Discussion: WOC '93 Courses

Kseniya and I are going to do some training at Harriman State Park this week and we would like to run a couple of the courses from WOC 1993. We have the maps, but not the actual courses. Can someone help us out and scan in the courses (in particular, the middle final and the classic)?

I have the WOC women's and men's courses at Surebridge. - J-J probably has the other courses.

Training at Harriman can be frustrating when there are no controls hung. I'm often unsure that I've located the correct feature.

So I prefer to cross the Hudson and go further north, to Fahnestock, where there are permanent courses set up for the men's and women's 1986 World Cup races on the Moneyhole Mountain map. Very challenging.

If you insist on remaining at Harriman, there is a decent permanent course at Silvermine that you can order from HVO. But I don't think it has any resemblance to the WOC'93 courses.

Cool. I ran that race. Has the map held up since 86? Vegetation, trails etc.?

I haven't been at Moneyhole for several years. But as I recall, the map remains a work of art...all on 8-1/2x11. A few of the trails that were intermittant in '86 seem to have been relocated and run-in a bit more (mountain bikes?), and some of the light green seems to have spread a bit.

But the intricate contours, rocks, cliffs and water features are the main features of that map, and they endure without change.

upnorthguy, pretty much all of Harriman is much like it was in 1993. The mountain laurel may have spread slightly, but not much, and blueberries might be thicker and/or deeper in a good year, but otherwise, not much changes in Harriman. Awesome (and challenging!) terrain.

I have all of the WOC93 courses (I think) -- send me an email to remind me and I'll send you scans of whichever ones you want. (Ooh, do I have all of the sprint qualifier courses? Not certain.)

Hudson Valley vegetation doesn't change much, as Janet says, and that applies to both Fahnestock (where Moneyhole is) and Harriman. Except for the places in Harriman that have been affected by fire or bugs. Trails have changed somewhat. HVO now has Moneyhole in 0CAD, so they should be able to update the trails.

The WOC93 courses did exist in semipermanent form: the controls were taken down, but not the stands. We made the stands out of basically the cheapest lumber we could find, though, and it weathered pretty quickly. You might still be able to find the odd board or two at a few sites if you kicked around in the leaves. It would probably make sense to nail some small signs to trees out there to denote the control locations. But who should do that? US Team, probably. Wouldn't be a bad training exercise to nail up a few markers, and after a few people did such training, the courses would all be marked. Anybody want to donate some trim markers? Any team member want to volunteer to put up the first one? (Anybody know how to get park permission for this?)

Classic map at

http://www.orienteeringonline.net/photos/woc1993.j...

but the downside is that is has routes on...

Yeah, well I've always enjoyed examining those route choices in the terrain...made while running 6-1/2minute km's!

To supplement the Surebridge Classic map itself: the solid control circles and routes are the Men's Classic course (13475m/690m) won by Allan Mogensen (DEN) in 87:36 with Jörgen Mårtensson (SWE-dashed line) 31 seconds back. I believe it rained the whole time; a description of the event by one of the control observers is quite humorous.

The double-lined controls and routes are the Women's Classic course (8625m/410) won by Marita Skogum (SWE) in 62:27.

Incidentally distracted, would you mind telling us how you located that map at Orienteering Online? On my screen I don't see a seach function, and the Archives tab only brings up articles dating back to 2005

OH, I just read the control observers comments and I think those two clueless people he mentioned might have been Liisa Breton and me! This was my first year of orienteering and Liisa spoke very little English. We were quite a pair. Watching all those runners in the rain was a great way to be introduced to orienteering, that's for sure.

Spike mentioned it on his blog a while back:

http://okansas.blogspot.com/2007/04/thinking-about...

and I remembered thinking it looked pretty awesome terrain and most definitely worthy of a world champs race

I prefer the WOC maps to Moneyhole. Moneyhole has gotten greener, there are indeed several moved trails. We also need to check on the markers. The Silvermine map is completely outdated as a map and again, the markers need to be maintained.

I ran the men's classic two years ago with a Swiss friend. It was great fun. As long as one stays in touch with the map one can identify the control location fine. You just can't run for the bag.

It would be great to put small permanent markers on the WOC controls.

I was even thinking of doing a re-run. The course could be run on the 1:10,000 OCAD version, this makes the map legible for people who don't have hawk eyes. It could be part of the Highlander, right? Oh no, better not, maybe the course is a little bit hard for the last leg of a Highlander.

If you run the courses, you will find the remains controls stands used for WOC 93 at many control points. They were abandoned in the woods after the champs.

Well the 15th anniversary is next autumn.... Hint Hint HVO!

Only one control stand survived (sort of) on the Middle. I didn't see any but one, as I hung the strimmers past Sun.

Hill Sam and I ran a Green US champs course last fall and found several control stands, even could read the code numbers on them.

I was against the WOC 93 folks leaving the stands behind. I felt that it was littering. One of the argument that was used againt me was that Harriman was already a garbage dump; a bit more trash in the park would not matter....

Harriman a dump? Puhlease! It is pristine compared to a clean Ukrainian forest.

Admittedly, I'm not sure about the merits of leaving control stands behind, but made of wood, they definitely seem better than many things I've seen recently.

We never said it was a garbage dump. Not that I recall, anyway. But it didn't seem like leaving wood in the forest was much of a problem. The only real difference between the stands and what's there naturally is that the stands have straight edges. (Okay, the control codes do represent a little bit of plastic.)

Ukrainians definitely leave the wooden control stands behind after their courses.

Well, what's done is done.... Anyway those stands were built for pin punches, and had to take a lot of pounding as runners punched, sometimes quite victoriously, or angrily.

But with SI electronic punching and self-contained stands, is there any club in North America still constructing semi-permanent wooden stands in the forest? And then abandoning them there?

I know we here in the midwest value our new SI equipment too much to leave anything out there.

We used some of the leftover wooden stands, I think from WOC 93, at the first sprint series finals at Pawtuckaway in 2005. We did bring the stands back in, though. I think they became firewood at that point. JJ, is that right?

The things we used for the sprint finals weren't control stands, although they were WOC93 leftovers. The control stands had two uprights and a horizontal bar, with horizontal feet that were ballasted with four rocks. The boards were held together with small traingular pieces of plywood in the corners. Now that I think of it, there was also a piece of heavy wire that held the control, and the wire was left behind with the wood, although the controls and punches were removed.

The thngs used for the sprints consisted of a single square upright, with a piece of plywood on the bottom, and a couple of more pieces of plywood for bracing. These could be ballasted with a single rock. They were made for the relay, where the finish chute crossed a long stretch of parking lot at Lake Welch, and these were used to support the tapes since we couldn't drive stakes into the asphalt. And after having spent too long in the Bundschuhs' barn, I think they did end up as firewood.

The control stands for the World Cup at Pawtuckaway in 1992 were made from 2x4s and weighed a ton. Those were all disposed of years ago, I think, except for the ones that were built as drink tables with holes in the top to hold cups. Those were reused for WOC93 and I think are still around.

I dont recall who was guilty of the dump remark JJ but we were definitely on opposite sides of the fence on it. I recall it was many for leaving them and one against. Time has softened me so now I am not so against them.
I wonder what the consensus would be if it was going to be done today.
Take a look at this thread from the pre-o-net days.
I never had a chance. Search for "control stands"
http://www2.aos.princeton.edu/rdslater/orienteerin...

While I probably would have taken Bernie's point of view in 1993, I must admit I have no encountered any control stand debris from WOC on any of the maps. The trash problem at Harriman is mostly along the roads and the trails. Although sometimes I had to wonder how a beer bottle or aluminum can found its way deep into Surebridge when I set courses there last spring.

What I really would like is to have markers on the classic, maybe even smaller than the usual permanent course markers (not to add any trash to the woods).

I encountered a pile of recently dumped household trash and a ripped garbage bag about 1km from the road in a fairly remote area of Harriman near my house recently. I could not figure out why someone would go out of their way to dump plastic bottles, napkins and such in the middle of the woods. After looking around a bit, I discovered fresh Bear scat not far away.
So it seems that some of the garbage that makes it way into more obscure areas of the park is there thanks to careless home owners and hungry bears carting away their booty to remote areas where they can dine in privacy. I have encountered several such piles in the area so I assume that the bear is practicing in well rehearsed behavior.

Bernie, it must be some Ukrainians - they go long ways to do so in all forests around Kiev :(, or it may have being done by your friendly bear :)

are you trying to own up to something Greg?

I'm always amazed at how often I'll find an abandoned car (or truck, or even a combine) in the woods. Typically it's older than the woods and there would be no way to get it out anymore.

I once found pieces of an airplane on the West Point Bull Pond map. In some tall mountain Laurel that I should not have been going thru.

Apparently some tall mountain Laurel that the plane should not have been going through.

I had a control on what appeared to be the remains of either a plane or a helicopter at WP. About 3 years ago, on the Round Pond map though. Also have had a control on the door of a decaying VW Beetle in a park where quite a few old cars are mapped as manmade objects.

We could open up whole new areas for orienteering in the U.S....Junkyard & Landfill Orienteering. All controls could be hung on junk and man-made features! Not exactly a chance to be AOWN as advertised by the IOF. But certainly a possibility for access to some new open, runnable areas near major cities.

Other sports are already there. I once did a 10km trail race in Wisconsin which was completely on trails within a huge active landfill. Quite nice actually.

And here in Chicago, two of the more expensive, challenging golf courses within an hour of the Loop are on active landfills. The only drawback is that you don't want to fish too many found balls out of the water hazards and stick them in your pocket.

West Point has a well-known crashed airplane on the Turkey Mountain map, as well as a wrecked helicopter that I believe has been dragged around to various locations on the NW side of Rte. 293.