Adventure Rogaining

Rogaining is the sport of cross-country orienteering using route planning and navigation and a variety of maps. This years’ ARC Adventure Race will combine these principles with the three disciplines of trekking, mountain biking and kayaking or alternate water activity and participation involves teams of 2, 3 or 4 people who complete the whole event together. 

The country that gave us Pavlova, say they can trace the sports roots back to 1947 when the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club ran events with many of the features of modern day rogaining. It was officially recognised as a sport in April 1976 in Melbourne.

Rogaining, however, has much more of an emphasis, on the skills of orienteering and mapwork. Courses are designed with a pre-determined timeframe, with more checkpoints than are physically possible to collect. Checkpoints have points attached which may vary depending on their level of difficultly. It’s a sport of skill, fitness and strategy with teams deciding the best route that will get them as many points as possible in the given timeframe. If they go over time, they are heavily penalised and if they come in too early, it means they have wasted the opportunity to get more points. The team with the most points wins. 

Each stage of the ARC will be a rogaine in its own right and there will be a cut off for completing each stage as well as a final cut off. Simply at the end of the race the team with the most points will win.