October 23, 2016

Community School Orienteering Event

The Community School Wilderness Navigation class is hosting an orienteering event at Adam's Gulch trailhead on November 6th at 10am. The format of the race is score-O with a beginner and an advanced course. The course can be run in either teams or individually.

Who: Orienteering beginners to experts
When: November 6th at 10am
Where: Adam's Gulch Trailhead, Ketchum
Cost: $5 per person 
Registration: At trailhead from 9:15 - 9:45am 
 

October 11, 2016

Return to the Maze 10/22/16



Since the results were so positive last year we decided to try it one more time. Prepare to be aMAZEd Saturday October 22nd. There will be two course options depending on how fast you think you are. Choose wisely, the penalty for being late is a killer…

We have reserved the group area for CTOC. Enter at the main gate and tell them you are with CTOC and they will let you through. You only need to pay at the CTOC registration table in the group area.  

We only have a two hour time block reserved so we will need to run things on time. It will be a busy Saturday night and the parking lot really fills up so plan on plenty of time to get parked and into the event. Bringing a pre-completed CTOC event registration form will really help us speed things up for you. Also please check the event rates and bring exact change. Note that this is a special event at a venue with admission charges. This event is not free to CTOC members but they do get a reduced rate. If you compete as a group you can save on the map fee but you will still need to pay the entrance fee individually.


Bring a headlamp or flashlight, it is dark in the maze. Be careful and watch your footing, there are corn stalks and corn cobs to stumble on. Since this is a public venue there will be no vampires, we wouldn’t want CTOC members attacking unsuspecting bystanders. Don’t forget your watch; this is a score format. If you are back past the deadline you will lose massive points.

Date:  Saturday, October 22
Location:  Linder Farms (7165 S. Linder Rd – between Lake Hazel & Columbia)
Formats:  
Score, with two course options
Starts:  7:15pm - 7:45pm
Time Limit: One Hour
Penalty: 10 points per minute

Cost:  Maps $5 junior or $10 adult for non-members (members free), plus
Admission $4 under 12, $6 over 12 (non-members & members)

Don’t forget your headlamp and watch! 




 

October 4, 2016

Upper Dry Creek Results--October 2, 2016


Jerry Stewart plans his next leg from Intermediate Control #6
 Thanks to Melanie Wright and Michael Bading for helping with control pickup. It's a big mountain. It would have been a very long day without their help. And special thanks to Jeff Black for making the extra effort to find the thumb compass left behind by the meet director while setting controls.


Fifteen orienteers tackled the brush and steep slopes. There was one mishap resulting in an injury when Mike Teller slipped on the treacherous mat of Ponderosa Pine needles that covers many areas of the mountain. After a night's rest and an undisclosed quantity of  medication Mike reported that he is well on his way to a full recovery. We're relieved, not as much as Mike to be sure, but still quite relieved. It can be dangerous out there on steep slopes with unstable footing, especially while dividing attention between navigation and foot placement.

Doug LaMott punched Advanced #4.
Advanced Control #10 deserves a comment for two reasons. First, as far as the meet director knows, it is the only grave on any of our CTOC maps. Fred is buried there. We know this because in a remote location at the foot a cliff in the bottom of a gully there is a seven meter long 1.5 meter high stone wall supporting a terrace bearing a cut and polished stone slab engraved with Fred's name and dates of birth and death. If recollection is correct, Fred was born in 1990 and died in 2007. Some of us thought the effort and expense suggested that Fred was a person. Others speculated that Fred was a dog. If he was a dog, he was among the most loved and honored of dogs.

Michael Bading celebrating on his
to a second-place Advanced finish
The second reason Control #10 is noteworthy: Anton and Sam found it. That feat of navigation is not notable in itself. All of the five orienteers who attempted the Advanced Course completed it including Control #10. What makes Anton and Sam's navigation notable is their addition of Control #10 to the Intermediate Course. After departing Intermediate Control #6 on a 100 meter leg to Control #7 they bypassed #7 by 300 meters and found Advanced #10, mistaking it for Intermediate #7. You might think that their misbegotten adventure would have resulted in a big fat DQ. However, the meet director believes they deserve extra credit for finding #10 and running a significantly longer course than Melanie Wright, who finished a miserable 17 minutes behind them in spite of her cutting the course short by following the map. Melanie, sometimes doing the right thing just doesn't pay off. Maybe someday Anton and Sam will go back out there and find #7, mitigating the grief likely to befall a meet director who so generously, loosely and perniciously "interprets" the rules.

As you read the results, please be advised that Jeff Black is the actual winner of the Advanced competition due to quality points added as a reward for finding the meet director's lost compass.




We were pleased to welcome three foreign students. It was a pleasure to meet Alexis. He's a 17-year-old French student and experienced orienteer studying at Timberline High School this academic year. Anton currently visits us from Moscow (That's Russia, not northern Idaho.). He's studying at Riverstone. We heard Russian as he and Sergey struck up a conversation. Anton tells us that orienteering in Russia sometimes has required him to scare away the wolves. The best we could give him on Sunday was a couple of deer. Samuel Gontharet, Anton's partner on the Intermediate course, is another French student joining us with the Riverstone contingent.

Sergey's winning advanced course appears below for your study and edification.

Please join us for Halloween fun presented by Melanie Schuster and Greg Davidson in the corn maze on Saturday, October 22.

John Murray
Meet Director