Sometimes circle checks go terribly wrong

If you don't know what a circle check is you are not alone. This is a major part of Hashing with the Hash House Harriers though and it is one of the very first things you will learn about should you ever go on any Hash run. Basically, in order to keep the pack together there are certain points on a run that the continuation of a trail is a mystery and all the people at the front have to work together to figure out where the true trail continues.

When you encounter this on the trail that was marked up to that point with powder or paper this means that somewhere within 100 meters or so of that circle, the path continues but first, the group needs to find it. The people who set the trail normally will do a pretty creative job of hiding where this continuation of the trail is and this is done on purpose to slow down the people at the front to give the slower people and the walkers the opportunity to catch back up with the group.

Sometimes though, the hares do TOO GOOD of a job in concealing where the path continues and all of us are just out there in the jungle with our hands in the air not able to find it. This is what happened this week on Thursday and thankfully it was one of the very first circle checks so no one was too winded at that point.

Right at the red circle there is the 1km mark according the overhead mapping app someone has that is a front runner. You can see how from there the path lacks the usual fluid motion and it just seems like a bunch of random walking around. The person who this was attached to wasn't alone because it took us so long to find the true trail that the entire pack had caught up and now we had 23 people all looking for the true trail but nobody could spot it.

here is a close up of one person's attempts to help find the real trail

So what happened here? Well, the answer to that is something that isn't so common but can and does happen. The Hares had actually marked the continuation of the trail but something happened to it and the flour that indicated the continuation of the trail had been wiped away somehow. It could have been a bit of rain, a farmer who didn't understand why it was there, or even dogs peeing on the ground. The fact of the matter is that the trail markers were not there and it took us the better part of 15 minutes to figure out in which direction the trail actually continued. If you go back to the first image the trail continuation was actually quite close to where the previous trail had been but no one could tell because the markings had been washed out. Strangely, even though the trail flour had been wiped away, the rock circle, the powder, and the paper that is at every circle check was still there so whoever or whatever wiped out the trail markings, didn't happen to notice the actual circle check.

This is a big part of the reason why we try to remain together as a group on these runs. The people who made the trails are almost never with us so nobody participating in the run actually knows where the trail continues from any point. If we happen to get hopelessly lost, at least we are lost together and with the GPS on our combined phones, we can make sure that everyone gets back to the start point without anyone roaming around in the wilderness totally lost. If you find yourself alone for a long period of time at a Hash event a good thing to do is probably to turn around and find the group. You can should "How You!" and someone who is on the true trail is meant to should back "On On!" to let you know the general direction you are supposed to be heading in.

While most of our runs are at least somewhat near civilization it can be quite a trek to the nearest house and if you don't speak Thai, there is a very good chance that they are not going to know what the hell you are talking about anyway.

Rest easy though. These sort of mishaps are extremely rare and we have only had a couple of instances in many years where someone was properly lost and only one situation where Thailand search and rescue needed to get involved. To this day we still donate money to Search and Rescue because of that one time that we needed their services to find a hapless Hasher roaming around in the jungle.

We tend to take special care of anyone who is there for the first time because the worst possible scenario would be for someone who is completely unfamiliar with the protocols to be all of a sudden on their own without a clue of what to do next. Even though we are a silly group of people that joke around a lot, we do take getting everyone back safely very seriously.

So if it is your first run with us or any other Hash around the world it is probably best to let someone know this so that they can make an effort to help you out a special amount.

When this run was done we gave a very good grilling to the people who made the trail and we put them on the ice at least 6 times each for this mishap even though it actually wasn't really their fault. They HAD put the trail indicators down earlier in the week and nobody knows what happened to them. Such is the nature of the adventure that is the Hash.

Come one come all! We are still doing 3 runs per week, every week in Chiang Mai and there is more than likely an active Hash chapter somewhere near where you live as well. Check em out!