March 17, 2024
Sunny Day in Julia Davis park
Advanced (4) 6.8 km 0 m 24 C
1 Ted Smith 44:16
2 Derek Duval 58:06
3 Cat Stauffer 1:49:01
4 Cristy and Scott Morris 2:22:23
Beginner (2) 1.5 km 0 m 8 C
1 Team Reed 39:01
2 Oscar and Co Adventurer 39:20
Intermediate (11) 4.4 km 0 m 16 C
1 Belen Hoobing 38:55
2 Eli Arambarri 43:13
3 Torn Angela Ford 43:52
4 Clint Thompson 44:43
5 Dave Byrd 49:03
6 John Arambarri 51:28
7 Jackson Ford 52:54
8 Eloise Hoobing 1:07:17
9 Andy Hoobing 1:07:28
10 John Siebold 1:14:57
John Murray mp (44:47)
Sport (1) 3.6 km 0 m 16 C
1 Marcella Mimk 1:16:24
Split times could be accessed in Winsplits. Look how you did against best on the course.
Many thanks to my co-director Pete for gracefully handling meet setup and registration and to Derek for helping to collect controls after the meet.
See you all enjoying outdoors next month at the Eagle Rock park near Old Penitentiary!
Yours,
Sergey
February 22, 2024
Veteran's Memorial Park and Willow Lane
Barb, Rhonda, and Jan with a couple of great sniffers. |
Easy peasy. For all you future CTOC meet directors (yes, we need you), once you've directed a meet at the same venue 2 or 3 times, with great helpers, it gets easy. So it was for me on Sunday Feb 8, for this pre-superbowl, 'participate don't spectate', event. And if it's the first one or two holding you back from volunteering -- there are many of us who'd love to show you the ropes. Helping with even just one meet is greatly appreciated!
Thanks so much to Sergey for jumping in on the unexpected greenbelt closures and delivering a newly updated map to my email inbox just as I was designing courses. Thanks to Innes for making the morning control setting and pickup easy and for being darn good company. Thanks to the forces of weather for providing us with mostly dry ground and dry skies.
A little bit of sun brightened the later morning. |
We had only one hicccough when someone decided they needed to "clean up" a control (complete with electronic punch and a sticker that clearly labeled it's reason for being there) mid-event, so a good portion of people heading for #9 on the Vets loop arrived with nothing to find. Some moved on quickly while others spent time looking. Innes, again, to the rescue, scouted the area and found the control, e-punch still attached, residing in a nearby trash can and re-set it for those who were still out.
We were happy to see a few new-to-orienteering or new-to-Boise folks. If anyone is comparing themselves in the times below to CTOC veterans, know that competitive orienteering involves navigating in UNKNOWN terrain. Don't be intimidated by top runners who have competed on these maps multiple times. They still have to quickly choose their routes, but they have a distinct advantage of recalling key passages, landmarks, and parallel bridges that extend to separate land masses. If you were fortunate enough to be exploring these places for the first time, count yourself lucky!
Beginner Course 1.2km
1 Julynn and Quinn Dillard 1:06:04
Vets Loop 2.5
km 10 C
Kirsten also with a hound friend |
2 Dustin Thomas 21:47
3 William Leach 23:52
4 Hugh & Jackson Ford 26:07
5 Angela & Torin Ford 28:09
6 Jason Russell 31:56
7 Heidi Thomas 34:12
8 Michail F 39:32
9 David Byrd 40:02
10 Carrie Magnusson 41:16
11 Heather & Matt Steele 41:56
12 Barb Rhonda Jan Recla 1:13:31
1 Sergey Velichko 22:09
2 William Leach 31:26
3 Dustin Thomas 33:10
4 Angela & Torrin Ford 39:25
5 John Murray 41:18
6 Hugh & Jackson Ford 47:33
7 Heidi Thomas 51:55
8 Jason Russell 52:34
9 John Siebold 1:05:58
10 Christy Morris 1:24:03
11 Kevin & Steve McDowell 1:33:39
12 Kirsten Severud mp
1 Sergey Velichko 39:34
2 Dustin Thomas 54:57
3 William Leach 55:18
4 Angela & Torrin Ford 1:07:34
5 Hugh & Jackson Ford 1:13:40
6 Jason Russell 1:24:30
7 Heidi Thomas 1:26:07
The Ford crowd made the most of both loops! |
January 22, 2024
Eagle Island Meet
Not quite Snowmageddon |
Jerry, Angela, and Torin's boots for deep snow. |
Scott & Christy at the start table |
December 10, 2023
December 9 "Frost" meet at Ann Morrison park
It was really cold this past Saturday. At the time of courses' setup ice patches covered trails and paths, lakes and canal were frozen and grass was painted in silver colors. It didn't dissuade brave souls who came to enjoy outdoors and occasional sun picking trough the clouds.
Few images of happy finishers:
Most of participants took on intermediate course, five on advanced (could be 6 but I ran out of maps, next time I will print more!), there was one taker for sport course and one very large and happy family who tried beginners course.
Results:
dnf | ||||||
2024 club schedule of events is being defined. Some already published on the right side. Consider joining the club as it makes all our events free for the year.
Hope to see you all enjoying outdoors next year!
Happy Hanukah, Christmas, and New Year!
Yours,
Sergey
November 28, 2023
Got Lucky...Again
I have been a member of CTOC since Dec 2019 and while I really look forward to our events out in the hills/mountains I also look forward to the events in the "off" months because that means we are closer to town, have maps that many can use for fine tuning skills and we get to see faces new and familiar!
We haven't been to Columbia Village in four (4) years so it was time we revisited the area. We started with walking the original course and after the almost 4.5 miles we understood the vast area that we would be covering. We took several trips out to the area to compare the old with the new, while many of the locations remained the same we did throw in a few changes. Big thanks to Sergey for updating the base map and making it more current.
As we headed out around 7am to set controls a few stray rain drops splattered on the windshield and I found myself thinking "It wasn't supposed to rain!", but as we set controls and prepped for the event we got away with only a few sprinkles. Thank goodness I didn't plan this for Sunday or we would have been very soggy - got lucky...again. This was only my second time using actual controls as I normally do an urban (QnA event) and as many of you noticed a few things didn't go according to plan. Luckily the mistakes didn't really impact anything major except a little confusion but I've learned - Print a master map (once someone shows me how!). I know this will come in very handy for my next event if I remember a year from now.
Since this area was built for speed I proceeded to use all 26 controls for our advance course and outside of the numbering mishap received lots of positive feedback. We had 4 brave souls take on this course and the times were very competitive with less than 15 minutes separating them . Ted squeaked out the top spot, but we are giving Sergey bonus points since he pre ran the course and made some minor modifications as he went to ensure it worked out for the rest of the field.
1 Ted Smith 39:36
2 Sergey Velichko 40:29
3 Jason Russel 43:08
4 Dustin/Heidi Thomas 52:16
The Intermediate map was a big hit this month with a total of 13 teams. It too was a very competitive field with Eli coming in first and Belen finishing only six (6) seconds behind him, neither looked very taxed at the effort - the joys of youth! Eli and his dad started together but Eli came flying into the finish and when asking where he dad was he simply shrugged and said "I dusted him", haha. Belen is rather new to Orienteering (to my knowledge) and she too crushed the course and overtook John for second. Teach him to invite family to play with us! We even had a tie for 10 with Derek and Austin clocking the exact same time.
1 Eli Arambarri 35:28
2 Belen Hoobing 35:34
3 John Murray 39:36
4 David Byrd 43:48
5 Torin Ford 46:03
6 John Arambarri 47:21
7 Leslie Perez 57:03
8 Eloise Hoobing 1:01:07
9 Cat Stauffer 1:07:13
10 Derek Duval 1:17:33
10 Austin Agosta 1:17:33
12 Jerry Stewart 1:22:13
13 Lois Urizar 1:35:20
As I mentioned earlier I enjoy the courses close to town as this is when we see the most first timers (or new to CTOC) come out of the woodwork and this event was no exception. Most of our Beginner/Sport courses were all newbies; it was great to see that all of them ejoyed the beginner enough to stick around for the Sport. We had several groups of Royal Rangers (similar to boy scouts join us) and it was great to see them get acclimated to the map and take off in what you could tell would be a very competitive morning for them. Team Jamie took the lead in both courses by nearly two (2) minutes. Thomas Bernier came all the way from 2T to play with us and then stayed to chat with some at the start/finish - hopefully he makes the trek again!
Beginner
1 Team Jamie 13:03
2 Team Brendan 15:41
3 Thomas Bernier 15:56
4 Team Zack 16:00
5 Ryan MacDermott 17:41
6 Amy Noyes 20:11
7 Team Kendall 24:18
8 Mary Jane Byrne 53:57
Sport
1 Team Jamie 26:16
2 Team Brandon 28:49
3 Team Zack 34:36
4 Amy Noyes 35:11
5 Ryan MacDermott 40:30
6 Thomas Bernier 47:15
7 Pete Paradis 51:40
8 Mary Jane Byrne 1:29:36
As always my thank yous go to:
- Sergey for again updating the base map and pre-running the course to ensure it was ready for everyone else and helping pick up controls at the end.
- John for always being helpful in jogging my memory on how to work on and print the course maps.
- Frank for getting up early on a Saturday and helping me set controls and getting coffee! I appreciate that you support my crazy hobbies!
- My Dad for walking the course several times, getting lots of miles in, helping to set controls in the sprinkles, and hanging out at the start/finish while we ran the event and then of course helping pick up the controls and load the car at the end.
See you all Dec 9 at Ann Morrison!
October 9, 2023
Mulligan
I'm not a golfer, so I don't have any
personal experience with Mulligans. I had a vague notion of the rules
affording a redeeming do-over and the attendant humiliation, but
nothing really solid. And, long before I associated the word with
golf, I associated it with stew. That's stew where the only
requisite ingredient (or should I say non-ingredient) was the
kitchen sink. As in “everything but the kitchen sink”. As I
pondered the Snowbank Meadows Meet, it seemed to have some of each
version of Mulligan.
If there was something needed to redeem a meet of arguably dubious success, it was the weather. Saturday was a glorious sunny day with comfortable temperatures complemented by the absence of mosquitoes and the recent removal of cattle to lower elevations. Throw the recent grading of the notoriously washboard Snowbank Mountain Road, and you have the base into which to mix the other ingredients of a Mulligan stew.
Accommodations and Restroom |
I sent out a pre-meet message with my mapper's notes and course setter's notes. I had the intention to impart useful information to the participants. John Siebold, a man of estimable intelligence and accomplishment, uncharacteristically ( I might add “incomprehensibly”.) interpreted my description of the northernmost four controls on the Advanced Course as an option to bypass the northernmost four controls on his Intermediate Course. I've often been accused of and probably am guilty of too much information, this meet report serving as evidence to support the accusation. John found the option to be an elegant solution to optimizing his performance. It wasn't strictly a Mulligan in the golf meaning, but it did very much reduce John's strokes.
Christy and Scott blew it on the very first control. They assured me the error was theirs. Whether that's true or not, they graciously omitted mention of my misplacement on the map of a line of fence posts leading directly to Control 1. Eventually, the found the boulder and went on to successfully navigate the course.
I know better than to hide controls. Controls 5 and 6 were hidden. They also were found by every orienteer, but not without some aggravation. In each case the control was exactly where indicated on the map and in the control description. Those facts do not exonerate the course setter. Perhaps a photo courtesy of Torin Ford will illustrate my blunder. If you look closely, you can see the control bag hanging off the tree wedged between the two boulders of the boulder cluster. If you stand at just the correct angle, you can see the control bag. If you don't, and you are within a couple of meters, you can't. I don't have a photo to illustrate the problem with Control 5. I won't explain except to say it was a somewhat similar blunder on my part.It really was a good day. Everyone seemed to enjoy the beautiful venue and the courses in spite of my errors. 2023 has been a year of four good new maps beginning with Blackrock Canyon in the winter and including the spectacular world class Granite Peak. We should have some more new venues for 2024 including Sergey's new Warm Lake map. But, before we get to 2024, Christie will add next month's Simplot Complex on November 18 to her string of first rate urban meets.
John Murray
Meet Director
September 12, 2023
Confirmation Bias: Gold Rush South 2023
Confirmation bias is the innately human characteristic of seeking information that confirms an already held belief (and ignoring things that refute it). Most orienteers will be familiar with this phenomenon, having had the experience of going through all sorts of machinations to make the lines on the map force to fit the (wrong) belief in their head about where they are. In medicine, doctors are taught to combat confirmation bias in a diagnosis by deliberately asking ha"what can I look for that would prove me wrong?" (not what proves me right).
Team |
Course |
Time |
Rank on course |
Kirsten Severud |
Intermediate, Full |
1:41 |
1 |
Torin & Jackson Ford |
Intermediate, Full |
2:11 |
2 |
Ted Smith |
Intermediate Full |
2:37 |
3 |
Sergey Velichko |
Intermediate, Full |
MP (1:02)* |
|
John Murray |
Intermediate, Full |
DNF |
|
Innes Wright |
Intermediate, Full |
DNF |
|
Lois, Micah, Emilio, & Tyler |
Intermediate, 6-9 shortcut |
3:08 |
1 |
John Siebold & Leslie Perez |
Intermediate, 5-10 shortcut |
3:09 |
1 |
Jerry Stewart & Valerie Orr |
Intermediate, 5-10 shortcut |
3:28 |
2 |
Scott Cockerham and Christy Morris |
Sport |
1:23 |
1 |
Donna Pitzer |
Sport |
1:36 |
2 |
August 7, 2023
Super Scenic
And amazing map considering that you spent only couple days field checking! The key was to use white wood patches, contours, and large boulders and rock features for navigation. It is very tough terrain physically but so much reminds me of mountain terrain in Switzerland!“ And thanks to Sergey for recommending that we explore Granite Peak. It was his recommendation that put this map into CTOC's growing inventory.
Three Springs at Int 7/ Adv13 --Kirsten |
The terrain “reminds me of Switzerland” remark reminds me that most of the quotations about Granite Peak revolved around Karin's contribution to the meet report's title. In addition to world class orienteering terrain it was “super scenic”. Add in a respite from the heat, post-season for mosquitoes, and recent grading of the first four miles of the Snowbank Mountain Road. It was as close to a perfect day as I could imagine.
July 11, 2023
Bear Basin East orienteering meet July 9, 2023
It was a beautiful day to
spend wandering around in the woods and those with an early enough start got to
enjoy some of the cool mountain morning before the heat came on. Sergey
topped out those brave enough to attempt the challenging advanced course which
made a tour of every part of the eastern Bear Basin map with varieties of
terrain and lots of route choice options.
Late comer Melanie narrowly beat out John on the intermediate, dashing
his hopes for a victory in their rivalry.
The intermediate runners got to join the advanced runners in experiencing
a rough vague area with a control placed on a dam in a mosquito dense swamp,
yet most were able to make it out of there before being bled dry. The sport course provided a step up from a
beginner course and a couple of groups were up for the challenge, and thanks to
Cliff of Valley County SAR who came out for some navigation training. Included is Sergey’s map with his route for
the advanced course.
Thanks to Andy, Ole, and Sergey for helping with control pick up.
Anyone with pictures from the meet is welcome to post them on the Meet Up Bear Basin event page.
Karin Didisse, meet director
Advanced Course 7.8 km 16 controls
Sergey Velichko 1:15
Ole Bergset 2:30
Andy Hill 2:48
Sean Howerton 3:07
Ashley Boyd & Forrest dnf
Intermediate Course 4.3 km 9 controls
Melanie Wright 1:13
John Murray 1:14
Torin Ford & family 1:28
Bob Didisse 1:47
Bill Pilcher & Dee 2:35
Christy Morris & Scott 2:38
Jerry Stewart 2:52
Ted Smith dnf
Sport Course 2.6 km 9 controls
Maggie & Matt Vuturo 2:04
Ray & Lindsey Ramirez dnf
Novice 1.9 km 9 controls
Cliff Steele (VCSAR) 1:29
Intermediate Course Sport Course
Novice Course |