‘W’ is for wind: Three Creeks and one alphabet

Our roving reporter, Bruce Greenhalgh, shares his thoughts on SARA’s 12/24 State Rogaining Championships near Cradock

An occasional rogaine team mate of mine, Chris Graves, is fond of declaring that it’s an achievement just to get to the start of a rogaine. He’s referring, in particular, to bush rogaines which require not only organising a team, an entry and transport to the event, but also arranging three or four days away, camping gear, meals for the pre hash house period and so on and so forth. A bush rogaine involves a lot of preparation.

The process is made easier if you have a regular team mate (or two) and have been through the rigmarole a few times. My Plan A for the ‘Not Just Three Creeks’ rogaine was a case in point, as I entered with Steve Sullivan who I have rogained with over many years. ‘The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men’ truism applied however, and Steve fell ill before the event and couldn’t compete. I didn’t have a Plan B, but a few ‘partner matching’ enquiries brought an offer from Kerstine Alba and Amelia Purvis to join their team. I accepted and Plan B had us all travelling up in Amelia’s car. Plan B became Plan C and then D, E, and F as arrangements ran a gauntlet of changing circumstances, what with sickness, holdups and, well, you name it. But Plan F did, finally, get us all underway in Kerstine’s car.

Common to Plans A to F was the intention to camp at the rogaine site on Friday night. However, having set off in wintery weather, the further North we travelled the worse conditions became. A little after leaving Jamestown it was dire. Some frantic phone calls to local hotels had us booked in at the Carrieton Hotel – Plan G. We’d dodged a cold, wet bullet and were happy (non) campers when we pulled into Carrieton.

The next day at the rogaine site the rain had stopped but the, shall we say, ‘memorable’ wind was strong enough to make tent pitching a minor ordeal. One of the course setters, Trent McInerney, suggested that I might title my report ‘They call the wind Mariah’ (a song from the musical Paint your wagon) since the wind was proving to be such a feature of the event. It wasn’t a bad suggestion because I did call the wind a few things, but ‘Mariah’ wasn’t one of them and all of them are unprintable.

The ‘memorable’ wind also gave me a moment I’d rather forget. I made a last nervous visit to the toilets just before the start. I thought I’d attached the toilet door latch sufficiently, but a gust of wind proved me wrong by ripping the door open and revealing me, sitting on the throne, to a queue of rogainers waiting to use the loos. Oh dear.

Despite all the travails we did make it to the start and it did feel like an achievement. It was also a relief to be underway, even if it was still all before us, including working out how we would operate as a team. However, our load was lightened a little by the realisation that in a mostly barren landscape a tree, or group of trees, near where we figured the control should be, was likely the control’s location. The clear views and this knowledge often made for control sightings hundreds of metres before getting to the location. I had earlier described my experience of rogaining to Kerstine and Amelia as being one of ‘long periods of anxiety (while moving, hopefully, toward the control) punctuated by brief periods of euphoria’ (when the control was found). Amelia said that the ‘far sightings’ were a good thing as they extended the period of euphoria.

Things were going well until control 77, which we made a mess of, but did eventually find. The next two controls were our first in the dark and we made encouragingly good time to them. After that, alas, my brain went AWOL and heading back to the HH we ended up walking the wrong way on the wrong track and really blowing time. Bummer.

Sunday was a fine, sunny day and though still windy (of course) conditions were good. As if matching the weather all three of us had more vim and, as a team, things were really starting to come together. We didn’t end up troubling the places in the results but did our ‘X’ team have a good rogaine? ‘Y’ for yes is the answer, which brings me to the letter ‘Z’. It’s not worth ten points in Scrabble for nothing so I can’t come up with a ‘Z’ word. I’ll have to allude to the fact that it’s the last letter of the alphabet and say that in the end I was pleased and grateful that Kerstine and Amelia had invited me onto their team and had suffered my curmudgeonly ways with good grace. And, as ever, I am grateful and indebted to the organisers who did great things in very trying conditions.