By Matej Šebo
Lake Herman is a very open park. You are likely to base most of your navigation on contour and vegetation features. You'll encounter little to no forested areas. Most vegetation is scrubby, scattered bushes or large thickets of impassable blackberries or poison oak. (While present close to some controls, all the poison oak is easily avoidable.) Wearing long pants is recommended, as there are a lot of "stickers", star thistles, and grassy undergrowth on all the courses — including short sections of the Yellow course.
The Map
The map has been comprehensively updated for this event. It's an upgrade in detail over the previous map, but far from perfect.
The new scale (used to for all the courses at this event) is 1:4,000, and the symbol set is ISSprSOM 2019-2 (Sprint symbols). A one-page presentation of the Sprint map symbols is available here (525KB PDF).
Bushes were mapped with great detail using aerial imagery, but in some cases, entire hillsides of vegetation have thinned in the years since the photos were taken. I've adjusted the map around controls, but you may still notice inaccuracies in vegetation mapping. Contour quality is excellent, freshly generated from recent LIDAR data. Trails are mapped accurately, although you may find small unmapped indistinct paths, especially in the thicker areas. The lake level appears to be slightly lower than shown on the map, and some of the indistinct marshes are barely marshy at all.
You'll see some disc-golf targets on all the courses. None of these are mapped. There are also white, post-like structures in the terrain that appear to be birdhouses. None of these are mapped either.
The Courses
The final course statistics are as follows:
Navigational
Course Distance Climb Controls Difficulty
Yellow 2.9 km 110 m 12 Beginner
Orange 3.7 km 125 m 16 Intermediate
Brown 3.1 km 110 m 15 Advanced
Short Memory 3.0 km 115 m 13 Extreme
Long Memory 4.8 km 190 m 19 Extreme
The safety bearing for all the courses is south to the baseball fields.
The Start, Finish, and assembly area are all essentially in the same place, in the area with the picnic tables.
No water will be provided on the courses (the assembly area will have water). The courses are short, but if you feel like you'll need water on them, please carry your own. Carrying water is strongly recommended on both Memory courses, as the risk of getting lost for a long time is significantly higher on these.
The Short Memory and Long Memory courses do not overlap at all. If you have time and are looking to maximize your training, I'd recommend running both. The Orange and Brown courses overlap significantly with both Memory courses.
Special Notes for the Memory courses
Memory-O is a challenging training option for advanced orienteerers. If it sounds too difficult, but you want to run an advanced course, consider the Brown or "Sketch-O" (see below) options.
In Memory-O, you are orienteering without a map in your hand! Compasses are allowed. You will get fragments of the map at each control. At the Start, you'll see only the leg from the Start to #1. When you successfully navigate to #1 (using only your memory of this map fragment), control #1 will have another map fragment showing #1 to #2, which you must then memorize, and so on until you get to the Finish.
You'll carry a control description sheet that'll let you verify each control code, but no map.
This training is meant to test your ability to simplify the map. Memorizing large amounts of detail is rarely a winning strategy. The ability to memorize the right details and execute a simplified plan will be key to success. Your strategy around making this plan will likely look very different on each leg, and long legs will typically be more challenging.
If the above sounds too difficult, but you want a similar challenge, you can run the Memory courses as a "Sketch-O".
In the "Sketch-O" option, you'll be competing on the same course (Short Memory or Long Memory), but you'll have a slight advantage: a pencil and paper. We'll provide those at the Start, and at each control, you'll have the chance to draw a simplified map of the route to the next one. You'll still face the challenge of having to simplify the map down to meaningful but sparse details, but with a little less pressure.
I would also like to remind everyone to carefully read the map (unless of course you're doing Memory) when approaching a control. Remember that not all of the controls you see will be on your course, so remember to always check the control code before punching.