Despite competing holiday plans, a respectable number of QOC members and others turned out for QOC's first ever event at Cunningham Falls State Park, braving a radically different terrain from any other QOC map, unseasonable heat, and even more wildlife than we typically encounter on QOC maps - at least two people saw a black bear on course. Times were long, partly due to the physical nature of the terrain even if temperatures had been cool, and perceptions of the technical orienteering challenges the courses presented varied greatly with the range of orienteering experience in the backgrounds of the perceivers - but people generally seemed to come out of the woods tired but in good humor, so I'll chalk this one up as a generally successful first outing. Here's to many more in years to come.
This wouldn't, of course, have been possible without the help of many volunteers. Michael Wood and Daniel Heimgartner handled the setup while I was hanging controls on Sunday morning. Daniel then mostly manned registration, while Michael plus Allison Brown (supervised by Inara Granovskiy) handled e-punching duty throughout the day. Control pickup was ably handled by Charles Carrick, Nadim Ahmed, Eugene Tsypnyatov, Sam Listwak, and a visiting from DVOA/SVO Samuel Kolins. And let us not forget to be thankful to Michael Newman, who approached the park and negotiated our permission to hold the event at all.
Course results can be seen below as well as on Attackpoint or Winsplits. To enter your routes and see how others went, head to RouteGadget.
Jon Torrance, Event Director/Course Setter
