The red course for the Little Big Econ had proven very difficult for most of the teams that had attempted it during the daylight hours. The fastest time was 2 hrs 13 minutes, and most teams and individuals were unable to finish the course. I talked two other adventure racers, Will Murphy and Rick Kaydas, into attempting the course in the evening. We started about 7:15 PM. Our course as best we can figure is shown in dashed red.

Start to Control 1 (11 m 45 s)
The first leg was through an open field, we went west to the fenceline and found the opening. The large path south was not apparent, but an unmapped trail led us to it. We originally went too far south, but used the eastern river segment as a backstop and went back north. Once we found the earth berm, the flag was pretty easy to find.

Control 1 to Control 2 (10 m 7 s)
The simple strategy was to go northeast to the trail, and follow trail to the attack point for the peninsula. This worked well. Once on the 'island' we followed the ridge along the edge of the river. We found the flag fairly easily. The darkness made the travel fairly slow.

Control 2 to Control 3 (6 m 29 s)
We used the same strategy as on Control 2. The large number of contours and ditches (many not mapped) required us to move slowly through this section so as not to overshoot the flag.

Control 3 to Control 4 (12 m 50 s)
We moved north to the trail, and then followed the trail, even running, to the 4-way trail intersection. We debated taking a direct bearing from the intersection, but instead decided to take the South trail to the man-made object (some boards in a tree), and headed due west. There were a lot of depressions in the area, but we were able to find the correct one with only a couple of minutes searching.

Control 4 to Control 5 (16 m 45 s)
The strategy was again to hit the trail, we headed southwest out of the woods, and took the trail heading south. In the dark we twice ended up going down spur trails, but corrected quickly. We decided to follow the marked trail southwest till it came to the area where it was on the edge of the river, and then head back northwest on the trail 50 meters, and look for the spur. We found the spur, and expected to follow it easily to the flag, it seemed that the flag was much further than the mapped 50 meters along the spur– But the strategy worked well.

Control 5 to Control 6 (23 m 34 s)
We headed again for the main trail and followed it past the second ditch crossing. When the trail turned due south, we headed east and found the ditch. We then followed the ditch north and then northwest. The flag was fairly easy to find. Pushing through some dark green mapped areas was difficult in the dark and cost us a bit of time. But that route was conservative on the navigation and worked well.

Control 6 to Control 7 (17 m 44 s)
The plan was to take the ditch to the T-intersection with the east-west ditch. We took a bearing from the ditch T-intersection and followed it. When we reached what appeared to be the yellow mapped area, we re-grouped to develop a strategy. After looking at the map and the treeline I said 'We should be right on top of the damn thing”.'. Will and Rick continued to look at the map while I scanned the woods with my spotlight. While scanning I spotted the flag literally 10 feet from where we were standing.

Control 7 to Control 8 (32 m 40 s)
This leg proved quite challenging. First we had a difficult time getting past the yellow mapped swamp, which kept getting deeper– And in the dark none of us really wanted to test the mucky water to see how deep it was. After getting around the swamp we got caught in the dark green section, finally pushing to the horse trail. We could not find the foot trail (it was quite overgrown), so we followed the horse trail full circle around the flag. We went into the woods when the horse trail went south– But we estimated our bearing was too southerly and we missed the stream the flag was on. We eventually found the foot trail, and used the crossing of the foot trail and the stream to navigate to the flag, heading north on the stream.

Control 8 to Control 9 (1 h 18 m 44 s)
This leg started out badly for us. Our plan was to backtrack south to the foot trail, follow it east to the main N-S trail and go that way. We completely missed the foot trail in the dark and overshot, requiring us to head back north. Coming north we did see it, and followed our plan. We followed the major N-S trail until we came to the open orange and used the dark green treeline to set an attack point. At this point the fog was rising from the (thick and tall) grass and our visibility was quite low. After we realized we would not be able to navigate to the flag we set up a search pattern, using the marsh to the west of the flag as a backstop. We spent a lot of time pushing through tall grass and biars.

Control 9 to Control 10 (19 m 4 s)
This leg seemed a lot longer (time-wise) than it really was. We followed the plow furrows west (with a slight bent to the south) as the traveling was easier. This led us through some marshy areas (shin-deep) until we hit the horse trail. After crossing the stream on the horse trail we entered some very thick grass to head northwest and catch the northern horse trail. From the trail we could see the distinct tree-line (white orange boundary on the map) and took a bearing towards a large Oak we could see against the skyline. The weeds were so high we had to rely on the compass bearing as we could not see above them to the tree. On reaching the tree we had taken the bearing from we realized it was too far south and that the correct tree was another large Oak visible about 100 meters to the North. We headed for this tree and the flag was very visible under its canopy.

Control 10 to Control 11 (20 m 54 s)
Most of this was pushing our way through the 10 foot tall weeds until we hit the horse trail. To make it better we somehow ended up in shin deep marsh. We eventually hit an indistinct treeline and followed it south to the trail. We followed the trail and after passing to two stream crossings paced out about 75 meters and headed south into the white woods (which were much thicker than white woods). My plan was to hit the ditch and follow it west to the flag, but I ended up hitting the ditch right where the flag was hung. Will and Rick had decided to overshoot the flag and come down the ditch from the other side, but I found it before they had entered the woods and was able to lead them to it by shouting.

Control 11 to Control 12
We simply followed the trail back to the parking area, and then doubled back along the fence-line and roadway to the ditch-stream and the flag. This seemed a very fast route as it involved no bushwhacking, but I forgot to set my watch on this one.

Total time on course 4 hr 10 min 14 sec