Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Garfield Circumnavigation

This was Saturdays run, it consisted of 7 hours 45 minutes (25.5 miles) of amazing running, bushwhacking and snow stomping. JVG, Glenn Hayes and myself connected the Taylor creek drainage to the Dingford Creek drainage, which we have done before, just not in these conditions or traveling clockwise. Love the terrain and old growth in the Middle Fork region....get up there if you haven't yet.

It rained the entire time, and we chose the clockwise route to avoid downclimbing one steep section in the snow. Instead we froze our hands off and played it safe. The plan worked and we connected two of the dreamiest trail runs in the valley. We are also getting used to traveling with a gps and plotted a handful of UTM coordinates along the way, to let technology do the dirty work. There is something to be said about the purity of navigating with the map and compass, but the GPS is a marvelous thing.

We only had 3 headlamps and got to the dingford creek parking lot at dark so we opted to run the dirt road instead of the trail to make sure we could all see and share light. Probably only missed out on a half mile of the route and we were ready for that after work out burrito at Tacos Guaymas! mmm..

5 comments:

Matt Hart said...

i'm a bit disappointed with the caliber of navigators in your crew that you didn't navigate for real!

that would have be wicked bad ass. instead it's just kind of bad ass.

Glenn said...

There really wasn't too much nav and we needed to get proficient at using the gps before AD

Glenn said...

what was the map you downloaded to? Were those the actual gps tracks?

DARTvg said...

We need to get proficient with the GPS and navigating with it for Abu Dhabi, as it will be like the raid series and the teams that know how to use their tools will run the race much faster...at least I am assuming this. It didn't take away from the "bad ass'ness" of the day :-)

DARTvg said...

G-forgot to mention that the route is via National Geographic TOPO and is not downloaded from the gps. I could not get my software or computer to recognize the gps.