Rotorua rules
Whakarewarewa Forest is awesome. The MTB trails are mint and heaps of the forest off-trail is passable on foot. There are decent hills, a couple of lakes… and the map is good. All good territory for rogaining. I’m super-grateful that the MTBers were willing to share their forest with us! Rotorua rules.
Orienteering Bay of Plenty put on a tricky course for the Great Forest Rogaine. It was difficult to decide the best route, and we found we had to make major changes to our planned route as we went. Fortunately my teammate, Kath (whom I’d just met 2 hours before the start gun), was pumping out time/distance calculations on the fly (I tend to go more by feel), and making the calls on what checkpoints to miss. She got us into position to make it home within the 8 hour time limit. My main contribution, aside from double checking Kath’s nav decisions, was to tow the s#%t out of her for the last hour to get us through the last high scoring checkpoint and home in time. We had to work hard, and I was pleasantly surprised that my legs were willing.
Points wise we did ok but failed to beat our friends Erin & Aidan who beat us by ~80points, from memory (about one or two checkpoints). Despite this bitter disappointment, it was a highly enjoyable event.
