It poured all night, and even though the forecast was for clear skies in the morning, at 10:00 it was still raining.  The hotline started ringing continuously at about 8:00.  At 9:30 I called the park and there were no reports of serious flooding or any safety problems because of the rain.  Doug had already said he wanted to do it rain or shine, so with the OK from the park I updated the hotline and the website to inform people that the meet was on.  The rain managed to hold on until 12:30, and the sun finally started to peak out about 2:00, so the early birds may not have gotten the worm, but they sure got wet.  We had two scout troops, some ROTC folks, quite a few first timers (considering the weather) and a stalwart group of regulars.  The ranger generously opened a building which made the event much more pleasant.

The courses were well designed and took us through some rather unused forest.  I noticed that some of the hardwood downfall is getting rotten, and some is already decomposed.  This lessens the fire danger somewhat, and maybe in 5 or 6 more years these areas will begin to open up, and our little green lollypops will finally become rootstocks.  It seams as though there are enough big trees left standing so that most of these areas will be wide open forest and won't grow up into thickets.

There certainly wasn't any fire danger during this event.  Every little re-entrant was a good little creek, and the creeks were a challenge to get across keeping your feet dry -- as if you could keep your feet dry.

If you see any errors in the following results, then let me know.

Joseph Huberman