all-knighter

Course map & profile: Caltopo

What: an unofficial 6-hour nighttime self-supported virtual rogaine.

When: 9 pm, August 8th (report below).

Where: Cane Creek Mountains.

How: Visit 64 virtual controls in the sequence of the earliest knight's tour (ascending or descending numerical order)... Or choose your own route. Darkness and summertime vegetation adds difficulty. Note that MapRun treats this as a score course, which increases the odds of unintentional punching. But it still beeps at revisited controls. 

I reserved a campsite for Friday night after a rainy week of work and set off solo to take care of unfinished business. It was a beautiful night with a near-full moon. I followed the preordained knight's tour sequence in descending numerical order. The going was slower than expected. The ground was still quite wet and I didn't want to risk injury. 

My headlamp illuminated many large spiders hanging out on their webs. A few unlucky ones joined me for a short stretch of the tour. Deer watched me as I passed. A hornet buzzed around me for a bit, but seemed too discombobulated by the darkness to attack. I had briars all over me after visiting 53. Roots and vines tripped me up at times.

Somewhere around midway, tired and discouraged, I contemplated quitting. I sipped on caffeinated electrolyte drink mix in my hydration bladder, sucked on mints and crunched on crispy celery sticks to help keep me awake. The incessant navigation was just about enough mental stimulation, even if the controls were all virtual.

I stopped at least half a dozen times for 5 minutes, or longer. These were breaks to do one or more of the following: switch out headlight batteries, eat some snacks, dump debris from shoes, pick off briars, filter water and enjoy the moonlit landscape from atop the tower. I also lost time routing (and sometimes rerouting) all 64 legs.

Another substantial hiccup occurred at 15 where MapRun crashed. Thankfully, I had the tour loaded on Usynligo for backup. I tried my best to make it to the finish before sunrise, but the NW quadrant had other ideas. After crawling through blowdowns and revisiting(?!) my favorite briar patch at 53, I brought it home in 9.5 hours!

whose idea was this?