MOGA 2018: Part 2 Night Competition

Post Race Dirtiness 

I showed up for the night competition an hour early, as they said to do on the competition info, so that I could get the coordinates loaded into my GPSr and figure out what the course would look like. My fears about the Garmin In Reach not working for the completion turned out to be warranted, the race organizers couldn’t seem to get the coordinates onto the device. Luckily my 60Csx was working and they loaded the points into it and I was good to go. I tried to also get the points loaded onto my phone as a back-up but couldn’t figure out how to use their mobile hotspot to download the GPX file. I didn’t try that hard though. I had a map in hand, and coords on my GPSr, I was good to go. The course promised some good obstacles, the biggest being a river. 11 of the 13 geocaches were on the side of the river where we currently were, but two were placed on the opposite side (of course there were 13 geocaches, it was Friday the 13th afterall). There was a bridge to cross the river, but it was a good half mile or more from where you wanted to cross the river in order to have an efficient route. This meant competitors would need to choose, attempt a night river crossing to save time, or go the long way and stay dry. Before the sun went down, I walked over to see what this river looked like. Rivers in New Mexico are often not much of an obstacle at all, and I was hoping it would be relatively small and easy to cross. The river, actually known as Salt Creek was about 30-40ft across, a muddy brown color and hard to tell how deep. The section where I scouted it out looked fairly deep actually, maybe over one’s head, but looking at some satellite images of the river further downstream, there were some bends where the river might be shallower as indicated by some logs in it and rippling water. At least that’s what I hoped, because I was ready to cross the river for this race.

More and more people showed up as the race time got closer and the sky grew darker. Right around 8pm the race officials stood up on a table and gave us the run down for the course. It was mostly the usual spiel about making sure you punch the right spot on your map, and checking back with the race officials before leaving so that they don’t send search and rescue out after you. But they also warned us that these woods were filled with spooky stuff and to be very cautious of what we might run into in the night. It wasn’t too hard to guess what this meant… they had volunteers out in the woods waiting to scare us competitors. This could be interesting. The starting horn sounded and I took off at a quick run, getting ahead of the group and then settling into an easy jog down the main road. The route I had selected was to go south along the road first to a large group of caches that were furthest from the start/finish area. I also wanted to tackle the river crossing before it got totally dark, or at least see if I could tackle that.

Getting to the first cache was actually pretty rough. After a nice easy jog over roads and open space I had to plunge into a thick wall of young evergreens. It was not easy to push through and I almost had my headlamp yanked off my head a few times as branches snagged on the power cord that fed from my camelback up to the lamp. The brief struggle was soon rewarded with the first cache location, and unsurprisingly, there was a figure clad in dark clothing, crouched down near the coordinates. I said my hello, but mostly ignored the person as I searched for the first cache. I vaguely recall them saying something like, "we weren't expecting anyone this soon" but maybe I imagined that. I found the cache, punched my card, and bid the ghoulish figure adieu as I raced off to the next cache. The same thing repeated itself at the next cache. When you are expecting people to be loitering around GZ it's difficult to get scared. Plus, I found it actually kind of helpful that someone was at GZ as I could zero in on where I needed to go from further away. After the second cache I veered off towards the bank of the river and started following it looking for a decent place to cross. The bank was pretty muddy, and slick, I couldn;t always stay right on it as the embankments often rose up quite steeply. Eventually I found a spot that I thought would be suitable and tested the water. After a few steps in I was upto my waist, but the redt of the crossing looked shallower, so I forged ahead and was soon on the opposite bank and clawing my way up the mudddy wall there. Once on top it was pretty easy to jog to the two caches located on this side of the river, there were no "scarers" over here. I then ran back to where I had originally crossed. I could see other competitors on the other side looking for a way to cross, but it did not appear that anyone was willing to get wet. They had more sense then me I guess. I slid down the embankment, quickly crossed and then was off running again through briars and brambles.

The rest of the course went pretty smoothly. I was wet and muddy, but didn't care much because running kept me warm. The woods were dark and full of brambles. There was a good network of trails in the area, but neither my GPSr nor the competition map showed these, so I often was off trail, cutting through the woods directly towards my next objective. At most lcoations, spooky decorations and volunteer zombies helped me zero in on the cache. Some volunteer monsters were more helpful than others, offering words of encouragement, Others were really in it for the scaring. At one cache, there was a flashing beacon near GZ which attracted me like a moth, as I got within a few feet, two people came out from nearby hiding places to sneak up on me... luckily I wasn't too surprised. My biggest shock came at one of the last geocaches of the course, which was tucked among the routes of a fallen tree. There weren't any halloween decorations at this one, and after finding the cache, no one came out to scare me, so I put my GPSr down to punch my card. It was right after I punched the card, that a voice whispered in my ear. and caused me to jump, knocking my GPSr into the weeds, That guy got me good, and I then had to search around for a few seconds to find my GPSr before I could continue.

The only real hiccup I faced was when I slipped over a log and hit my GPSr hard against the log. The display went blank. This could have been a disaster for me, I still had a couple geocaches left to find, but didn't have the coordinates downloaded in another device (like my phone). So if my GPSr was dead, I would have been out of luck as far as finding the last caches. Lucky for me, a quick toggle of the power switches resulted in the display coming back to life, and I continued on without hardly a minute;s delay.

Coming into the finish zone, I put on a burst of speed. There was no way of knowing if other competitors were close by, but I figured I might as well try to finish strong. I rushed over to the race official and slapped down my competition card, and was greeted with surprise remarks to the effect of "we didn't expect anyone this early. Yep, I had a good time, and was by far the quickest finisher. I was wet, muddy, and covered in burrs, but happy at my finish.

I loitered at the finish area for a while chatting with the race organizers and waiting for other competitors to come in. One person came by, but passed the finish area in order to go to the bridge that crossed the river. He had decided to not get wet, and instead opt for the long route to those two caches. Perhaps he was the wiser person. I now had to deal with wet and muddy clothes and shoes, and likely would be wearing some of this wet and dirty gear the next morning in the cold. Those thoughts, plus the seeping cold of the night, had me saying my goodbyes to the race volunteers, and heading back to the hotel to clean up and prepare for the next day.

I practically jumped in the shower with all my clothes on in order to scrub out the mud. I then spent almost an hour using the hotels hair dryer on my shoes, gaiters and other wet clothes. I had some extra race clothes for the next day, but not I really did not want to start of the morning with wet shoes, so I focused my drying efforts on those.

My shoe drying set-up

Some final thoughts about the night competition

I have to say that I thought the night competition was an excellent addition to the MOGA comps. I also think it was the most fun competition. I appreciate that it was shorter than the day competitions, since it was pretty late already. The shorter course was not without challenges though, especially the river crossing, and I like that you had to decide how you want to run the race around these challenges. Having to make course decisions is one of the aspects of these races I like best. It's not just about everyone running the same race/route. You get to choose how you want to tackle the course, figure out how to play to you strengths, and ultimately hope that you can gain some advantage by making wise/foolish decisions. In this case, my foolish decision to cross the river worked in my favor. I can see other circumstances where it wouldn't. But aside from just the course itself, what made the night race extra fun was all the volunteers that came out to give the Friday the 13th theme a little extra punch. I couldn't help but smile each time someone popped out from behind a tree to scare me. I give the Nebraska Geocachers huge props for pulling this together and making a very memorable race.

On to Part 3: Saturday's Comps