Race 12-08 Discover Valley of Fire Day #1 2hr.

- 1:58:19 - 6th/17


Due to not qualifying for the National Snowshoe Championship this year (lack of snow in my region caused qualifying events to be cancelled) I unexpectedly had a free weekend. Since I already had scheduled the time off of work and budgeted for a trip I decided to run the Discover Valley of Fire orienteering events near Las Vegas, NV. On Saturday there was a 2 hour event and Sunday there were 2, 4, and 6 hour events.

I drove to Vegas Friday afternoon/evening and although I got there late I had plenty of time for a good night’s sleep since the race Saturday didn’t begin until 1PM. The location was the Valley of Fire State Park which is an hour northeast of Las Vegas close to Lake Mead and the Arizona border. It is a Red Rocks park not too far of a drive and there were a fair number of other visitors there. On the drive in I saw several bighorn sheep running across the open plains.

The only people I knew there were Rex Winterbottom who was the event organizer and Bud Laird who I had seen a year ago and Red Rocks Canyon Park. It looked a lot easier than it turned out to be. Rex explained the instructions which were similar to other events he had put on except for how we were to check in at the controls. Usually there is an orange orienteering bag identifying the spot. Since the park wouldn’t let him leave even temporary markings out on the course, in order to check in we were given answer sheets that contained 2 images and we needed to circle which of the 2 images was visible from the control location. There were 17 teams total and many of the teams had multiple people. The weather was warm and very sunny.

I started out to get the control closest to the start as did at least 2/3 of the people. The rock formation where the control was located was extremely easy to find however identifying the picture turned out to be nearly impossible. A bunch of us climbed all over the rock formation looking to see something that resembled one of the photos but I believe only 1 team actually found at. At one point I got high up and could observe a dozen other people around all looking in different spots. After 20 minutes I had to give up on it and move on.

The 2nd control was easy to find but identifying which picture was correct was not easy. After about 5 minutes I found it and I had finally got my first control over a half hour in. I progressed toward the 3rd control which was supposed to be in a canyon. After passing by where I thought the canyon entrance would be I couldn’t find the canyon and decided to skip it I found the 4th rock formation as easily as I found the 2nd and identifying the picture was a little easier. Another team was there as well and they had identified it right before me.

I considered going to get one more and returning at least to get a good time (in the case of a tie for points, fastest time wins) so I headed out toward what Rex called was the easiest one to find. He was right – it was a sign at the top of some stairs and the stairs were easy to spot from quite far away. From there I decided to get 2 more, both similar to the first couple controls I had already gotten – large rocks standing alone on the flat plane. I found both without too much difficulty and made it back to the start with only 1:41 minute to spare although I could have run back faster if I needed to.

I finished with 275 which was good for 6th out of 17. I was relived to hear that several other teams had the same difficulty I did with finding the controls. Bud had scored 400 points but lost 450 due to coming back too late and another team had 300 but lost 450 for the same reason. While on the course I considered only running for 4 hours at Sunday’s event as I didn’t want to be out there for 6 hours just looking for controls when I knew I was in the vicinity. It was a fun event but I would hesitate to do many more where the specific landscapes are being used for controls are so difficult to find.