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Topic created by skolins on Thu Jun 27, 2019 at 10:23 pm
No sprint on July 4th, so our next sprint will be on July 10th at Schuykill Center. Course notes are below.
We will have two courses that only overlap at the first control, so you will get to experience two different parts of the park. Hope to see you there!
Sprint 1: 2.3km 60m climb 13 controls
Sprint 2: 2.3km 90m climb 16 controls
Parking, registration, start, and finish will all be in the main parking lot of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education next to the visitor’s center.
Starts from 5-7PM, with control pickup starting at 7:30.
Important Course Notes:
Course 2 will enter some small fenced areas. Gates to enter and exit these areas are marked on the map. YOU MUST CLOSE ALL GATES BEHIND YOU. Failure to do so is grounds for disqualification. Please help us maintain our relationship with the park and the areas they are trying to protect!
The line from the last control (control #16/86) to the finish on course 2 is in a busy area on the map and hard to see, but the control and the finish are clear (and the finish is in sight of registration, so once you reach 16 you will know where to go next)!
From start, the both courses go east down the north side of the park entrance road to get to control 1.
Other Notes About the Courses and Terrain:
Map Scale: 1:5000.
Contours: 5m
The map was made using woods orienteering standards, not sprint standards. Therefore, we will use woods orienteering rules – the only OB areas will be marked in purple on the map. The only exception to this rule is do not try to climb any fences marked uncrossable! The courses will cross the dirt road from the park entrance to the parking lot – be careful crossing the road.
I would recommend long pants and tick protection. Depending on the recent mowing patterns there will be some high grass along some of the trails. Overall the woods and fields are very green and thorny. In general, I would not recommend taking any off-trail ‘short-cuts’ except through white woods, and even then expect some low brush and stickers. The courses are designed with this in mind and should give you some interesting route-choices based on the geometry of the dense trail network. I did some vegetation updates in areas important to the courses, so if there is a reasonable route choice through white woods then the route should be passable.
Because of the desire to run around thick green areas, the running distance for both courses will be a bit longer than the measured distance. The park is also hillier than many of our other sprint venues, so the climb is a little bit bigger than many of the other sprints. Be sure to leave yourself enough time to do both courses – control pickup will begin at 7:30.
