I (Margot) with some help from my faithful wives, am organizing a new thing for the club inspired by ANU’s Inward Bound.

WHAT IS INWARD BOUND?

Kind of like spicy rogaining, Inward bound is an event where you get dropped in an unknown location, a map where your finish location is marked, and you work out where you are and race other teams there. ANU is hardcore and had divisions where you get dropped off up to 100 km from the finish, but we are mostly not that hardcore and I don’t want to deal with people being out after dark so I’m aiming for a 15-20 km day. Ýou’ll have a map and a compass but obviously no GPS nav is allowed. Just you, out there, raw dogging navigation just like they did in the old days.

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WHAT KIND OF DAY CAN I EXPECT?

Like I said, I’m aiming to have teams travel 15 to 20 kms, which will be mostly on roads and trails but expect some bush bashing too. I would like to have everyone out by sunset ideally, cause I don’t want to have to worry about you all, so expect an early start. I think aim to camp at a campground up in the Blue Mountains (I will announce later) Friday night, then we’ll move from there early Saturday morning. Leaving Sydney at an ungodly hour and driving up to meet us at the campground would also work. Then you’ll be blindfolded, and dropped off with your team in a location with your day packs and given a map, and from there its up to you!

HOW WILL THE TEAMS WORK?

I am currently thinking the most likely arrangement will be 4 teams of 4. It would be great to have more spaces, if more are keen, but we’ll be limited by how many people can fit in a car and how many volunteers I have to drive cars, and then how many people fit in a car. If you have a car or access to a car that can fit more than 5 let me know as we can have some bigger teams then. If stoke is high and we can’t accommodate all the people who are keen hopefully this will be a proof of concept to have more/bigger events in the future. I will assign the teams myself, to do my best to evenly divide up abilities and also to make sure there are people in each team I trust to get dropped off in a random location in the bush. Feel free to add your team preferences (if any) in the comments and I’ll take those into account, or flagrantly disregard them.

WHY ARE YOU ORGINISING THIS SO EARLY? (This doesn’t seem in character, are you okay Margot? Have you been kidnapped?)

Cause I’m leaving to go on the Larapinta bitches! I’ll be on the Larapinta from the 7th to the 22nd of June which would be prime time to organize this so I have chosen (with admirable responsibility, although it’s probably not necessary) to start doing stuff now, and mostly I’m after an idea of how many people are interested, so probably not much will happen till I get back. This means if you don’t hear from me for ages, don’t stress, I’m just chilling and vibing in the outback, and your trip request will be dealt with in time.

HOW WILL YOU KEEP ME SAFE?

I am still working on the details of safety for this event. All teams will have a PLB of course, but I’m hoping all teams will also have a InReach (or similar) for less emergency safety contacting. If you have or have access to a InReach or something of the sort let me know! I’ll give you priority with getting a spot on the trip.

This event is still a work in progress, so will keep you updated with timing and logistics, and what to bring later as things progress. I’m posting this now mainly to get a grasp of numbers and if we can get cars/InReaches off people. So, If you’re keen please put in the comments:

• Your rogaining, navigation, bushwalking/trail running or other relevant experience/ability
• If you have a 4wd, or a >5 seater car you’re donate to the drop off efforts (I’m hoping 4wd will not be necessary for the drop offs but just incase)
• If you have an InReach, satellite tracker, or other satellite communications device (not a PLB) that I might be able to use for this event
• A cool fact if you have one and want to sway my decision to give you a spot and/or brighten my day
• If you think this sounds cool and would like to be involved but don’t want to be lost in the bush running around all day let me know if you’d be keen to volunteer to help organize the event! Mainly I’ll need people to drive the teams out but I’m sure it will be a fun day of talking shit and waiting for the teams to turn up, and you likelyhood of having type 2 fun in some scrubby gully full of lawyer vine is drastically reduced.

EDIT: I HAVE GONE AND SUSSED OUT THE ROADS AND WE TOTALLY WILL NEED SOME CARS THAT CAN GO ON MODERATELY SHIT ROADS. If you have a 4WD or AWD or could possibly borrow one please put it in the comments! Enough people have volunteered in reaches so we should be good on that!