It was a fun exercise doing this without the stress of the rally, and I could really take the time to understand the process. There were moments where I could not take my eyes off a spot on a single dune, while Barlow maneuvered the Jeep below the point where I lost sight of my “target,” and then I would have to find it again. This was the hardest part. Sand dunes look the same. So do bushes at a certain point. I began to doubt myself. But Barlow was sure. And her sense of confidence began to give me confidence too. I was learning a different kind of lesson today — something about self-confidence and a sense of certainty. I realized that my tendency to doubt and second guess myself gets in the way. I need to let myself be more “sure” of what I am doing. I “know” what to do and how to do it with precision, I just don’t trust myself in the authoritative way Barlow does, and that leads to doubts and a feeling of insecurity about my choices. In fact, I was doing it right and we were moving with precision. There was something magical about it.

We were in the middle of the desert but we knew exactly where we were, and where we were going. There was no fear of getting lost. No fear of being stuck. We had faced the fears and conquered them. I was feeling very good about what we were doing, and I noticed that despite all the trouble with the broken Jeep earlier, Barlow was smiling, too…

Nena Barlow, of Barlow Adventures, is letting me figure it out on my own as part of the simulation. I have to navigate and pick the lines, and more importantly keep track of where we are precisely on the map. She is “checking” me against a book that has the actual trail mapped out with GPS points and distances as well as diagrams and description of the route.

As we are using different sources for the trail waypoints, we quickly learn to “translate” between different formats for expressing coordinates, between “degrees minutes seconds” (expressed like this like this: N 32° 04′ 20.4″ W 114° 20′ 36.0″), “degrees decimal minutes” (expressed like this like this: N 32° 04.340′ W 114° 20.600′), and “decimal degrees” (expressed like this like this: 32.072334, -114.343336). There are some discrepancies between our routes, because each source has made different choices about which trail to take for certain options, but in general I am completely on target in my pathfinding…

I had sent the link for the map portal to my teammate, and she verified that the track did in fact broadcast as I travelled. I also used to communications function while en route to SMS her my location, and was able to receive her reply SMS with just a short delay. Once back at base, I went into the interactive space and labelled, connected, and refined the route lines directly on top of the satellite imagery of the terrain, where I could precisely contour the lines of my route to match the lines of the trail.

Very impressed with the capabilities of this tool so far. Next test will be in the canyons of Moab…

Still, we reviewed our skills, plotting the points and getting our headings, using both back and forward azimuths to keep our line straight through the thick forest where it was impossible to see our “target” locations. We also did some quick “where are we” exercises, orienting the map to the landscape, and identifying key features.

Now as we backtracked towards a spot we had seen earlier, that looked like it would make a good place to camp, we discussed the lessons of the day. We will need to move faster than we did today if we hope to get all the day’s checkpoints. We will also need to go straighter. And we cannot “waste” time. Minutes and kilometers both count in this contest…

We detoured back into the bushes until we had gotten around the race terrain, at which point we were on heading towards our next CP…

Working my way down in line with the mountain was ok while we were on the dry cracked lakebed, but soon we entered a maze of bushes. These were not huge bushes and I could drive between them weaving carefully so as not to scratch the rental Jeep. The bigger concern was not driving over something that would puncture the tire. There were tons of little dry bits of plant sticking up. As we got closer to our objective the density of the plants got tighter, and it was getting harder to find an easy path straight through. It was taking long going so slowly. I decided to try to take a set of tracks to get around the worst part of the bushes.

That was probably a mistake if we were in the actual rally, because the track meandered moving us off our correct heading, and when we got back in line with the right heading visually, we had added mileage that we couldn’t be sure we had accounted for, making our navigation less precise.

And there was also something else I noticed. There was a prominent red mountain to the right of our objective and it was easy to see and there were more tracks heading towards it. I had a tendency to veer towards it myself, and Niki had to correct me a number of times back in the correct direction. I must be careful not to fixate on something visually striking, or “easier” to distinguish, which can distract me from the proper line.

Still, with the deviation and the added time, we made it to the place we thought should be the point, near the base of the larger mountain that was in the foreground and inline with our terrain feature. We checked the GPS and we were close enough to see a big red flag! Success!