The policies posted here have been adopted by the BAOC Board of Directors (current board members are listed in Contacts).
BAOC Policies on Setting Brown Courses
Adopted Oct. 2024
Local Brown Course Physical Difficulty
Always provide a physically easier Brown course at local events in rugged terrain. This should be 1/2 to 2/3 of the national standard Brown course length and an even lower fraction of the climb. (Climb is the enemy of older legs.) It can be called a “Silver” course.
Rationale: Much of the Bay Area terrain is physically demanding enough to create problems with DNFs and extremely long times on Brown courses. To improve the experience for older orienteers and developing orienteers trying their first few advanced navigation courses, this policy reduces the physical demand while retaining, as much as possible, fully advanced navigation.
This policy is meant to be easy for course setters to implement at our local events, and might or might not involve adding an additional course. For suggestions, see Reducing the Physical Difficulty of Brown Courses. When both Brown and Silver courses are offered, many of the suggestions in that document ought to be considered for the longer Brown course as well as the shorter Silver.
National Brown Course Physical Difficulty
For the longer (Classic, Long, and Middle-distance) national (NRE) events hosted by BAOC, split the Brown course into two courses (i.e., Brown-X and Brown-Y according to section A.39 of the Rules for Orienteering USA Sanctioned Events (PDF copy), regardless of the number of registrants on Brown. This will provide a physically easier Brown-Y at our national events. Our policy does not require splitting Brown for the shorter Sprint-distance events in urban settings. Nevertheless, a Sprint course setter might prefer to split Brown to preserve the Sprint character for older Brown-course orienteers.