Giant’s Rib Raid

What a perfect day for a tromp through the woods with friends. The sun shone, and apparently the wind blew, although we didn’t really feel it sheltered in the trees. Spring flowers were blooming and the orienteering began.

Our team of 3 for the race

The Giant’s Rib Raid is put on by Don’t Get Lost and is a 22-26 Km orienteering trail race on the Niagara Escarpment. This year’s race started near Kilbride Ontario. It involves a lot of technical running and a compass so you “don’t get lost!” We love running the Bruce Trail. The race started at Kelso Conservation Area and proceeded through Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area, Crawford Lake Conservation Area and wound its way down to Kilbride. Of course we didn’t know any of this until we picked up our maps the day of the race.

Here we are meeting another team in the race at a CP.

We had to add to our team name include our 3rd teammate (the rules call for teams of three) so the Blister Sisters and the Bandage took off running.

We did great on the first 6 CP’s (check points) but CP 7 gave us a run for the money, we were so close, but we just couldn’t find it. After deciding that we really need to do a navigation course and learn how to use our trusty compass with a map, we bushwhacked on to CP 8 & 9 only to find out that CP 7 was also CP 10. Well, we found CP 10, no problem!

Brook’s Cascadia! Love them!

More bushwhacking ensued to try to stomp our way out of the bush. The ice storm of the fall of 2013 did a lot of damage to the bush and I don’t think I found 2 square meters that didn’t have a downed tree or a cord of branches on it.

Check points were everywhere. Too much fun!

Time was running short so we ran the trails through Crawford Lake, until we saw the beautiful carvings that are near the lake. Picture taking took a few minutes off our time. The next part of the trail was particularly rocky and beautiful, by then we were really behind so our non-competitive spirit took advantage of us and we chose to just enjoy the rest of the race.

Next year we’ll be back and perhaps have a handle on the whole compass thing.

Awesome trail running and climbing!