[roc-info] National Orienteering Day, Highland Park, Saturday, Sept. 17

[Richard Detwiler]

This Saturday we celebrate National Orienteering Day with a meet in 
Highland Park. The main purpose is to introduce orienteering to 
newcomers, so it would be great if you could bring someone out who's 
never done it. There will be White and Yellow courses free to newcomers, 
as well as prizes.

We encourage club members to come and help welcome newcomers and one or 
more of the courses being offered (see below for course descriptions).

We'll be starting at a new location for us, at the Cornell Cooperative 
Extension, 249 Highland Avenue, a little bit east of South Avenue.

Courses offered:
White 2.5 km (free to newcomers)
Yellow 3.3 km (free to newcomers)
Sprint 2.3 km
Trail Challenge 6.0 km

The park has been completely re-mapped since last year's meet, using 
LIDAR contour data. The main portion of the park was mapped by Joe 
Brautigam from Connecticut, who not only mapped that section of the park 
to very high standards, but he set the course for the US trail-O 
championship which was held here in early August. Trail-O requires high 
precision in both mapping and course setting, so this map is truly very 
high quality.

The portion of the park to the west side of South Avenue, and north of 
Pinetum Drive, was not mapped by Joe as that wasn't needed for trail-O. 
The mapping standards of those portions are not quite trail-O quality, 
but should still represent a significant improvement over the previous 
map, due to the availability of LIDAR contour data. These portions of 
the map will only be used for the Trail Challenge (see description 
below); the White, Yellow, and Sprint courses will stay within the 
portions of the park mapped by Joe.

The White, Yellow, and Sprint courses will use a 1:4000 scale map, 
mapped to Sprint Orienteering standards. The Trail Challenge will use a 
1:7500 scale map, also mapped to Sprint Orienteering standards, other 
than the map scale (sprint maps need to be 1:4000 or 1:5000).

Trail Challenge: A TRAIL CHALLENGE is a mass start cross-country race 
over fields and trails with a difference. The course is not marked out 
by marshals and cones but is instead defined by checkpoints that are 
marked on a specially made color map. The TRAIL CHALLENGE arises from 
choosing the fastest route between them.

The format was pioneered in ROC by Tyler Borden at the Genesee Valley 
Park meet, where it was very well received. The technical difficulty is 
roughly Yellow, but the distance is much longer than a typical Yellow 
course.

Schedule:

Sprint, White, and Yellow: Start any time between noon and 2:00 p.m.
Trail Challenge: MASS START at 1:30 p.m.
All courses close at 3:00 p.m.

Safety note: All courses involve road crossings. Sprint, White, and 
Yellow courses will be crossing Highland Avenue and Reservoir Avenue. 
Please use caution when crossing these roads.

The Trail Challenge will be crossing those streets plus South Avenue. 
The South Avenue crossing is the most potentially dangerous crossing, 
because it is a highly traveled street, with curves and hills limiting 
visibility. There is only one legal (from an orienteering standpoint) 
crossing point, the crosswalk at Reservoir Avenue. This is shown on the 
Trail Challenge map as a crossing point, with the rest of South Avenue 
marked as out of bounds (vertical purple lines). The course is designed 
so there is little advantage to crossing South Avenue anywhere other 
than the cross walk, so please obey the rules of the game (which are 
there for everyone's safely) by only crossing at the crossing point 
shown on the map.