By Rex Winterbottom (Regional Event Coordinator — Sierra Nevada)
All orienteers are welcome to find an interesting challenge this Saturday!
Whether it's beginners courses, intermediate courses, or advanced, technical sprint courses, check out all the details for the event right here.
Sprint Basics
- Be registered, dressed, warmed up, and ready to run at 10:55. It's about a 5-minute walk to the staging area. I'll give a brief talk with instructions for the special format, and group-of-4 starts begin at 11:00, with 1-minute intervals. Everyone will have started by 11:10!!
- Anyone can enter, including on the day of the event. You don't have to have run 4 qualifying sprints prior to this event! Please come and enjoy some nice, fine, technical navigation.
- For my sanity, let me know in advance if possible that you may come, if you haven't already done so.
List of Attendees
Here's a list of people who have contected me thus far (as of 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, May 15):
Class First Name Last Name
F21 Marie-Josee Parayre
F35 Stephanie Maclean
F75 Shirley Pierce
M21 Peter Graham
M21 Ben Legg
M21 Russell Neilson
M21 Mark Prior
M21 Greg Khanlarov
M21 Vladimir Gusiatnikov
M21 Torkel Dominique
M21? Andrejus Masalkovas
M35 Francois Leonard
M35 Ido Green
M40 Derek Maclean
M45 Tapio Karras
M45 Steve Beuerman
M50 Kent Ohlund
M60 Dennis Wildfogel
M60 George Minarik
M65 Jim Fish
M65 Bob Cooley
M70 Terry Gleason
Did I miss you? Misclassify you? Let me know!
General Event Details
Terrain
The terrain is a mix of urban parkland and oak woodland, with some open space. The forest and campus blend together nicely. Moderately hilly, only one Sprint course, and the Orange course, get to the steep stuff.
Map
Map scales could be 1:10000, 1:7500, or 1:5000. All the Sprints will be printed at 1:5000. The contour interval is 5 m.
The map quality is generally good, but it is an older map. Things like vegetation are not mapped perfectly, but are fair enough. Just take the vegetation with a grain of salt. When going off trail and through the woods, the white forest is generally pretty runnable.
Hazards
The poison oak can be prevalent in spots, especially the woodsy areas around the campus. It's easy to run into, literally, if you don't look out for it; it can be found in flat, white-coded forest. For that reason, shorts are not recommended for Orange or Sprints. Tecnu is a good idea, but I personally prefer dishwashing soap.
The White course crosses a parking lot. The Yellow and Orange courses cross a road with light traffic, including people coming to and from the event. All Sprint courses cross the service road, which should have no traffic but possibly could. So everyone should watch out for cars.
Course Statistics
Technical Physical
Course Length Climb Controls Difficulty Difficulty
White 1.7 km 35 m 12 Novice Easy
Yellow 2.3 km 40 m 12 Beginner Easy
Orange 3.3 km 250 m 10 Intermediate Hard
Sprint 1 1.2 km 45 m 7 Advanced Moderate
Sprint 2 1.1 km 80 m 7 Advanced Moderate
Sprint 3 1.3 km 20 m 7 Advanced Moderate
Sprint 4 1.3 km 45 m 7 Advanced Moderate
Orange Notes
Make sure you've had lots of practice if you haven't done Orange before today! This is a challenging, physical course. Cleats are necessary and long pants, too. Adventure racers should enjoy the course. And if you want more than that, do the Yellow course too. It's navigationally interesting. Long Orange was supposed to be Yellow + Orange, we can have a results category summing the times for people who run both courses.
Sprint Notes
Read the maps carefully. Three of the four Sprints cross themselves. Make sure you start with the first control, not the last, as Mikkel did when he vetted one of the courses. We'll make it as clear as we can on the map!
Wear long pants and cleated shoes.
Boulders, even 1.0-m boulders, seem small.
Buildings have grey areas indicating where you may pass through. Sometimes it may be useful.
Mapped earth banks near the campus are usually walls, and are impassable enough that you should just go around them.
Near the campus, there is a network of deep gullies that are difficult to cross for long stretches. I purposefully course set around these, except: One leg on one course will take you straight to a gully. If you go straight, you'll find crossing options. And you'll see the bag.
After you finish each course, download immediately—it will be right there. Then go back to the Start area. I'll update your position in the next group on the whiteboard. Within 5 minutes, you should be starting your next course with a new group. Keep warm. We'll keep you hydrated.
You don't have to do all the courses, but you are encouraged to do so! They are all good, but in a way build up to the final course. The summed statistics are 4.9 km with 190 m of climb.
Starting at 11:00, I predict everyone should be done by 1:00. I hope to do the awards ceremony at 1:00, or even sooner.
Enjoy, and good luck!
Rex