Patuxent

These notes reflect a complete update based on site surveys and control vetting.

The map continues to hold up pretty well. As a consequence of holding this event in early fall, indistinct trails may have some leaves covering portions – and – visibility will be less than we might enjoy in a late fall or early winter event. Creeks often have sheer, deep sides of about 3 – 5 feet. They're not deep enough to require a contour, but they are deep enough to warrant crossing caution. As usual, linear marshes and gullies may have water present depending on recent rainfall.

Site Comments:
These points are likely to be of interest for most participants.

• Water Levels. The control sites were streamered shortly after the recent week of rain, so as one might expect, every low point was filled to the brim with water and the ground was saturated. After this week of relatively dry weather, and observed during the final portion of site vetting, most park-wide water concerns have abated. However, advanced course runners should expect to get their feet wet.
• Beaver Activity. Green, Red and Blue courses pass through the Western portion of the park. As you enter wet areas, and areas adjacent to water features, please be alert for beaver activity, especially for the relatively sharp stumps of small trees. The activity is pretty fresh, and one beaver was observed during course vetting.
• Indistinct Trails. The map has aged pretty well, but do not assume an indistinct trail continues very far beyond any point where you are confident you're on it. This will be particularly relevant for Orange and Contours-Only runners since those courses use much of the same terrain.
• Deadfalls. Recent weather has not been kind to many of the trees near trails in the park. Several fresh deadfalls were observed during course vetting, many across trails. None seemed sufficiently significant to really slow anyone down, but they are present, and should not be surprises.
• Unmapped Tree Stand. Orange, Brown, Red, and Blue courses use the foot of a tree stand in the south portion of the park. During course vetting, another tree stand (unmapped) was found relatively close to the one used as a control. Both are older wooden structures that look like ladder rungs nailed to the trees.
• Other Orienteering Control Bags. Bob Turbyfill's Zero-to-Orange Instructional Course is planned for this weekend. The control bags used for that course have manual control punches. The control bags used for the QOC event have electronic punch boxes and no manual control punches. There should be minimal opportunity for confusion, but don't be surprised by the appearance of other controls in the park.
• Water Controls. Some courses may seem to have a shortage of refreshment points / water controls based solely on control descriptions. However, four water sites have been placed at areas where relatively high orienteer traffic is expected, so look for those on your maps.

Classic Course Comments:
White should be a straight forward course, giving our beginners an interesting route to follow and allowing them to get comfortable with Orienteering. See notes for Yellow below.

Yellow provides a few more route choices, but remains pretty straight forward. Yellow is also sufficiently different from the White course that early White finishers might want to give it try.

Orange is intended to provide opportunities for route planning, collecting features, as well as catching features to help keep everyone mostly on track. Unless really aggressive, most Orange runners should be able to use bridges for stream and large marsh crossings. See site notes regarding indistinct trails. All Orange controls are located south of Croom Airport Road, the main road entering the park from the west. See Contours-Only comments below.

The Advanced courses try to use as much of the park as feasible.

Contours-Only Course Comments:
The Contours-Only courses are derived from the Maryland State LIDAR site based on 2014 LIDAR collections. Although a bit noisy, the automatically developed contours matched the existing map pretty well – they were certainly close enough that I had no qualms about using them for training courses at this event.

My goal was to enable those for whom Pax River Park is old hat to give it a try in a new light.

Due to the large stream and marsh features in the contours-only area, I added the three bridges with stream snippets most likely to be useful for these courses, especially for those orienteers whose first instinct is to not plunge headlong into the first marsh that presents itself along the course.

Within each control circle I've reviewed the available data and attempted to accurately portray the features within and near the circle.

Make no mistake: these are contours-only maps, not terrain feature, not trail, not vegetation, and not water feature maps. No kidding, contours-only.

The Contours-Only courses use much of the Orange course terrain and some of its controls, so Orange participants might want to consider trying one of the contours-only courses to get a different perspective on that part of the park.

Bragging rights go to those who can find the contour differences between the older map and the contours-only. There are a few, but their impact should be minimal.