Alan Ayling

06 August, 2011

What I love about the Nav Challenge events is how different they are to regular mountain races and how everyone gets different stories to tell. You don't know what to expect, apart from the unexpected. Today's race from Curtlestown was no different. There may have been some unforeseen issues, but it was nonetheless another enjoyable day in the hills.

The first control – the top of Raven's Rock – is familiar to anyone who's run the Prince William's Seat race, the challenge this time was in the route choice to get there. Gerry Brady made an initial dart left up an old mountainbike trail, cutting off a substantial corner from the Wicklow Way option to the top of Curtlestown. A few others did likewise. Most of us shunned that for a more direct approach – straight on at the first hairpin, across the stream and some sort of direct route to the top of Raven's Rock. Suffice to say, Gerry got it right. The vegetation on the direct route was very dense. Gerard Butler led me out onto the path from the Wicklow Way to Raven's Rock itself, where Gerry passed us on his way back. The group who had stayed further right on the straightest route to the top got there slightly later.

The second control was a well-planned route choice classic: over the top of Cloon Wood or through it. Both are viable options – the former involves slightly more climb but is runnable all the way, the latter involves forest, which may or may not be as good as it looks (one of very few downsides of the EastWest maps is that that forest is basically just mapped as forest, you have no indication as to whether it's any good to get through or not, also felled areas aren't always captured). I went over the top. Lost sight of Gerard, so I guess he went lower. Just managed to stay ahead of Zoran, who closed a decent gap on me all the way to the control. We passed Gerry on the way after he'd taken an unpleasant fall. The control was easy to find from that angle, not so easy if you came from the quarry below, as some did. This reinforces the need to have control descriptions for these events – the precise location isn't clear from the map and if the control feature is a cliff you need to know if the kite is at the top or the bottom!

And so to number 3... this invited all sorts of route choice and even more discussion. I found a decent route to the main fire road in Tonygarrow forest (or what's left of it), some reported turning off early and having to climb huge fences. The route from the road down to the control caused even bigger problems – the most inviting approaches turned out to be private driveways. The sort of places where the welcoming committee is equipped with dogs instead of tea and biscuits. It seems a lot of options were tried, mine involved a gap in a fence, a driveway of sorts, a turn off onto a double-track neatly avoiding going near the houses, smugly picking up a stream and then disgust at realising it was the wrong stream... a cut across through some pleasant woodland to the right stream, following it up to the footbridge and the complete absence of a control kite. No control description got me muddled – what feature was I looking for? It looks uncannily like a crag on the map... so off I went to look for a crag. Yep, found a crag, great. No kite though. 400 m downstream and back up again. No kite. Back to the footbridge, no kite had magically appeared since last time. Right then, a phone call will sort this out. It did – I was in the right place but the control had not made it that far – the volunteer putting out controls 3 and 4 hadn't been able to gain access. Three other runners arrived at this point, one of them fresh from an encounter with the aforementioned welcoming committee.

Across country and fences to where number 4 should have been and a route choice to number 5 that I'd reconsider if I had to do it again. Well, it avoided climb. Unfortunately it meant a good track at first petered out and the vegetation became so bad that at times the best line was to be in the river instead of along the bank. It did lead neatly to the control though, so it's not all regret.

Last control – no 6 – began like its predecessor. Grand track to start, before descending into farce. A lot of runners took the safe option – run all the way up to the Cloon/Oakglen carpark on the main road, along the main road, take a right onto the Wicklow Way and follow its tarmac and fire road safely to Knockree. Three sides of a square, but safe, more or less predictable. Where's the fun in that? So I went for the direct option and it was grand until a certain stream had to be crossed. The stream was easy, the jungle beyond it was another matter. The map shows only 600 m up to the Knockree road, the first 400 m of this was utterly horrendous. Head high bracken. Head high gorse. Holes. Rocks. Forest to the left, but the sort of young tree forest you might go into and not be seen again until some tree-chopper found the bones two decades later. The best part of half an hour's thrashing and the road was finally attained. Haven't seen another runner in close to an hour now, not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Finally, runnable ground. But sure doesn't that get boring? And this open bit of ground leading directly up Knockree and cutting out over a km of fire road, well it looked almost inviting, despite the huge boulders. Should've learned by now really. The boulders soon gave way to more head-high gorse and some young trees into the bargain. And eventually, mercifully, the upper fire road. From whose end it's a simple enough pull up Knockree and back down again, and the fire road all the way back to the tarmac and home to the finish, sadly missing out the rat pass that Joe Lalor found behind the bench, saving maybe 1500 m of distance.

All told, as much an adventure as a mountain race. Sadly I don't have one of those GPS watch gizmos to plot the route like Ruairi did last week. But I did enjoy it a lot and being first back was a nice bonus. Most of the hardship was down to my own route choices and that's half the fun. There's usually an easier way – but do you want the easier way?

Thanks to Kevin for organising – a thankless job. It would seem the middle of Glencree is not an ideal area for an event of this type, but it was worth trying.

I'd heartily recommend any mountain runner to try these navigation challenges. Go and have an adventure... marked routes are the most overrated thing in our sport. And if nothing else, you'll have stories to tell and cool scars to show your friends and work colleagues on Monday.