Dot Watching - Trek 1 - Early Route Choices

We're two hours into the race and teams are moving well through the first trek. We're seeing two main route choice strategies to move between CP3 and CP4 - continue bushwhacking (green line as the 'direct route') or head south and use the road (red line).

The bushwhacking (green) route is the most direct on paper, but the road, might offer a quicker option to cover kms, but you still need to bushwhack south from CP3 and back north to CP4. We HQ dot-watchers are seeing most teams choose to stay along the cross-country route, but a few intrepid teams (RaidPulse [14], GRIT racing [7], and St. Lawrence AR [18]) were early adopters for the road route alternative.

Adventure racing is all about route choices - decisions that might land you a sweet gain in time, or cost you by being less efficient or more difficult than the map might have led intrepid teams to expect and thus costing you. We'll see what choice paid off soon enough!