Planning...

Back in June last year, having collected some controls at the end of the Oz Championships, I had a brief chat to Jim Langford about volunteering to help set or vet a Rogaine. Before I knew it, I was volunteered to set the next March 6 hour event.

I’d heard that Alcoa were going to be moving their mining operations north towards Karnet and so thought it would be good to get a Rogaine up there before everyone was locked out of the area. Since it was only about twenty minutes from home, I’d also be
saving myself some travel time.

I consulted my fellow setter to see what he thought, and he kindly offered to allow me to get all the approvals sorted out. When I was ready to start setting he would be ready to help out. So I started searching the area for a suitable Hash House site outside the drinking water catchment and finally, by chance, I knocked on Ruth Fawcett’s door. Ruth and Geoff were more than happy to have a few hundred people camped out in their orchard, and walking all over the place.

Several months later, just in time for Christmas, I received the formal approval from DEC to use an area bounded by the Reservoir Protection Zones of North Dandalup Dam to the southwest and Serpentine Dam to the east, an area to be imminently closed off by Alcoa to the southeast and private land to the west and north. This, I thought, gave me an area just big enough for a six hour Rogaine ... little did I know.

In early January, Gary Carroll got me started with OCAD and the map data. Somewhat behind schedule with the setting process, I was now ready to get my fellow setter involved and start setting controls. Alas, I found that he was going to be away for all of January. So, with the setting and vetting team now reduced to a team of one (me), Gary started a flurry of emails which, within a couple of days, resulted in Peter Beyer joining me with the setting and Wil and Ricky coming on board as vetters.

Within 24 hours of Peter joining the team we were out setting our first controls and, with some careful alignment of our calendars, just over three weeks later (one of which I was away on holidays) we finished setting our last control and celebrated with an elated run back to the car.

By this stage it had become evident that we probably had a much bigger area than we needed. With no obvious area that could be cut from the map we figured the larger map provided more route choices, so we stuck with what we had planned. The gullies, both broad/indistinct and well-defined, had shown themselves to be full of sometimes impenetrable vegetation.

Wil and Ricky (with some secret helpers) soon vetted all the controls and, with a few minor changes to control locations and adding “broad” to half the control descriptions, the map and control descriptions were done.

...Now it was time to hang the controls and Wil and I wanted to check out the steep gully north of 102 (to see what it would be like traversing between 102 and 75). So we parked just south of 102 which we hung. Then we split up, with Wil going to 20 and I going to 75, planning to meet up again at 76 and continue on back to our other car which we’d left at the lookout at 103. This was when the fun started. After descending
most of the way to the river bed I realised I was no longer carrying the control for 75, so I had to head back up the hill searching for where I’d dropped it. A quick call to Wil over the dodgy mobile coverage revealed that he wasn’t having much luck getting to 20 either as he couldn’t find a place to get down into the dry river bed. Eventually, after doubling back all the way up the hill to 102 and back down a bit, I was
lucky enough to find the control on the ground. In the meantime Wil had doubled back to 74, which we’d already hung, to get across the river. Finally about two hours after starting off for 102 we finished the 3 km back to Wil’s car at 103 (the trials and tribulations are sometimes the most fun and the most memorable).

Shane Lewis