Evergreen Trail "10 mile race"

Me before the race to the RD: So how well is the course marked?
RD: You can't get lost.

Me after the race: So why did half of the entire field go off course?
RD: We didn't mark one of the turns.
 At least he admitted his mistake flat out and didn't make excuses. For that simple fact I wasn't too pissed and would do the race again. 

At mile 8.5 I was in second place by about a minute when I rounded a turn and saw the race leader standing at an intersection looking confused. My immediate thought... "Of course." Neither one of us had a clue where to go and the course was clearly not marked. Before the race I asked for a course map but the RD said he 'forgot them at home but could explain the course... it's straight forward and marked well'.  We ran about a half mile back down the mountain before realizing that this was clearly not right. Then we ran back up to the summit again and waited for another runner to come by which took several minutes... he didn't know where to go either. So we dropped all the way back down to the only road on the course and ran up the road to the finish. I mapped our alternate route on Mapmyrun and we hit somewhere between 12.5 and 13 miles in 1:32.
Turns out that about the top 8 all went the wrong way. At the finish line it was person after person looking at their Garmin and cussing at seeing mileage between 9 miles (yes- some people were actually short) and 14 miles.
I felt pretty awesome though. I was able to red line it in 3rd gear and push the climbs very hard and the virtual-would-have-been race 'winner' was able to red line it in 4th gear on the descents. I was catching him on the climbs but once again I was getting destroyed on the descents. It seemed like I just didn't have any leg speed.
All in all a fun run but I'm kind of bummed that I paid $35 for a workout I could have run from home.