World Rogaining Champs

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One Long, Long Day in the Outback.

Dennis de Monchy / 17.11.2006

Seven of the top ten most venomous snakes, a bunch of spiders that like to bite, 35\' heat ... do you feel like running through the Australian bush for 24 hours? 850 people from 16 countries arrived in the Warrumbungles keen to do just that!

We drove into the campsite just on dark and tried to scope out as much of the terrain as possible. First impressions were that it was a lot hillier than expected, and from the road some of the bush looked much thicker than the open Eucalypt forest we wanted. With kangaroos bouncing around the campsite it looked like the wildlife was going to join the party too. Luckily the kiwi contingent were easily spotted, a bunch of Macpac and Fairydown tents always sets us apart.

The crowd started to gather in the morning, nervously awaiting how many of the granite outcrops would be on the map, and how many would have controls on them! The whistle went and the queue was moving, people were walking away with some pretty big bits of paper, we hoped that there was some unnecessary information that we could trim off. It looked an impressive map, very hilly especially due to the 10metre contours.

As with any Rogaine it took Chris about 10 minutes to figure out a route encompassing all the controls! Not quite the careful planning we needed, and at 115km, a bit too much distance for us to cover. We figured we could do something close to 100km and planned a route accordingly, and trying to miss out some of the nastier climbs that could be skipped.



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