June 28th saw the inaugural use of the new Gold Rush Hills map. While this map more-or-less covered the same area as the previous Bear Run map, the use of a real basemap and the services of world-class mapper made for a night and day difference in quality.
After the heat nearly killed off a large proportion of the club members in July 2007, the annual Idaho City meet was moved up a month to June. The strategy worked -- although Saturday was quite toasty for June, it stayed quite pleasant for most of the day. And, luckily, the sheep herd that had been passing through earlier in the week had made it north of the competition area by Saturday.
The course itself turned out to be a 16-control score course, with all controls worth 10 points, and a 10 point per minute overtime penalty in the competitive class. Surprisingly, nobody actually went over the 2-hour time limit.
As the all-powerful meet director, I divided up the results into two sections: individuals who seemed to be going for speed (the "Running Raving Nutters") and those individuals and families (those "Enjoying the Woods") who were traveling at a more leisurely pace.
In the Nutters division, Lee Scott had a runaway victory, finishing a full 20 minutes ahead of Jeff Black, who in turn finished over 20 minutes ahead of Ole Bergset. Rounding out the finishers who managed to bag all 16 controls was Bill Leahy, who still finished with well over five minutes to spare. Bill Pilcher bagged nearly every control, and finished in a very respectable time. Karin Didisse (she of the ice-covered wastes of McCall) decided a round dozen was more than sufficient when running in the heat. And, rounding out the Nutters, Dave "Seconds Count" Bergset won the coveted Use-as-much-clock-as-you-can prize by finishing with five seconds to spare.
| Running Raving Nutters Division | time | controls |
| Lee Scott | 62:49:00 | 16 |
| Jeff Black | 82:26:00 | 16 |
| Ole Bergset | 105:25:00 | 16 |
| Bill Leahy | 113:22:00 | 16 |
| Bill Pilcher | 109:05:00 | 15 |
| Karin Didisse | 101:20:00 | 12 |
| David Bergset | 119:55:00 | 11 |
The Enjoying the Woods division isn't about competition, so take the following table as a list of results, not placement. Dondi Black made sure she didn't get any advice from the meet director this year (see last year's meet report for why), and did a nice job bagging 8 controls in a bit over an hour and a half. The Ritzenthaler's started and finished multiple times, so I never really figured out their time or their number of controls. Mea Culpa. The fact that they actually came up and orienteered while playing host to various viruses was still an impressive accomplishment. Brad Lowe and his anonymous friend (c'mon Brad, she's got to have a name) also bagged 8 controls in a most challenging area. The Hall Family made their first foray out of the foothill and park maps and into the woods (and for those of you who have yet to orienteer in the woods, it's quite a jump from open land) managing to bag seven controls, and finish without screaming "never again!" (at least, not within my hearing).
| Enjoying the Woods Division | time | controls |
| Dondi Black | 91:26 | 8 |
| Brad Lowe + 1 | 150:10 | 8 |
| Hall Family | 145:00 | 7 |
| Ritzenthaler Family | ~51:00 | ? |
The after-meet festivities were marred by Trudy's still not having re-opened after their fire this winter. The owner's promised me that they would be open by the time of the next meet (one would hope, as this is pretty much the only place worth eating at in Idaho City).
All-in-all, a most enjoyable day of orienteering. Thanks to everyone who showed up, and a special thanks to those who hung around until the end and helped pick up controls!
Andy
Karin Didisse and Dave Ritzenthaler ask Kayla for directions to the next control
Karin wonders how far she'd roll down the hill if she tripped... 
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