By Scott Aster, Event Director
What a great weekend for orienteering! The first dry weekend of the new year, blessed with clear skies and cool temperatures, great for participants and work crew as well!
Saturday started out with temps in the 30's and frost covering everything, but warmed up quickly into the 50's by the time the start window opened. Sunday was about 10 degrees warmer, with both days filled with glorious sunshine.
Heidi Cusworth designed the courses, while husband Bill Cusworth updated the map and hung all the controls. The courses gave a fine tour of all the terrain the map has to offer—rolling oak-covered hillsides, open meadows, and dark, dense redwood forest. All three courses ventured onto the "Hillside of Death", but no casualties resulted, thanks no doubt to Bill's great mapping advances there.
While it was too early for wildflowers, the wildlife showed up with abandon, with more deer and turkey sightings than I can ever remember. With all the recent rain, the lakes were overflowing, while every small reentrant turned into a small creek, and flat areas became marshes.
The courses challenged competitors, resulting in some long finishing times and multiple DNFs, but all commented that the controls were well placed and most legs offered multiple route choices. This was a great event to start the year, and for participants to begin to tune up and get the rust out before the upcoming Cal-O-Fest this summer!
The event ran very smoothly, with really no issues at all. This wouldn't happen without the great help of the people who volunteered.
First of course, is the team of Heidi and Bill Cusworth. Heidi as the course setter, Bill as the mapper and the setter of all the controls. Bill also got our maps printed, using a firm in Santa Rosa that also printed our Spring Lake maps. The quality of the printing was great, and their pricing was very reasonable.
James Roney helped greatly with collecting equipment before the event, and finding us the company to print the maps.
Jeff Lanam provided the E-punch gear, and made sure I was up to snuff on how it all worked.
Sabrina Gonzales of the Water District was very helpful and accommodating with the permitting process, and even raised our daily participant limit when I asked her.
Lastly, an Event Director is always indebted and very grateful to those willing to go out at the end, and collect the controls on Sunday. Greg Khanlarov, Vicki Woolworth, Bill Cusworth, Steve Gregg, and Tapio Karras made life easy for me, and the last of us were able to leave the park by 3 PM.
Thanks to everyone for a successful event!
RouteGadget