Mason Neck

Course results can be seen below. Splits are available on Attackpoint or Winsplits.
To enter your routes and see how others went, head to RouteGadget.

Flickr photo album for this event is here.

Happy New Year to QOC family and friends! On Sunday, 5 January we had a fantastic day in the woods of Mason Neck Sate Park. The weather was beautiful for much of the day, despite a foreboding forecast. After a chilly start, we enjoyed some sunshine and temps that rose to mid-30s, a great way to kick off the calendar year. We had 186 starts on Sunday that included 235 participants. Thanks to all who braved the cold to enjoy some post-holiday cheer with us, and especially for the Scouting, NJROTC, and other groups. It was also a pleasure to meet so many new (or new to QOC) orienteers throughout the day. Welcome!
Thanks to Rob Field who designed and set a full set of seven courses in the beautiful and mostly open woods at Mason Neck. We heard many good things from returning runners and walkers about the courses over the relatively flat terrain and potentially tricky reentrants and marshy areas. My deep gratitude goes out to all of our volunteers for the preparation and execution of a successful event: Harry Jones, Massey Bartolini, Chloe Ritter, Iva Zicha, and Paul Hession greeted everyone with warm smiles at check-in, ensuring a smooth process for map hand-out; Tom O’Donnell and Scott Sharp provided beginner and refresher training to so many new and returning orienteers; Bill Wright, Ed Joseph, John Organek, Keg Good, Stephen Pepe, Jenny Kuenz, and Howie Weinstein all ventured back into the woods to pick up the controls; Matt Knight was super helpful with equipment pack-up and clean-up of our event site and John Cummings was my back-up for everything, and helped keep us all on track after his course.
Many thanks go out to Matt Smith and Dennis Doherty for all the coordination, collaboration, reservations, reviews, and permitting with Mason Neck and VA State Parks that enabled a smooth event. As always, thank you to the e-punch team of Amy Louden and Valerie Meyer for their expertise, dedication and patience. An extra shout out to Keg Good for her partnership with Rob as course consultant. Big mahalo to Greg Lennon for his time and effort in maintaining, reviewing and updating the website along with running the event registration and memberships. Thanks also to Kathleen Lennon for all the great publicity and her work on the socials and to Sharmagh Yepremian for organizing a great post-event meet up at Casa Tequila in Lorton. Lastly, thank you to Sid Sachs for tracking and computing the points system after every event including this one.
I look forward to seeing you in the woods in 2025.
- John Baker, Event Director