The results posted below proved anti-climactic to Russ Pilcher.'s incomparable performance in the kitchen. Russ upstaged Sergey's 1 hour and 13 minute completion of the Advanced Course with an orienteering themed chocolate cake that probed the far reaches of imagination. As you can in the photo, it came with prominent features including boulders, hills, re-entrants, a lake and a stream. He completed it with a map, a compass, a CTOC banner and a control bag hung from a prominent conifer. It also tasted good.
Sunday was National Orienteering Day. Our modest publicity brought out some new folks to try orienteering. Nico Romani and Ty Miller ran the Beginner's Course to test compass skills for Civil Air Patrol. Kerry Davis is new to Boise, but has been orienteering with the Possum Trot Orienteering Club in Kansas for 10 years. She introduced herself to the club by finishing 4th out of 8 on the Intermediate Course. Ian Mullens and his dad, Jeff, came back for another Hidden Springs event after last year. They gave the Intermediate Course a run and decided to join the club.
It is possible to design a shorter Intermediate Course with less elevation gain. However, since the clusters of interesting terrain are separated by a lot of ground that doesn't entice orienteers, the options are either boredom or exhaustion. These courses had a lot of elevation gain/loss to ensure interesting terrain. Sergey reported, “I still feel a little beat up after those hills. 515m on a 6.7K course is surely a lot of climb, especially with the majority on first 2K.” What Sergey didn't say was that the ground was hard and irregular, route choices through The Slump dictated passage through boulder fields and the cheat/Medusa/squirrel tail grasses produced sharp and plentiful stickers. Kudos to those orienteers who completed their courses.
The Advanced Course was tough enough on Sergey that he reported he got tired on #17 and drifted aimlessly without a good bearing. Sergey drifting? Perhaps he is mortal after all. Here is his actual report: Here is scan of my route attached. As you can see – no problems with moving between controls but definitely some hesitations and small bobbles within the circle (ex. 1, 4, 10, 11, 20). My biggest loss was on #4 (it was placed higher than expected) and #17 (got tired and drifted aimlessly without good bearing). I lost ~12-13 minutes overall so 1 hour was within the reach.
Because National Orienteering Day is special and Russ baked a special cake we honored him with a special map. On Friday Sergey kindly printed maps for us. We have to confess we got the cart before the horse because on Saturday David Murray vetted the Advanced/Intermediate Course. He detected several errors requiring reprinting. So, on Sunday morning we had two sets of maps, one kind of accurate and one not quite too terribly inaccurate. The directors thought that the USA Trail Orienteering champion would appreciate an enhanced challenge. After running the Intermediate Course it became apparent to Russ that he received the enhanced challenge map. Russ has his own special way of expressing his gratitude for our efforts to make him feel special. Think nothing of it Russ. We were happy to do it for (to?) you.
David Bergset offered to help pick up controls. The day was hot, the smoke had drifted in and all of the beginner and novice controls had been picked up. We decided to go home and come back another day for the remaining controls. Thanks, David, but we didn't want you to do what we had chosen not to help with ourselves. And, unlike you, we didn't turn in the second best time on the Intermediate Course.
The Hidden Springs Map is much improved over last year due in large part to contour data provided to us by Barry Semple at RiverRidge Engineering and permission for use of their property by Lance and Robin Teel. Thanks to Barry Semple and the Teels. And a special note of gratitude goes to Bill Leahy, came out on crutches just to say hello and give his moral support. We wish you a speedy recovery from your basketball mishap.
Sunday, October 7 Sergey Velichko and John Murray will direct our inaugural Bogus Basin Meet. If you enjoy a new map, don't miss this meet.
David Murray
John Murray
Meet Directors
Kerry, Doug, David Bergset and Ian with their smiles and duct tape debris
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