AL18-04 (2018-03-08)

The nightmare at Santa Pola... Started jogging from the tourist parking area towards the K point, no problems here. There after the spiraling decent toward madness began. K-1: Half walking, trying to get to grips with the terrain and the "rocks" that were on average reached a dizzying 10-20cm towards the skies. Found it well enough. 1-2: Pretty straight forward, the hole was easy enough to spot. 2-3: Slow and steady with compass wins the race, the I just stumbled over the right rock and there it was. 3-4: Kept to the open area following the edge of the trees. Hit the track when I went too far and headed back. Was a bit lucky here too. No way to tell what the h*ll is what out there... 4-5: Cut to the track, chose a rather random spot to leave the track from (although I was certain I was cutting through the green/white stiped stuff towards the supposedly "more open stuff". Evidently not. Hit the open area with the building and had to swing back into the scrub. This one was a bit of a challenge. Or I could have done a better job of it... 5-6: The rather amusing part of this excercise begins. Somehow I thought I could follow the slim patches of open ground and groups of rocks to control 6. I did not manage that. I should have continued to the track further on but I turned back to try again. Followed a straight narrow opening in the scrub, (yellow-ish on the map, hidden under the route). Obvioulsy came wery close but didn't see the tiny bands marking the control. Hit the track, found a suitable place to cut back in and somehow magiced my way to the control... 6-7: Again pretty close by (no way to tell what was what out there, just a bed of crushed rocks of which some obviously bribed the map maker + scrubs and bushes and small trees...) Compassed my way from the track to control 7. 7-8: Not much to say here, compass and walking pace and tadaa! 8-9: Hit the road, follow the (what ever it's called, brown dotted line) and ninja my way by compass to control 9. 9-10: This one was bad. Obviously got pretty close. No chanse to distinguish a feature from another. I eventually found the track, tried to find a suitable entry point for my return journey. (Note: I took it for granted that the white stripes were features in the terrain, not just part of the symbol painted all over the map, the terrain was riddled with parallell lines of more "open" terrain. I eventually stumble back over control 9. Tried again for #10, aborted and went back to 9. Compass and counting steps, walking pace. 152 steps between controls 9 and 10. 10-11: 124 steps to control 11, not messing around this time. 11-12: Plan: compass until the terrain opens up and then hope for magic again. No need for that, found the damn thing before I had even started to prepare my approach... (Made me doubt the accuracy of the map scale) 12-13: Slow and steady and pretty boring I guess. 13-14: This one went quite well too, the light green striped stuff was low growing so visibility improved. 14-15: This was one of the easier ones today. Clear and easy approach. The rock formation just north of the control was one of very very Very few that reached above knee height... 15-16: Just a couple of steps to the side on this one, quite lucky though. 16-17: (Not so) Straight with compass. Realized something was off... Contemplating different approaches, decided that in relation to the powerline I was a bit off to the side, hunch correct. 17-20: Not that focused anymore, long day, was getting warm, I was getting tired. Nothing special here. Small mistake to control 20, came too close to the track but managed to find the control. After that I gave up and jogged back to the car... I do like a challenge but this sh*t was just about impossible... I'm not that good at reading variations in vegetation, or trying to figure out what the map maker has seen where. And with very small and invisible diffenrences in elevation contours were useless, just like at home... At least I found something to work on, besides the never ending struggle to go straight all the way by compass without suddenly deviaiting. I guess normal control flags would have saved me a few times today but in the end the goal is to find the control point and not the flag.