Five Rivers Environmental Center
We had a beautiful, sunny day for a change for our first event of the
Fall season. The temperature was warm, but not too warm for
running. The Five Rivers Environmental Center was obviously a great
place to be, judging by the many other folks who chose to come there,
even though they didn't orienteer (but several did ask us what we
were doing, and seemed interested for the future). Because the map is
old, in black & white, not too detailed, and fairly small, it's
not possible to set a super-challenging course there; but it's such
a nice spot that it makes a great beginner-through-intermediate
location, and advanced orienteers can just try to run faster.
A good number of folks turned up to give it a try, including
several newcomers along with the usual more fervent "O"
devotees. Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. There was
one control placed a bit too far out along the trail, and the map's
imprecision slowed a couple folks a bit. But despite all problems,
everyone got through their course, and some were quite surprised by
how quickly they completed them.
The last couple times we've done a Meet here, the map has been
modified and updated to show newly found or changed features. And
there's even a whole newer section to the northeast that isn't
on the map at all. If someone were looking for a chance to hone his or
her mapping skills, this would be a great place to do it. In the
meantime, we'll just have to make do with what we've got, and
simply go out and have fun!
Meet Director/Map Updater/Course Setter: Sue Hawkes-Teeter
Thanks to Anita Snachez of Five Rivers for her help in
arrangements. And thanks to Glen Tryson and Phil H-T for picking up
controls.
Grafton Lakes State Park
About 55 people came to Grafton Lakes State Park to venture out into
the woods on a nice Fall day (partly sunny and in the mid 50's).
For a "local" meet, we had quite a broad geography
represented with folks coming from Plattsburgh, New Paltz,
Poughkeepsie, Utica, and Finland! (currently residing in Michigan and
visiting in the area).
Rather than conventional courses, eighteen controls were set out
for a Score-O using Western Massachusetts Rules (find any 7, 11, 15 or
all 18). People seemed to enjoy this format, although it was a bit
confusing for some of those newer to orienteering. It was also easier
on the course setter since fewer controls had to be placed and picked
up. There was a little extra challenge for the course setter (and
some anxiety) since small game and turkey were in season and hunting
is allowed in parts of the park. Fortunately no unpleasant
hunter-orienteer encounters occurred.
Grafton Lakes S.P. Reps.: Bea Peterson and Tom Conklin
Set-up and Registration: John Beatty, Janet Tryson
Results Posting: Robert Tryson
Control Pick-up: Eric Hamilton, Tom Temple, Rob and Rita Reed, Greg, Rob, and Janet Tryson
Clean Up: Sue and Phil Hawkes-Teeter, Janet Tryson
Course Setter, Start, Finish, Results: Glen Tryson
Meet Directors: Glen and Janet Tryson
The Park personnel were very helpful, providing us with hot water
and even a nearby Port-a-potty. Thanks to them and all the others who
helped out.
EMPO's First MtBike-O at Thacher
Park
EMPO held it's first (and so far only) MtBike-O at Thacher Park on
Saturday, October 25th. Unfortunately it was a rotten day, with rain
starting up the night before and continuing on until about the time we
were scheduled to close registration (1 PM). As the result of a phone
call the night before from two younger EMPO members who wanted to
attend but had an exam on Saturday which didn't get out until 12:45, I
had already agreed to keep things going until at least 2 PM. However,
after a certain amount of planning, a couple hours or so of flag
hanging, and eventually 4 hours of hanging around waiting for people
to show up and register, I had a grand total of 5 entries.
Fortunately I did get some company for much of my lonely vigil, as
club Secretary John Beatty showed up, even though he wasn't going to
bike the course. At one point he had asked me if he could just run it,
or parts of it, for exercise, and I had discouraged him, out of
concern for bikers/runners trying to be in the same place at the same
time on the trails, which can be narrow and steep. As it turned out,
this was a ludicrous concern, but you have to plan for success, not
failure, or you fail from the start. So, John came by to help out with
setup and registration on his way top go fishing, and ended up staying
for about three hours, as we chatted about this, that, and everything
else.
I had originally figured that we would only get a few EMPO folks
out, but that the bulk of the attendees would be from the
Mohawk-Hudson Wheelmen bike club, which I had gotten at least
marginally involved. The whole idea for the event had originally come
out of their contacting another EMPO member, Eric Hamilton, about
setting up a MtBike-O at a large scale event of theirs planned for
1999. I thought this might be a good entrée into getting a few
of these folks exposed to the real fun of orienteering, plus I thought
we needed some experience in this relatively new O discipline before
we tried a large scale event, so I set up the meet at Thacher
Park.
I had quite a few bike folks say it sounded interesting, and they
would try to be there, but I guess nobody thought it sounded
interesting enough to brave a steady rain and fairly cold
temperatures. In the end, exactly 0 people came from the bike
club. This is somewhat in contrast to reports I have read from
elsewhere, most recently Australia, where the turnout has tended to be
about 2/3 bike people, 1/3 O people. Maybe it was my publicity (which
was actually at its highest level ever). Maybe it was...well, I guess
I just have to say it must have been the weather. But I hadn't figured
the Mountain Bikers to be such weenies.
All that aside, I think the few O folks who showed up actually had
a good time, which goes a long way towards making me feel like I
didn't completely waste my efforts. After John and I had hung out for
an hour or so, Eric showed up, followed shortly by the first of his
Clifton Park XC skiing proteges, Tom Temple. Eric has done a lot for
O, XC, and the combination of the two, Ski-O, in his neck of the
woods, and he nudged some of his young charges out to the event. After
much futzing with gear, deciding upon appropriate clothing, and
generally chatting about this and that, they headed out on the Long
course (15k), about 10 minutes apart.
By now John had more than done his duty, and he decided to venture
on to try some fly casting in the Foxenkill, which flows right by our
house. I offered our backyard, but he was going a bit further
downstream (probably a good move; too many overhanging trees). Shortly
thereafter Scott Pleban showed, (he had also called the day before to
make sure it was still on). Scott is the US Ski-O Champ for the last
several years, and someone I see fairly regularly at various events,
as he lives up in Old Forge and tends to get to some of the same
events we do (though we have yet to emulate his periodic trips to
Europe for the major parts of the Ski-O season there; he does this
truly on a shoestring budget, and I have a lot of respect for his
commitment, and for his physical strength!). Not only did he take
awhile to get ready, Scott actually wanted to spend awhile warming up
before setting out on the course, so he road up and down the park road
for 15 minutes or so before getting an official start, taking it as
much to the letter of my "rules" as possible. He saw this
right from the start as a Ski-O training opportunity, and that's
pretty much how I had set it up.
I'm not aware of any USOF (or IOF) rules on how one should conduct
a MtBike-O. About all I could find was a Web site with material on a
British variant called Trail-Quest. This appeared to be something more
like Rogaine-on-a-Bike than orienteering (maybe a good, or even a
better, idea, but it wouldn't fit in our park); but from that and one
or two other things I got the idea that the distances ought to be
around 15k for the Long, and less than that (10k?)for Medium and (5k?)
Short courses. Happily, this fit pretty well with some Ski-O courses I
had set on the same map a few years before, and I figured the route
choice decisions should work in much the same way. At the same time, I
also figured that there needed to be rules about what you could do
with your bike or without it, and there I just copied the Ski-O rule:
your bike must stay with you, whether you're on it or not. This was
reinforced by the Park's prohibition against riding off the
trails. Thus, you could bushwhack, but you had to push/carry/drag your
bike rather than ride it whenever you chose to venture into the
woods. For various reasons having to do with the way trails were (and
weren't) shown on the map, I modified this slightly to allow riding in
any Yellow (or shade of Yellow) area, but prohibit it in any White or
Green area (there were no Green/Yellow combinations on the map).
And you know, it all seemed to work. I had an amazing variety of
route choices taken, considering I had only 5 competitors. There were
3 different routes taken to #1. On the major "To Bushwhack or Not
to Bushwhack" choice, I had 3 go around and 2 go through. On what
I thought was kind of a "Dead Leg", which I really only
added to bring up the distance, I had a couple riders lose track of
their position and miss the turn. Everybody loved it, including the
slides and dumps on the tight switchback trail, the spray of mud on
themselves (and especially when the kids passed their leader and
sprayed mud on him!).
Scott felt it was great Ski-O training. And in fact, the folks who
came all turned out to be Ski-O people. Does this make MtBike-O a
sub-genre of a sub-genre? Could be. Do we try to change this, and do
what I had intended, which is interest cyclists in "real"
orienteering; or do we celebrate this opportunity for Ski-O without
snow, and maybe broaden orienteering's ultimate future? I don't have
the answer, but I'm interested in the discussion. I know Scott and
some others would love a summer MtBike-O series across New York next
year (one or two days from each club). Personally, I think it fits
quite nicely as a summer O alternative, and I may try our next MtBike
event then. But before anyone takes my opinion on anything, I should
probably make a few disclaimers: I don't own a mountain bike; I'm a
"roadie" from way back before I ever orienteered; but I came
to running-orienteering via Ski-orienteering, so I'm pretty weird
anyway. Or so my family tells me.
Thanks to Mike Krish and Nancy Engel of Thacher Park for their help
in making arrangements for this event!