By Steve Gregg

After a 12-year hiatus, BAOC will return to Donner Lake State Park for a Sprint event, to wrap up the Tahoe 4-Day. The map is the property of the Truckee Orienteering Club — thanks to Greg and Carol Walker for letting us use the map again. As far as I can tell, the map has not been used at all since 2018, but it is still in really good shape, and I only had to make a few relatively minor corrections. The park has very little unpleasant undergrowth, and none of the 2-meter boulders have moved much in the last 12 years. 😊

I will emphasize again that this will be a pure Sprint event, which will reward your ability to navigate at high speed. I have purposely placed all of the boulder controls at the largest boulder in the general vicinity, which in theory means you should never need to come to a full stop to determine your precise location. In particular, you will never need to decide which of the six 0.5-meter boulders in the control circle is the one that your bag is hidden behind. One of my vetters, Greg Khanlarov, test-ran the 2.7 km Long course, and finished in a little under 20 minutes. Greg predicts that the winning time is likely to be under 15 minutes, and I am expecting to see similar winning times for the 2.0 km Short course.

The 1.8 km Beginner course will mostly stick to the trails, but there are two or three controls that are more "Yellowish" in nature, requiring short off-trail jaunts to reach the control locations. So the course is perhaps not appropriate for a young child's very first solo event, but I would not expect a more-experienced young competitor to have any trouble with the course.

The staging area for the event will almost certainly be in a little alcove directly west of the main park visitor center. From there, the walk to the Start will be less than 100 meters. The walk from the Finish back to the staging area will be less than 200 meters, and very scenic, along part of the park's nature trail.

Courses

As usual for a Summer Series event, three courses will be available: Beginner, Short, and Long.

The Beginner course, which will be mostly on trails, will be an excellent introduction to orienteering, with beautiful surroundings as an added treat.

The Short and Long courses will be true Sprint courses, and will venture off-trail. The results of these courses will be included in the respective Summer Series competitions.

Notes: The results of the Short or Long course will count toward the Summer Series competition only if it is the first course you do at the event. Participation on other Summer Series events is not required, and you're definitely free to ignore the "competitive" aspect of the Summer Series and do your course "just for fun".

Here are the course details:

    Course      Length   Climb  Controls
    Beginner    1.8 km    20 m     13  
    Short       2.0 km    35 m     18  
    Long        2.7 km    65 m     23  

Beginners should be aware that the distances shown are the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. The climb numbers represent the amount of ascending that would be done on the "optimum route" (in the Course Setters' opinion), without regard for any descending. Because you won't travel in straight lines, and might not follow the optimum routes, your actual distance and climb will be somewhat more than what is shown above, and will depend on your route choices (and any errors you make).

Everyone should be aware that "straight-line" course lengths are given above. (Sprint events often use "best-route" course lengths.)

The map scale is 1:4000, and the contour interval is 2.5 meters.