Saturday's event at Northfield Mountain was the start of the campover weekend
that wasn't (or to be more accurate... the camping part wasn't). The orienteering on Saturday turned out to be great, however. We had a very decent turnout, with individuals, families, and scouts attending from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York (EMPO country). The distribution among the five courses was fairly even, and many people who did the White course also tried the more-challenging Yellow course.

Fortunately the rain held off until our last finisher was heading in, so most people just had to contend with the humidity, very steep terrain, and mosquitos. The courses tended toward the long side, with lots of climb on the Orange, Green, and Red courses (190m, 255m, and 285m respectively).

Northfield is a beautiful and magical place to orienteer, with lots of rock features, streams, and deep hemlock forests. While setting courses, Ed and I saw deer, wild turkey, lots of chipmunks, and a ruffed grouse, which almost attacked me in its panic to drive me away from its nest.

Our apologies to everyone on the Red course for the misplacement of control #9, which was hung next to an unmapped 1m boulder higher in the reentrant than the point that was circled. It didn't cause problems for everyone, but several good orienteers spent a lot of time looking for it or went to the correct place, assumed the control was missing, and went on.

Many thanks to the following people for helping with the meet: Stephen and Gail Richardson (for a doing a fantastic job on registration); Dennis Struble, Tim Parson, and Chris Embree (for handling start/finish); Philip Turner (for posting results); Scott Turner, Steve van Ness, and Jeff Saeger (for control pickup); J-J Cote (for picking up the equipment from Burlington); Desmond Fleming (for getting extra signs and map boards to Ed in Groton); Joanne Sankus, Kevin Hart, Claudia Struble, Ben & Meg Parson, and Hillary Saeger (for taking photos and pitching in as needed); and Paul Magnus, my youngest helper, who helped take the maps off the map boards and put the pens away.

Finally, a sincere thanks to all the staff at Northfield Mountain and Barton Cove for their support. In particular, Dwight Harrison was wonderful to work with... from helping with permissions and publicity, to providing maps, to making sure the building was open for us, to letting NEOC use the group campsite at no charge, to even picking up the water jugs and cups at one of the control points after the event.

Thank you all, and if I've forgotten anyone who helped, please let me know. I was inside most of the morning and didn't get a chance to see everything that was being done.

Liz

P.S. Special recognition goes to the Feather family -- Jackie, Alex, and Will -- for being great sports. They were the only other people to brave the torrential rains at the campground on Saturday night, and I think they even had fun. Maybe next year we should try it again.