A0040409P

Newsletter Number 89, July 2003

PO Box 3,
Central Park,
3145, Victoria.
61-3-95721784 fax
E-mail: Neil Phillips

IRF Team

President: Neil Phillips
Secretary/Treasurer: Rod Phillips
Promotions and Development: David Stephens
World Rogaining Championships Manager: Gordon Birch

Czech Republic : Jaroslav Vavra, Miroslav Seidl
Finland : Iiro Kakko
New Zealand : Peter Squires
Canada : Alan Stradeski
United States of America : Eric Smith, Clinton Morse, Bob Reddick
Australia : David Stephens, Rod Phillips, Gordon Birch, John Berwick, Neil Phillips
Founders Representative: Bob Reddick

Observer status
Estonia : Andres Kaar
New Zealand : Michael Wood
Sweden : Lars-Åke Svenk
Russia : German Shestakov
China : Jianping Zhang
6 th WRC: Peg Davis

6th World Rogaining Championships

Date: 8-9th May 2004 in Arizona, USA.
WRC Manager: Gordon Birch
6WRC Co-ordinator: Peg Davis
http://rogaine.tucsonorienteering.org/

First 24 hour rogaine in Estonia

Estonia held its first 24 hour rogaine, Korvemaa 2003 rogaine, on 21-22 June. There were 25 teams (61 participants). There was a concurrent 8 hour rogaine with 34 teams (83 participants) and a further 25 participants in a 3 hour rogaine. Rogainers were predominantly from Estonia with five from Finland . Electronical punching was successful, and each team had its full results within a few seconds of finishing. See:

www.orion.ee/korvemaa/korvemaa2003/ rogainsplits.htm

First rogaine in South Africa

The Rand Orienteering Club based in Johannesburg has announced the date of their first rogaine, the Inaugural Capestorm Rogaine. This will be on 16 th August 2003 at Suikerbosrand, close enough to Johannesburg to see the city skyline from elevated ridges on the course. Pieter Mulder, a leading cross-country navigator and long-time member of ROC is heading up the organizing team and would welcome any international entrants.

The terrain features well-contoured savannah type grassland, protea veld, wooded kloofs, acacia and aloe ‘forests', broad valleys, streams, dongas and iron-age kraals. The tourist route, trails, paths and game tracks provide for interesting route choice decisions . The main event is an 8 hour rogaine along with shorter events. Further details: Pieter Mulder at 27-11 678 5596 or pmulder@infodoor.co.za and Craig Ogilvie, at 27-11 265 5003 (w) cogilvie@meditech.co.za.

Stories from Tucson 2: 6WRC Manager: Gordon Birch

JOURNEYS: Finding Ghosts In the Mountains
By TIMOTHY EGAN

LOOKING at the glut of housing developments and supersized stores flat on the floor of the Sonoran Desert , in southern Arizona , many people say this part of the country has no history, no art, and certainly no antiquity. Not there, or anytime before, is the complaint. Or they stare at the sandstone walls of the desert -- salmon-colored rock shaped by the ages - and shrug, ''Nice, but where's the mystery?''

The problem is, they don't know where to look. Art, intrigue, sex, entire stone walls of ancient narrative and allure are out here, incised or painted on stone. For the hunter of rock art, the Southwest is never one-dimensional.

Remote corners of the desert, the hidden hoodoos and unvisited canyons, contain sketches that are easily a thousand years old, or more, and can look as if they were etched yesterday. But some of the best rock art is at the edge of the big cities. Just across the Rio Grande River from Albuquerque , at Petroglyph National Monument , or outside Las Vegas at Red Rock Canyon , or on the edge of Tucson , Arizona , the rocks are full of dancing, chattering forms.

I fell for glyphs when I was a kid, growing up in eastern Washington . While fishing on the banks of the Little Spokane River with my little brother, we took a break from the summer sun and ducked under a rock overhang. Leaning against the stone, I looked up and saw what appeared to be feather-headed hunters on horseback, etched onto the basalt, chasing deer or elk. Though barely visible, the image was strong enough that it made the ghosts of the land come alive.

Later, in travels around the West, I would try when possible to end a day in a rock art gallery. At sunset, the Petroglyph monument near Albuquerque for example, with its 25,000 images, is a glut of stories in stone. Outside Sedona , Arizona , I like the beings that look like a cross between a turtle and a human. For starters, it makes you wonder what turtles were doing in Arizona .

One day recently I drove just west of Tucson , past the last golf course and minimart, to Saguaro National Park . The park, 91,327 acres of wild Sonoran life, is on two sides of this city. But the best petroglyphs are in the western unit, about a half-hour drive from downtown, and tucked in the folds of the Tucson Mountains .

The saguaros themselves, the giant, floppy-armed cactuses that are emblematic of this part of the Southwest, are worth the visit. It is hard not to anthropomorphize them. Some look sad and droopy. Others are perky, almost conversational with their sign language. The park takes in two of the biggest saguaro forests in the world.

The hunt for rock art begins once you're inside the park boundaries. The signs point to a visitor center, picnic perches and trailheads for day hikes, but there is no indication of where to find petroglyphs. Since so many rock art panels have been vandalized, park rangers generally do not publicize these finds. If asked, though, they will tell you.

A ranger mentioned several spots to me. One, a mile-long hike up a dry wash, would be the hardest to find, he said, but worth it; the others were easier to find. Since I like the hunt almost as much as I do the glyphs, I headed for the trail.

The day was warm and without humidity, a perfect late-winter Sonoran afternoon; the city sounds long gone, a slight wind. Rumors of rock art drifted down the trail. An elderly couple in Saharan sun hats said that if I traveled to the base of a waterfall, now dry, and backtracked several hundred yards, I would bump into rocks congested with thousand-year-old scribblings. That set my pulse racing.

FARTHER along the trail, I met a note-taking bird-watcher who said there were even better panels high above the cliffs near the dormant waterfall.

''Look up, and adjust your eyes,'' he said. ''It'll come to you.''

A mile into the trail I found the cliffs and started down the wash, scanning the walls. Nothing. Then, farther down the rocks, the vegetation grew thicker. Palo Verde, the green-skinned tree, was all around. Orange poppies blossomed from little holds in the rock, and hummingbirds darted around the flowers like a pack of seventh-graders circling a vending machine.

Close to the rock, I saw no sign of art. But as I backed away, it revealed itself. Here was a swirl, not quite a coiled snake, but a common geometric design, white on the brown skin of the rock. And nearby was a biped with horns that appeared to be dancing. There was also a star, like a distant planet.

It takes a little time to adjust your expectations, and eyes, to the art. You have to develop petroglyph eyes, learning to read the rock the way a fisherman reads a riffle on a stream. I backed up farther and looked across the way, about 60 feet, to the other side of the cliff. There I saw a gallery of eternity circles, snakes and lumpy-looking characters with stick arms and stick legs, and those antennas or horns.

Questions: Who were these guys? What were they trying to say? Is all of this a message, a greeting, a warning?

The park service is not very helpful on these rock art queries. ''We do not know what these petroglyphs mean,'' says a small sign off the road near another site. Give the government credit for clarity and brevity.

The mystery, to me, is one of the attractions. Who needs a bunch of snooty art reviewers or deconstructionists in black to let the rest of us feel inferior? Out here, it is just the stone and the viewer, the artist and the audience.

Of course, there are numerous explanations, all of them speculative since the ancients left no catalog details behind. In southern and central Arizona , most of the glyphs are from the Hohokam people, who lived here from A.D. 200 to about 1450, well before European contact, according to the Park Service. The Hohokam built canals and irrigated crops. Life apparently was sweet at times, even without early-bird coupons and air-conditioning. By the time the Jesuits arrived in 1608, the Hohokams were gone, leaving behind thousands of petroglyphs on stone.

The petroglyphs in this part of Arizona are done in the Hohokam style, in which abstract designs outnumber life forms. These could be solstice markers, decorative motifs or simply graffiti. Most rock art is in places that humans would find appealing -- near water, shade, heavy vegetation or a place with a good view. I could imagine these early Arizonans, sated on mesquite bean goulash and jackrabbit stew, with maybe a side of dried javelina (wild pigs) strips, hanging out in the shade of the rock quarry, drawing some impressive anthromorphs.

Petroglyphs are incised or chiseled onto a patina known as desert varnish. Pictographs are painted. Because Arizona is so arid, the sketches age very slowly. Most Indians who appeared later in the area shunned the ancient rock art. The Spanish called the works piedras pintadas (painted rocks) and were generally unimpressed.

I walked down the wash, my mind drifting back to a simpler time, found the car and drove to another site in the park. This one was off a dirt road, just a few hundred yards and up on a hill. You could see these sketches from a hundred yards out. From up on the hill, in the distance, I could see modern Tucson spread out just beyond the mountains. Here was a pile of concentrated drawings more than 12 centuries old, a park ranger said, that was undisturbed. One figure appeared to have a penis, or at least a middle leg.

There was no sign of Kokopelli, the hunchbacked flute player with the Bart Simpson hair, who is ubiquitous in Southwestern rock art. He was perhaps a fertility shaman, or a trickster. He always appears to be leading a Mardi Gras parade.

Kokopelli is common in many Anasazi sites. I have seen him in deep canyons days away from the nearest road, or on vertical rock near a highway, and all places in between. Of late, he has become the favorite motif of gift shop owners and T-shirt makers. Anasazi has been interpreted to mean either ''ancient enemies'' or ''ancient ones,'' in the language of the Navajos, who arrived several hundred years after the Anasazi had departed. The Anasazi had, by some estimates, a peak population of 250,000 -- a much greater population density than that which exists on the Colorado Plateau today.

On an earlier rock art trip, I was looking for Anasazi sights in southern Utah , north of the Grand Canyon , on Bureau of Land Management property. The bureau people, like the park rangers, were cagey about where to look. They control an eighth of all the land in the 48 contiguous states, and can often be charmed into giving up some of the secrets. But because of vandalism -- rock art thieves have plundered and defaced more than half of all the intact sites, bureau officials say they have to be careful about giving out directions to rock art.

After some schmoozing, though, they directed me to the hamlet of Boulder , Utah , population 112, in a place that Car and Driver Magazine once rated the most remote spot in the contiguous United States .

A friend and I went up and down a number of dirt roads, striking out, until we found something promising. Another hiker filled in some blanks. We tramped up a small creek around several bends, dodging rattlesnakes, in search of what I was told would be some impressive glyphs. In late afternoon, sitting on a rock and trying to rehydrate, we were ready to give up. My friend pointed to a distant red wall.

We walked up to a dead-end, in a semicircular canyon, and saw one of the most impressive petroglyphs I had ever seen. It was of three people holding hands, on a rock wall about the size of a movie screen. They had triangular upper bodies, a feature of the Anasazi late-basketmaker period, about 1,500 years ago, and, of course, antennas or horns on their heads. The image changed as the light slipped away. We stayed until dusk, renewed again by the unknown.

IF YOU GO
In the Southwest, the Stones Speak

MAJOR airlines serve Tucson International Airport , where you can also pick up a rental car. There is no public transportation to or within Saguaro National Park .

The park consists of two unconnected areas, the Rincon Mountain district east of Tucson and the Tucson Mountain district to the west. To reach the latter, where the glyphs are, go west from downtown Tucson on Speedway Boulevard , which will turn into Gates Pass Road . Turn right on Kinney Road and drive to the park entrance.

At the Signal Hill Picnic area, walk the short trail to the petroglyphs. There is a railing around the markings by the Hohokam. The area is open all year during daylight hours. More information about the park and the glyphs is available at (520) 733-5158 and at www.nps.gov/sagu.

The whole park has 91,445 acres and 150 miles of trails that attract 3.4 million visitors annually. The east side has an admission fee of $6 a car; the west side has no admission fee.

During weeks with a full moon, three evening hikes (two to eight miles) are offered. Participants go to a high point in the park at dusk and walk back to the center under moonlight. On the night of the full moon, ranger talks are given outside the visitors' center.

Camping is not allowed in the Tucson Mountain district (backcountry camping is permitted in the Rincon Mountain district) nor is there lodging within the park. There are camping sites at the Gilbert Ray Campground in Tucson Mountain County Park , about three miles from Saguaro.

The Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort ( 5601 North Hacienda del Sol Road , 800-728-6514) has 30 rooms and cottages (called casitas) with rates from $155 to $450. It offers a swimming pool, hiking trails and horseback riding. There is a restaurant.

InnSuites Hotel Tucson City Center ( 475 North Granada Avenue , 520-622-3000) is downtown and has 280 studio suites and two-room suites from $89.99 to $129.99.

El Presidio Bed and Breakfast ( 297 North Main Avenue , 520-623-6151) is a Victorian-era adobe house. The two suites in the main house and two guesthouses with kitchenettes around a courtyard are $95 to $125.

THE INAUGURAL CAPESTORM ROGAINE

AT THE SUIKERBOSRAND NATURE RESERVE

ON SATURDAY 16 AUGUST

The very first Rogaining event to be held in South Africa will take place on 16 August at the scenic Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve, some 20 km to the North of the town of Heidelberg . Participants pausing to admire the scenery may catch a glimpse of the Johannesburg skyline on the northern horizon.

The organizing Rand Orienteering Club is proud to welcome CAPESTORM as the main sponsor. This Capetown based company markets the very best in quality, innovation, comfort and appeal when it comes to leisure-time and outdoor activity clothing. CAPESTORM products are sought by discerning orienteers, adventure racers, hikers, mountain bikers, canoeists, rock climbers and alpinists.

More details of the company and its product range may be seen at their website www.capestorm.co.za CAPESTORM products are available at THE SWEATSHOP at the Dunkeld West Shopping Centre.

The renowned company FEATHERS of KNYSNA is supporting this event with unique floating trophies in a range of birds and animals that competitors may encounter on their journey.

Rogaining has its origins in Australia , and focuses on long distance navigation on foot by teams of two or more. The object is to score maximum points by finding the red and white checkpoints familiar to orienteers and adventure racers within the designated mapped area and within a specific time. Team members must maintain contact with one another throughout the competition and must punch their control card at the control sites together.

Controls may be visited in any order. The more technically challenging and physically demanding ones yield a higher point score. Teams over-running the cut-off time accrue penalty-points that are deducted from their total gross score. In the event of a points tie, the higher placing is awarded to the pair that record the faster time.

Further details: Pieter Mulder at 27-11 678 5596 or pmulder@infodoor.co.za and Craig Ogilvie, at 27-11 265 5003 (w) cogilvie@meditech.co.za .