In case you missed it, "Liberace" is one of our founding members here in Chiang Mai who recently passed on to the great "on up." In his time with us on this planet and in Chiang Mai he put us through some fantastic shenanigans including some really great "Live Hare" trails, which are runs that we very seldom do.
A Live Hare trail is one where the person who made the trail, know as a "hare" heads out on the trail 5 or 10 minutes before us and they will set the markers while we are all pursuing him or her. Normally, the hare goes out and sets the trail the day or even across multiple days in the week prior. Being a live hare is considerably more difficult because it requires that the person making the trail be intimately familiar with not just the terrain, but also exactly where they are going to go and how they are going to loop back to camp without encountering the pack.
We were able to get this wonderful overhead view of the entire trail thanks to someone, I don't remember who. If you look closely, you can see the numbers indicated on the trail and this is where there was a circle check. Circle checks are where you come to a dead-end of sorts and the people in the pack need to search around to look for clues as to where the path continues.
This can be really tough to pull off because imagine if you will that you are standing in the above picture and the only thing you know is that the trail continues somewhere within 100 meters of that spot. The indication of where the trail continues will normally also be very small... just a little splash of powder hidden behind a tree that carries on into the distance.
Once you find the "true trail" there will normally be quite a lot of powder from that point forward so that the pack can rest easy knowing that they are in fact on the trail and not just wandering into the jungle to get hopelessly lost.
It took us considerably longer to get back to the starting point because the first circle check was kind of botched and we didn't know how to proceed. Thankfully we eventually found it but there also wasn't that many of us in attendance because this was a Monday run where only men are allowed to attend. It's tradition.
Back at camp we sand songs in Liberace's honor and of course drank a bunch of beer like we always do. It was a fantastic day of remembrance of one of the most unusual HHH members you will ever meet. It is a pity that he is gone but we just look on the good times we had with him over the past 20 years or so. Almost all of them were good ones, and that is what Hashing is all about.
