Twin Peak 2007

Planners Comments (Day 1) - Steve Lang

I hope you have enjoyed High Dam, as much as I have.

It is fascinating reviewing RouteGadget and the splits, seeing where you have had inspiration and where you have been confused. Please add your routes and comments, so everyone can compare route choices. I have discovered controls 166 and 192 proved especially tricky, while removing 193 and moving 162 northwards would have improved some courses.

I was concerned the network of walls, fences and streams would have reduced the navigation challenges. I tried to set legs to minimise contact with linear features probably at the cost of adding climb, but I believe worth paying. On paper the courses appeared short, I’m sure no one thought so afterwards. The winning times were slightly higher than recommended with the heat contributing.

It has been a privilege to plan for High Dam. I would like to thank Ray Barnes (controller for both days) for his input; saving me from many mistakes, especially on the junior courses.

 

Planners Comments (Day 2) - John Britton

This is a marvellous map of an excellent technical area, with many small features mapped and plain to see in winter. It was heartbreaking to see most of them disappear beneath the bracken in the last couple of weeks

As someone who grumbles about too-short courses, that wasn't on the agenda here. Maybe we should have realised that the heat and general difficulty would spread out the field much more than usual, so apologies if your adventure felt over-long.

I chose not to take everyone through the extremely complex rocky hilltop area. I did wonder if I should also avoid the green area, but that would have been very awkward, and all I can say is that on every visit (including control collection!), I found the mapping worked and I hit every control site first time from at least 2 different directions. Furthermore, my GPS track was very comforting about everything being exactly where the map said it was.

Apart from that, I took every course whose length allowed through as many of the distinct areas as possible - the lovely birch area to start with, the heathery hilltop and green area, the sheep pasture in the North, the steep old forest, etc. The green area seems to have caught out a lot of people - I guess the bottom line is that extreme care is needed here, as relocation is well nigh impossible. I did try pretty hard not to have legs or sites that obliged significant hacking through greenery.

Thanks to all our control collectors, to Ray for his diligence and especially to Steve for coping admirably with the short straw of area and with total lack of help from supposed senior partner.

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