Ultrafit: Wild in the Country

BAYFIELD COUNTY, WIS. --We were chest deep in swamp water, feet sinking in muck, when my teammate, Todd Peterson, yelled from behind: "Is this gonna be a swim?"

I was hoping not. On my map, the swamp, a hatch-marked smudge west of Anodanta Lake, had materialized as a shortcut route through the forest. We were looking for an orange-and-white nylon marker -- control flag No. 5 -- heading due west in an orienteering race that had bounced us through the woods all day.

It was 2:30 p.m., five hours into the Minnesota Orienteering Club's annual "rogaine" race. You need not be balding to enter a rogaine, a form of extreme orienteering that stands for "Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance."

This particular map-and-compass competition was held Aug. 18 in the Chequamegon National Forest of northwest Wisconsin. Peterson and I were among the 30 teams that had set out that morning in search of two dozen flags scattered throughout the forest.

"Sinking!" I yelled back in warning, water now at my chin. Cattails on the far bank were fading from sight. I held my backpack high and lurched on.

Rogaining, an Australian offshoot of orienteering invented in the 1970s, puts teams of two to four people on a choose-your-own-adventure course in wilderness dotted with flags. (The name originally stood for a combination of Rod, Gail and Neil, the first names of the three Australian athletes credited with popularizing the sport.)

Topographical maps are marked with flag locations; a compass serves as your sole navigational tool, no GPS allowed. You chart a course and tag the control flags in any order, imprinting a punch card at each flag to prove you were there.

The team with the most punched points in the end wins. But finding the flags -- most placed far off trail in little woodsy nooks, on spurs or subtle creek bends, and in deep ravines choked with brush -- is only one crux of the sport.

Multitasking a must

Rogaining requires teams to plan course strategy, navigate while running on trails or in the woods, and maintain a steady, fast-hiking or jogging pace for six to 24 hours straight, the common range of rogaine events. Wilderness savvy helps too: On our race, Peterson and I -- aka "Team Gear Junkie & O Monkey" -- hydrated with stream water we purified on the go, shouldered small packs with gear and food, and ran nearly 20 miles through all types of terrain -- leaping logs, crashing through thorns, ducking limbs, crossing creeks, bushwhacking constantly at high speed.

At least when we weren't swimming through a swamp.

"The muck is getting deeper," Peterson yelled, halfway across the wetland channel near Anodanta Lake. I was out on the far side, standing in cattails and dripping from teeth to trail-running shoes.

As Peterson wallowed, I coached: "Keep your pack high, jump, now grab that grass to pull yourself up."

Out of the water, the race was less chaotic. Maps always in hand, we called out terrain features on the move -- "There's that ridge!"; "Clearing ahead!" -- and gauged contours and position on the folded page. Our compass needles spun north as we paced distance, counting hundreds of steps en route through trees.

Branches whipped our legs between flags, some half a mile apart in trailless forest. Wrong turns twice got us lost, wandering and on the lookout for land features that matched our place on the map.

My blood jumped at the sight of each flag. "Bingo!" I'd shout at first glimpse of orange fabric flittering through leaves, running in a burst the final few meters to punch our card.

Like most racers, we saw few competing teams during the day, running alone and pushing ourselves only against the clock. It was, for the most part, a day of solitude in the Chequamegon National Forest, all ferns and moss, exposed stone and leaf-filtered light.

"I felt like I saw the whole woods, not just the woods from a trail," said Dave Peterson, a first-time rogaine racer from Minneapolis who competed on Team Axis of Evildoers Doing Evil. "I saw a pileated woodpecker and several grouse," Peterson added.

He also got stung by a bee. And poked in the eye with a twig. And stuck in muck up to his thighs. "My teammate had to pull me out," Peterson said, smiling. "It was a blast."

Natalya Myers and Denitza Batanova, the newbies on the four-person, all-women Team Energizer, got lost driving north from Minneapolis to the race start. "It was not a good sign," Batanova said.

But the women, who signed up for the six-hour event on a whim, pulled off a respectable finish, finding 12 flags throughout the day.

"Six hours didn't seem too long," said Myers.

Return of the swamp things

At the 3:30 p.m. cutoff, when teams were required to be back at the start, racers ran in to add their final score. Peterson and I finished a couple minutes early, coming in from control No. 7, a flag on a saddle to the west.

"Teams coming through," shouted Mike Carlson, the race director, a pack of eight runners tromping toward his table. After a day alone in the woods the crush of sweaty, thorn-pricked racers running to finish created a fervor. "Nice work," people yelled out, or "Here they come."How'd you fare?" they asked, slapping backs.

I caught my breath, then counted the stamped imprints on our scorecard, which totaled 23 points. Despite the swamp swimming, Peterson and I found enough flags to land Team Gear Junkie & O Monkey in second place.

My shoes squished with water as I walked toward Peterson to tell him the news. He was on the ground, dripping wet and glassy-eyed, a map still clutched in his hand.

"Nice race," he said, looking up. "But I was ready to be done."

Stephen Regenold is a Twin Cities writer and author of the syndicated column the Gear Junkie. See www.thegearjunkie.com.