8th World Rogaining Championships
Picture: Marsh
Forum
2008-09-16

"good" and "bad" swamps and bogs

Would be good to get comments on which of the swamp-legs were better and which were worse than expected. For example we did not go to the other side of Ähijärv, but would like to know how was there.

Another point is of course emotions, which leg made you curse worst :-)

My opinions:

GOOD SWAMPS:

78-85. As expected

92-74. We went directly near 74. The northern swamp, unpassable on map was very passable in the most narrow place by beaver-damm. But the swamp near 74 was hard to cross due to very thick willow-bushes.

50-51. The bog after peet-field was slow, but very fine.

37-42. We were afraid of going directly to N, so we took the ride to W up to road and that was more-or-less OK. Someone went directly to N ?

BAD SWAMPS:

85-55. First part to NW was OK. Then we tried direct shortcut after the farm, but that was a mistake. Water was so high that we were forced to turn around and go around by road.

93-50. Going out from 93 to S the 3 ditches had all very high water and we were lucky to find fallen trees everywhere. Also we had problem finding the small path S from the bog-hill after the swamp. The ditch there was even wider and we had to move by it up to the path where was the only good crossing option we saw.

44-43. We planned to go directly by ride, but it looked very bad at night-time and we went around from under the high-voltage lines. It was not good there either, but at least the flooded ditch was crossable by beaver-damm. Anyone went directly ?

45-80. Already much commented probably the worst river-crossing of all. Should have chosen 45-31-80 instead of going directly. Probably almost the same time spent, but +3 points.

Alar

2008-09-16

85-55 Probably the most amazing thing in the course - about 50m (!!!) of continuous beawer dams. But quite difficult to find.

I guess that such huge amount of uncrossable narrow swamps and small ditches surprised also Estonians.
Very high water level even in the raised bogs.

Eduard Pukkonen
189

2008-09-16

I have to agree with Alar on several legs described.

74-84 We took a gamble going straight and easily crossed (without even getting our feet wet!) the "uncrossable" swamp (by a beaver dam) NE of 74.

55-85 Tried to cut straight by the farm in the middle of swamps (who wants to live in a place like that anyway???) but had to turn back as well because of high water. So we ended up going around and losing time on that.

93-50 Ran into the wide and deep ditches here as well, so we ended up going straight to the south along a ditch. I lost my Moscow compass here when crossing the last ditch here. So if anyone found it, please let me know, for a reward.

45-80 Fortunately we chose 45-31-80, so no problems there (except for finding the correct path to descend from 31).

57-75 We went straight again using the ride on the edge of the bog, but it was quite soft and we had to cross a wide area of open (and extremely cold) water at the end there. Going around there using the small paths would have probably been a faster option.

However, it was interesting that regardless of high water and multitude of swamps, it was possible to stay dray on quite many legs. I was able to keep my feet completely dry the first 6 hours (S-32-76-40-64-41-74-84-53-54-72-77-94-63-55 and half way to 85).

Neeme
228

2008-09-16

According to routes drawn in RouteGadget it seems that Latvian teams 65 Sturis-Sturis and 126 Mankus-Liepina could tell us interesting stories about how passable was the flooded marsh between 40 and 73, which the course-setter suggested to avoid in the pre-event information.
This marsh looked really beautiful, but I did not want to step in ...
For Sturis-Sturis it took 46 minutes to cover the leg of 1.7 km in daytime. Mankus-Liepina were there in darkness and spent 1.5 hours.

Lauri

2008-09-16

I think our team set the record of time for crossing the marsh, though it was a different march :) At 23 o'clock we decided to take a leg 55-85 instead of returning to the hash house and it was a mistake... We were doing quite well, thought we found the right ditch, but there was no CP. Finally decided we just go to the next CP (78). Somehow we took the wrong clearing and ended up two girls spending 3 hours in the middle of the night in a terrible marsh with a number of ditches, that were not marked on the map!

It was our first, but definitely not the last 24 hour rogain :)
Agne, 193

p.s. many thanks to the organizers, it was a really great event.

2008-09-19

How we did it! That wasn't easy, but day-time showed for us best route (Y can see our route by Gadget). Story---> it was a high level of balancing as circus as well as make decision on best possible route using a puzzle of falling trees. Sometime we use and calculate route by using 5-6 falling trees, just understood how we can do it. On preliminary planning we expect go more South, but when we cross a first dich by using some fallen trees then we suggest to show are there is some happy moment and find that route. I think that was possibile in day-time. If Mankus do it in night-time, that is miracle, congrutalation to him. Fortunately our legs was wet, but in other cases, we really understood message of organizers and try to escape from that type of bogs

sturis- sturis

2008-09-22

The 85-55 was extreme also for us, we decided to gross the ditch over beaver dam. What was the problem, we found wrong dam, which was extremly long and we have catched wrong side of perpendicular ditch and lost some 10 minutes. This beaver dam was like I've never seen - very long and with several sharp curves. It's clearly visible also in aerophoto (http://xgis.maaamet.ee/ if You could find right place), it's 125m long.
The right (mapped) dam was a bit SW, "just" 60m long.
I think the best route for 85-55 was around through WP1, as well as in daylight or night.
Many thanks to the organizers, specially to the mapper and course setter. I agree: this is one of the best places for 24h rogain in Estonia and organizing was done perfectly!

2008-09-22

The last comment was written by Mairolt, team 141, sorry, subscription lost somewhere.

2008-09-26

OUr comments as well: 64-73-40: we got more wet going to 73 then to 40. South from 64 there is just one yellowish marsh all other parts are hard land. Very wet indeed ! Then from 73 to 40 on day time (on our slow feets) was alright, there were old fallen trees under the water level which made the passing possible.

Those who weren´t there but did 80/45, that part was nothing, very easy and fast to cross compared to 64/73.

Worst definetely was, at night, trying to find a crossing 55/85. I saw on the map two black lines, kind of saying cross here, but we didn´t find it, and that was end of our race...rest just walking and haveing fun :)

And one more; lost the trail (well according to map there was not a trail all the way) from 67 to 86, ended up to lot of fallen trees and high water levels...but an interesting during the night.

iiro kakko


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