Seneca Creek

First, a few general comments about the map and park. The overall terrain is typical ridge and valley terrain with some scattered rock outcroppings. However, the park has several obstacles that influence course design: Seneca Creek, a lake and Great Seneca Highway. In addition, the park has multiple trail systems, roads, parking lots and a disk golf course. I would not consider this area to be highly technical or physical terrain, so efficiently executing your course will be a matter of route choice. Since the courses utilize sections of the park that have both multiple trail and roads present, this meet would provide a good opportunity for runners to try a more advanced course than they usually run. The courses were designed with subtle route choice options in mind and placed in portions of the park to enhance running speed. So for the competitive orienteers, small hesitations and route choices could determine finishing order.
Even at this time of the year while most of the nasty vegetation is suppressed, there still is considerable vegetation that will slow you down and it tends to be more extensive than what is mapped. Respect the Green. I have designed the courses to utilize the more open portions of the park, however when the vegetation comes into play there are clear trails through the worst offending areas and route choice options around others. Several of the courses will transverse Great Seneca Highway, either over or under, these crossings are indicate on the map. Several of the courses have control locations in the disc golf course, if the weather is nice there will be players on the course, watch out for flying discs. On some of the courses you will be required to cross some small streams. If we get any major rainfall prior to the meet, then these streams will be carrying more water than usual and you can expect to get your feet wet, but they still will be crossable. Under no circumstances on any course will you be required to cross Seneca Creek. In addition, if the weather stays dry the low lying marshy areas will be dry as well, otherwise, the marshy areas will be wet and annoying. I have used rootstocks as control location on several courses, the ones that I used will be large (1.0 m or greater), have dirt on their roots and be visible at running speed. There are a lot of older rootstocks mapped that have significantly decayed and should not be used for navigation purposes.
Now about the park. During the pandemic the park has seen greatly increased visitor numbers, if the weather is nice expect this to the case. Expect to encounter others, hikers, mountain bikers, etc. on the trails and along the roads. The courses are designed to avoid the most popular portion of the park, but there will still be others out there. Most courses will have park road crossings, be careful, look for cars and bicyclists.
There is no entrance fee charged at this time of the year.

Course specifics. There will be a separate Start/Finish for the White and Yellow courses from all the other courses. Map scale is 1:10,000 with 5m contours.
On the Yellow course, the first and last control is the same (a bridge), you will be required to punch that control twice. You will have controls in the Disc Golf course.
On the Orange course, your first leg will be a run along the road that leads to the parking lot used for this meet, be careful. You will have controls in the Disc Golf course.
On the Beige course, you will go through the Disc Golf course.
On the Brown course, you will go through the Disc Golf course.
On the Green course, depending on route choice you may go through the Disc Golf course.
On the Red course, depending on route choice you may go through the Disc Golf course.
On the Blue course, depending on route choice you may go through the Disc Golf course. This is the only course that crosses Riffle Ford Road (twice) which can have relatively high speed traffic, please be careful and look before crossing. Also, be careful if running along this road, fortunately, the road has wide shoulders at that point. There is one leg with a route choice that may tempt you to cross Seneca Creek as a route choice, but don’t, since the route choice not involving crossing the creek is perfectly acceptable. Finally, there is a trail run through the nastiest portion of the green vegetation - use it.

Have fun and enjoy.