Logistics

The event arena & parking are collocated on Day 1 and approximately 200m apart on Day 2.  Toilets (either park restrooms and/or portolets) are available at the parking or arena.  

Walk to Start.  Starts on Day 1 for all courses are 350m (5 min). Starts on Day 2 for all courses are in the event arena.

Start Area (All Courses):  There will be a portable toilet at or very near the start area (both days).  Clear and check your e-punch when you arrive at the start area. Loose control descriptions will be available, if you have not already downloaded/printed yours. (Download coming soon.)  The map boxes and start control will be in the mapped start triangle.  There is a start control, which each competitor must punch before heading for their first control.

Start Procedure (Orange - Brown - Green - Red - Blue):  You will be called to the line two minutes before your start time to check in. One minute before your start time you will advance to where maps are available. Write your name or number on the back of the map. You may ask the attendant to check that you have the right map, but do not look at the map before you punch the start. At your start time you will punch the start control and head for the first control. 

Start Procedure (White - Yellow):  We are using Orienteering USA's "Map Preview" option for youth on White & Yellow.  All White & Yellow courses are open starts at any time during the start window.  Meet volunteers will ensure a minimum of 2-minutes between competitors on the same course.  Start procedures for M/F-10, M/F-12, M/F-14, and youth on recreational White and Yellow courses:

Clear and check your e-punch when you arrive at the start area. Advance to the call-up line and check in with a volunteer. You will receive your map and loose control descriptions here. If desired, preview the map with a coach or event volunteer. You may discuss anything during this time, such as orienting the map, planning your routes, recognizing boundary features, checking control codes, and punching. When ready to start, check back in with a volunteer before starting so there is adequate time between others starting on your course.  At this point, you've formally exited the coaching process – the course is now an individual effort. You must punch the start control before heading off to the first control. 

Common first controls: On Day 1, all courses share the same first control, and competitors do need to punch there. On Day 2, White and Yellow share a first control, and the other courses all share a first control; punch required. Competitors will be started facing in the direction of the first control. These first controls are intentionally very easy.

After completing your course, please go directly to download. You will be asked to deposit your map in a bin, if the start window is still open; otherwise, keep your map. Maps from the collection bin will be available for pick-up as soon as everyone has started.

All courses have a time limit of 3 hours.  To prevent needless search & rescue operations, any competitor who exceeds this time limit must abandon their course and move expeditiously to Finish/Download.  All competitors, including those who do not finish their courses, must punch finish and download—this is how we know you are safely out of the woods.

Awards will be given based on combined time from the two days.  

Complaints & protests will be handled in accordance with OUSA rules of competition (in writing to organizers...within 1 hour of course closure).

Course Notes

There will be no water on the courses.  Competitors must carry their own, if desired.

Some areas are densely packed with controls as little as 30 meters apart (if on significantly different features). Please check control numbers.

An orienteering mentor of mine advised me long ago that course setter's notes should be unnecessary, because there should be nothing out of the ordinary that the competitors need to be informed about. To that end, I'll try to keep this brief, put the important information up front, and I'll note that none of it is really important.

There are some private homes within the mapped area. Private property is shown with either the olive green "settled area" or vertical black stripes. There should be no reason to go through these areas, and please don't go though anything that is obviously someone's yard.

There are a few hunter's stands out there, but they are not mapped (they're not easy to see, and they tend to get moved). Rootstocks are generally not mapped, although there are nine very large ones on the map (one of which is a control location).

When you turn the map over, your first thought is going to be that this map is really green. Even given this warning, you're still going to have that reaction. But don't lose hope, this is still a fine area for orienteering. Mainly what I want to talk about is the vegetation. Jon has done a great job of mapping it, accurately enough that you can navigate by it.

Of the 103 control locations that we have out there, about two dozen are in light green, and none are really in medium green or dark green (a few are on the edge of medium green, or in areas of white woods that you have to go through some medium green to get into). There will be some "outside of the box" thinking required to choose good routes, rarely will "just go straight at it" be a good strategy.

I personally test-ran all of the courses between June 5 and September 3 this summer, in the heat and humidity and summer vegetation (and on some days bugs), and I found them all to be fun, so in the nicer fall conditions, you should have fun as well, if you navigate astutely. I want to extend my thanks to Anna Campbell for setting the WYO courses (which I always find the most challenging), to Tori Campbell for vetting, and to Jon Campbell for his excellent mapping as well as so much more in directing this event.

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This state forest is where I spent a lot of time as a kid, though not really in the woods. I grew up in Townsend, and on any given summer day with nice weather, my mother would take my brother and me to either Pearl Hill or Damon Pond for the afternoon. About 30 years ago, James Baker and I went for a run to see if it would be worth mapping, and at that point we concluded that it was too thick. But in 2004 I bought a house about 10 minutes from here, and as this became one of my favorite places to train, I discovered the variety of terrain available and that it really offered a lot of potential. I hope you enjoy orienteering here as much as I enjoyed setting the courses.  -JJ