Here are the average distances flown at the King Mountain co-Nationals this year:

Day 1 29 miles
Day 2 24 miles
Day 3 29 miles
Day 4 12 miles
Day 5 12 miles

These values are inflated somewhat by the fact that I gave the pilots who landed in the bomb out zone credit for 3.1 miles while Lisa gave them credit for 1 mile. I did this to make it comparable with the Big Spring US Nationals, because we gave that value to pilots who landed within 3.1 miles of the airport. I think that one did that on one day. Here are the average distances flown in the Big Spring US Nationals:

Day 1 71 miles
Day 2 75 miles
Day 3 32 miles
Day 4 65 miles
Day 5 72 miles
Day 6 62 miles
Day 7 53 miles

Is there any comparison? Remember many pilots made goal at Big Spring and stopped flying there even though they could have gone much further.

Bill Soderquist writes in the article above:

Big Spring will always be a race venue that is in a class buy itself and will attract the best racers around.

I'd say looking at these distance numbers that Big Spring looks a lot better as a cross country site compared to King Mountain and that King really doesn't deserve its reputation as a big cross country site (at least according to this year's results). You don't have to be a racer to enjoy great cross country flying at Big Spring.

Heck let's look at Ridgely, the site of the East Coast Championships, and a well known very weak and hard to go cross country site:

Day 1 15 miles
Day 2 27 miles
Day 3 12 miles
Day 4 14 miles
Day 5 2 miles

King Mountain looks a lot more like Ridgley than it does Big Spring, at least for the average pilot.