Washington crossing courses
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Topic created by johncampbell on Sun Jun 16, 2013 at 10:12 pmThank-you to all those would volunteered for this event. I understand the desire to use the maps from last Falls event which were not used. That said, the vegetation difference between the Fall and full vegetation that existed today, in my opinion meant that the courses were significantly diminished and impacted the placement of controls. The green course control number 12 ended up being a total bingo control especially as i was the first person on the course. i have been orienteering many years and went through all the relocation techniques and attacked the control location from many angles. I did find what I believe was the correct feature. After 20 minutes I just gave up frustrated. My daughter Alison also had a hard time finding it and said she saw the same feature I explained and she was convinced it was located in the wrong place. No doubt for later starters there were some elephantbtrails. This post is not intended as a gripe, but a lesson for the future. It was good to be out in the woods. As advice for new course planners care needs to be given to consider control placement with full vegetation to eliminate the possibility of bingo controls. This is especially true when you check courses at a time with little vegetation.
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Reply by KathleenG on Mon Jun 17, 2013 at 9:37 pmYeah, #12 was tough. I attacked it numerous times, from a variety of not-so-good attack points. Followed one ditch down to its end and found a perfect clear place for a control, but no control. Yes, there were lots of "elephant trails" - but they all withered away to nothing (lots of despairing elephants, all lost in the brambles . . . )The lesson for me, at least, is to pay very, very close attention to staying in contact with the map in lush summer vegetation conditions. Don't count on the elephants, they could be just as confounded as me.
