Why didn't they leave one end of the wire at the beach?

Question

In the movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Beetee (played by Jeffrey Wright) comes up with the plan to wrap a wire around the "Lightning Tree", and plant the other end of the wire in the water at the pond (to electrocute their opponents). The group leaves the pond and hikes quite a distance to the tree. They wrap the wire around the tree and then send Katniss back to the beach with the other end of the wire.

So, since they start at the beach, why didn't they leave one end there, rather than repeating the entire hike all over again?

I understand they wanted to separate Katniss from the group.

Answer 1

This is just what I gathered from both the book and film.

It's likely that the group was being watched by the others. If they'd left anything behind it would arouse their suspicion and risk failure.

Being the larger and more dangerous group it would be more secure for them to be seen to move as a group rather than leave people behind.

Answer 2

I understand they wanted to separate Katniss from the group.

I think, after putting some thought into this after the second time watching the movie, that this is the one and only reason for doing it.

1. Worrying about the other group finding the wire, or even watching them place it can be fixed. For example, plant the wire sneakily - Looking innocent while hiding the wire under the sand would be trivial, and the wire would not be noticed if the sand were trampled and kicked around a bit afterwards before heading up to the tree.

2. The plan to kill the other group was a cover story, so leaving the wire behind wouldn't have affected the outcome regardless. They didn't actually care if the other group found the wire. If the other group was watching them, whether they had a wire or not, it wouldn't have made a difference - the careers would've tracked them either way at that point.

So again, I think the only reason for doing this was to separate Katniss when the time came.