Sonoran Desert Navigation Games
Alamo Lake
Saturday, April 20, 2024

We had a nice turnout for our event at Alamo Lake on Saturday, April 20. Despite the unseasonably hot weather, 23 participants joined us in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, ~2.5 hours from downtown Phoenix. The normal high temperatures in the area in the middle of April are in the low to mid 80's F. With a high of 95F, participants struggled through one of the hottest days of orienteering in our experience. The views at Alamo Lake are fantastic and the burros and snakes definitely add to the aventure. Thanks to everyone who braved the drive and the heat to join us.

We offered two main events at Alamo Lake, an adventure race, where participants travel by foot, mountain bike, and kayak, and a Rogaine, where participants only travel on foot. For both events, we had participants in our 6-hour and 12-hour options. All events included the same maps: one for watercraft, one for travel by foot, and two for travel by mountain bike (see links in this writeup). With the exception of three points on the west side of the lake, participants had the option to travel to the marked destinations marked by any of the three modes of travel that they liked. The points on the west side of the lake were only accessible by watercraft.

We thought we had provided enough destinations to keep people busy for almost 12 hours. We were mistaken. Andy Wentzel visited all the controls (cleared the course) in just over 7.5 hours. He seemed happy with the course in general, so we won't spend a lot of time worrying that we didn't give him enough to do. He also validated that all our controls were more or less in the correct place marked on the map, so that's a positive. John Beard took second place visiting all but one of the foot controls in 11.5 hours. He easily could have cleared the course too, but lost track of one control (i.e. forgot to visit one control) during a loop on foot. In third place, Jason Poole visited all but two of the foot-accessible controls in under 11 hours. More impressively, Jason visited all of the controls on foot! The heat took it's toll on Jason's energy. With lower temperatures, we're sure he would have cleared all but the watercraft points.

We had a close race for fourth through ninth place with teams separated by only 4 points. Brenda and Joe from team "We Will Survive", visiting the desert southwest from Michigan, found our race in a web search and decided to join us. The desert terrain is a lot different from the trees in Michigan, and we're sure 95F in April was a treat. Two teams from the Las Vegas area (Kayak Lake Mediocre and Cody Hidler), familiar with the desert heat and terrain, did quite well in their adventure. Marcy Beard visited all but 4 of the foot-accessible points on foot. Finally, Tim and Bob from team "Boat Anchor" took time out of their busy travel schedule to refresh their navigation skills.

Special mention goes out to two teams that completed the 12 hours on foot. Sue and Gavin from "HalFastAsleep" were one of only 4 teams to visit all the foot controls, while Steve Trautwein finished just behind point wise and left all his energy on the course. Also, two participants fairly new to navigating solo, Ashley and Catrien, had excellent results considering their experience.

Finally, we want to say a special thanks to everyone who remained at the lake to help pick up controls on Sunday. It took us ~20 man-hours to hang the bags before the race. With the help of Andy, Robert, Jon, Marcy, John, Catrien, and Gary, we were done collecting all the bags by 9:30 Sunday morning. Putting on a 12-hour event is quite an effort. It really makes our job easier to get a gang to pick up afterwards. Thanks for all your help.

Thanks again to everyone who joined us at our Sonoran Desert Navigation Games events. We hope you enjoyed exploring a new area. We certainly enjoyed the adventure. See you out there again sometime soon.