Matt Clifton and I woke at an early 4:00AM on Sunday. The plan was to get to POCAR by 8 and hit the trails ASAP. After a stop for gas and a gas station sausage, egg, and hamburger bun sandwich (that may not have been the best idea...) we were on our way. As you could guess the roads were deserted, which made the drive quick and painless.



We arrived at the POCAR site and discovered that a whole two people were awake. Joe Kruegar was also to come with us in clearing loop one, so I went and woke him up. After a short time we had a Topo, and a trail map, so we geared up and headed out. Due to our casual attitude the day was full of navigational error fun and many shenanigans as well. Some noteworthy points are: Forgetting we had a map of hiking trails in the area until after 3 checkpoints, spending more than half an hour trying to smash geodes, not looking closely at where one trail went (only seeing that it went to a cemetery) which put us somewhere around 2Km off route, talking to a farmer about a missing road only to discover that the road had been filled in after the property had been bought...although he let us cross through his pastures so we could get to the trail we needed, and lastly making the silly mistake of not taking a bearing at a trail intersection which caused us to look for a point for an hour or more in the completely wrong area.



All in all we had a good time clearing the course.