By Scott Aster, Event Director & Course Setter
Sunny but cool conditions greeted the folk who came to this year's volunteer appreciation event at Bon Tempe reservoir. The ground was a little muddy, but not too bad, though the recent rains did soften the ground considerably, and every little creek had water in it.
People seemed to have a good time, hunting for the controls on this less than perfect map, though the Hillside of Death did claim a few casualties, based on feedback from those who weren't able to complete their courses.
The outstanding performance of the day definitely belongs to George Minarik, who has had an almost miraculously quick recovery from last year's heart attack, this year's transplant, and subsequent rehabilitation. Not only did George complete his course, he had the fastest time! Welcome back to orienteering George!
Designing courses at Bon Tempe is more of a challenge than on most of our maps. The forty-foot contours and (in many places) the changing vegetation pose many problems of fairness and level of challenge. To compensate for these factors, I emphasized route choice as much as possible, and tried to have decent nearby locations for participants to re-locate from if their direct route failed them. This helped, especially on control number four, which was on the Hillside of Death and was common to all three courses. Some people hit the control dead on, while many others bailed to the trail above the control and successfully attacked from there. In poorly mapped areas, I used major features where you just had to be fairly close and you would see the bag (number 9 on the Long course was a prime example of this). My chief failure came at the next to last control for all three courses. The control clue was "upper part of shallow reentrant". I hung this bag on the only decent-sized tree in the correct location, but hung it on the downhill side of the trunk. This hid the bag from people looking down from the top of the reentrant (which was the optimal route to the control). Some people lost time here, looking for the bag, which should not have happened. The control should have been visible from the top of the reentrant, my apologies!
After their courses, people feasted on chocolates, candy canes, and sparkling cider (not enough — we ran out both days), along with some home-baked cookies and cake. Special thanks go to Cornelia Coolen, Marie-Josée Parayre, and Mikkel Conradi for bringing additional goodies, all of which were almost too quickly consumed! Reserving the shelter worked very well even with the good weather. It provided a nice focal point for people to hang around both before and after their courses, and would have been critical had the weather been soggy!
I wish to thank Joseph Doetsch, Steve Gregg, Theo Verhoeven, and Misha Kreslavsky, for a very rapid control pickup, and to everyone for coming out to enjoy an always fun weekend at Bon Tempe. I had a great time designing the courses and chatting with everyone during the two days.
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