Goyder’s Line, we were in for a wet and misty weekend. It didn’t really rain, I’ll say that, but there was a lot of moisture around. (Creeks with water in them? Good heavens!) If I had to sum up the 2026 State Champs in one word, that word would be ‘foggy’. It was foggy enough to mess up our navigation. Our route first took us on anticlockwise loop of the Bendleby Range and after visiting a few controls we aimed for a high ridge between controls 43 and 81 thinking that the elevation would give us a view of the lie of the land. Wrong. The view we had was of fog and more fog and what followed was a masterclass in getting it wrong. We did find the control, almost by a process of gully elimination, but it was a disheartening experience. At least there was some solace in later learning that other teams had experienced similar fog induced navigational embarrassment.

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Interviewer: Jo Powell
Interviewees: Jonty and Tiaan McKinnel, winners of the SA State Rogaining Championships 2026

Firstly, congratulations on your win last weekend. It was a difficult event with the fog and, collectively, we were astounded at how well your team did, cleaning up the course with 3 ½ hours spare.

A few questions for you:

You told me that you have honed your navigating skills over many, many years getting purposely lost in the bush in NZ as teens and have rogained since you were quite young. What strategies did you use for this rogaine, particularly when the fog overnight was so dense, when contours couldn’t be seen?

We had recently done a lot of bush navigation during our multi-day adventure races, meaning navigating with very few features to go off was second nature. It was important for us to know where we were at all times. So, bouncing from a big feature, sometimes only a few hundred meters away, was important getting to the control. Rather than doing big, long bearings, we did short bearings and always checked features with the bearing to confirm.

When you route plan, what do you consider? eg shortest distance, flats in the early hours, difficult terrain early, using handrails at night… (I did hear a whisper that you only spend 10 minutes route planning and therefore shortest distance is your only consideration. Is this correct?)

We used to only spend about 10-20 minutes route planning. We’ve changed that over the last 2 years, which has helped a lot. Now we try to use all the available planning time and consider every possible option. For this event, we spent just over two hours planning, tweaking and adjusting our route.

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