Prince William Forest Park

High winds on Sunday and the forecast that they would continue, not to mention the park rangers' safety concerns, forced the cancellation of that day's courses (perhaps we'll see them next season) but we - juniors, QOC members and visitors from afar - still got in a good day of training on Saturday and a challenging night-O. Somewhat more challenging than necessary, it seems, though the 5 minutes or so of whiteout while just about everyone was out on course must have been responsible for some portion of people's difficulties on course. It was my first set of night-O courses and the results suggest, despite the contribution from the snow squall, I should probably dial back the difficulty of the intermediate course somewhat and offer a shorter advanced course than the shortest that was available on Saturday if and when I set courses for another such event. Nevertheless, everyone made it out of the woods and back to the finish no later than a minute of so after the stated course closure time - well done, all!

Thanks to Boris Granovskiy, for organizing the junior training, and to his several assistants in keeping it on an even keel on Saturday. Thanks to Thierry Gueorgiou and Johan Hamelius, our remote guest course setters for the training exercises both juniors and adults ran on Saturday afternoon. Specially intense thanks to Florence Tan and Tom, Addie and Mei-An Nolan for rising to the significant challenge of feeding all the participants in the junior training camp. Amy Louden provided e-punch results for the night-O and Valerie Meyer showed up despite conditions on Sunday and provided the same service for the impromptu indoor ultra-sprint event with which we closed the junior training. John Baker and Daniel Heimgartner took care of registration for the night-O. Scott Sharp, denied actual courses in his first turn as event director, nevertheless had to deal with all the preparations for Sunday, with making the call to cancel, and with packing up to vacate the camp - better luck next time with the weather. And lastly, Victoria and Jon Campbell, John Organek, Keg Good and John Baker to date have picked up controls from the Sunday courses (with a few more left to retrieve that weren't easily accessible with some roads in the park closed by downed trees so that list may grow). Thank you all.

Jon Torrance

Next event: Feb 22, Patapsco/Hilton-Glen Artney area: A full set of classic courses PLUS an UltraLong (16+ km). The UltraLong requires pre-registration, which closes Friday Feb. 27 at midnight; event webpage here, registration link here.