Discussion: Largest Contiguous O'Map?

A Ukrainian O'club is seeking recognition from the Guinness Book of Records for an (ISOM-compliant) orienteering map they believe is currently the largest in the world. It's said to be 180 sq km (about 45,000 acres, or 70 sq miles).

Is anyone aware of an orienteering map that covers a contiguous area larger than this?

Give Swampfox enough time, and he may catch up -- I believe the contiguous mapped area in Laramie is over 100 sq km, although it's slowing down because he mapped a lot of the easy, open stuff first, and the more detailed areas take more time. The Harriman/WestPoint complex is definitely not that big. On the other hand, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a larger area than this in Sweden (Greater Stockholm?), though it could be that nobody has compiled it into a single place.

Maybe we can put together several Top 10 largest maps lists (in the World, in Europe, in North America, in the US)?

QOC's largest contiguous map is now of Prince William Forest, at 33.5 sq km (8300 acres).

I'm curious to know exactly how big Swampfox's map is, just to know if he is in contention with the Ukraine club...?

I think Swampfox recently broke the 100 sq km threshold, although he has a lot more basemap than that.

I measured Harriman/WestPoint, and it's bigger than I thought, roughly 150 sq km, and being able to print it as one piece isn't that far off. There's more terrain available, but no plans that I'm aware of to do any significant mapping anytime soon. A lot of it is either very steep, laurel thickets, or artillery impact zone, anyway.

You have to be careful how you define things, here. I know of several maps that could easily be extended to very large sizes, just by increasing the amount of uncrossable water shown on the border. :-)

I am thinking of having the Bear Mtn and Anthony Wayne area mapped (on the NE end of Harriman) and the Pine Swamp/Diamond Mtn on the south end. Paul B. works on the Deep Hollow section west of Sebago. All what we need is a good rock-cliff-reliable mapper.

All what we need is a good rock-cliff-reliable mapper.

With the euro at $1.60, good luck with that.

I'll bet we could clear 30,000 acres in a week or two, if we started here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Salt_Flats

I am assuming as there has been no comment from Blairtrewin Oxoman or __________ that the Victorian Central Highlands maps don't cover enough area?
Covering the forest between Castlemaine, Newstead, Drummond, and daylesford...

Wouldn't that easily be about 300km^2 + or is that an over exaggeration?

I was thinking about that - am not sure off the top of my head whether all the relevant maps quite join up. Wattle Gully/Mineral Springs/Glenluce/Porcupine Ridge/Mount Franklin Gorge certainly do (at a guess I'd say that would be around 80-100 sq km), but there's a small gap between Wattle Gully and the old Castlemaine Goldfields map, and I think there are also small gaps to the east before you get to Belltopper Hill/Two Kangaroo Creeks, and Kookaburra Rises/Boundary Creek/Boundary Creek South/Glenlyon Roses. Even if all these join you might fall marginally short of 180 sq km, although there wouldn't be much in it.

I wouldn't be totally shocked if the contiguous area of street-O maps in eastern Melbourne was greater than 100 sq km.

The largest single Australian map I know of is the 1985 Kooyoora map (the ones used for WOC) at about 35 sq km.

Thinking this out a bit further-
I don't know the extent of the burnout canberra pines maps;
but is there a contiguous section if you consider, Majura / Ainslie / Campbell / Commonwealth Park / acton Beach / Acton Hill / ANU / Black Mountain / Bruce Ridge / Lyneham Nth / AIS / Gossen Hill / Radford College / UC / Black Mountain Peninsula / Aranda Bushlands / Mt. Painter / Yarramundi Reach / Burley Griffin West / Dairy farmers Hill??? (and whatever old pine forest joins onto this? +Oakey Hill etc)

haven't checked these, just off the top of my head!

Blair; how big would the Greater Bendigo map made for that rogaine (not technically an O map) be? larger than Kooyoora?

The Central Highlands area is mapped but not on a single contiguous map.
The Ukrainian claim of 180 km2 would be about 11 A4 sheets at 1:15000, or 1.5 A1 sheets - a large orienteering map by any standard. It might be useful as a sail, but not big enough to use as a parachute whilst descending cliffs.

I've just measured my Werribee map at 80 km2 and the Altona/Laverton map is about 20 km2 and I linked the two at the weekend into a single map. I could link with the Deer Park Map, but am looking for field workers for a sprint map of the establishment at the SE corner of Palmers and Boundary Roads.

I believe there's a Mr Williams who's not going to have much to do for the next 35 years - perhaps you could ask him :-)

(For the benefit of non-Melbourne readers - the address mentioned is that of Melbourne's main maximum-security prison, and Carl Williams is a notorious gangster recently sentenced to life with a minimum of 35 years)

I would like to claim that New Zealand has the largest orienteering map. A few years ago I asked for it to be included in the Guiness Book of Records but received a reply that there was no category for it. I don't have the latest map in my possession but if I were to guess it would exceed 700 km2. This map is based in the north island and covers the whole wellington region. Yes it is all mapped, I have been involved in some of the fieldwork.

Maybe we should look at the complexity of the maps. That should be just as specious as claiming a record based on area. I don't pretend that I would get near Kooyoora - the biggest one I have is Glenluce with 25707 objects. Bunjil only rated 3071, smaller even than Werribee's 5625 or St Georges Lake 10539 (I knew it had a lot of tracks!)

in an o-shop in Turku back in 2001 they had a map of the Turku region on the wall behind the shop lines on it delimiting mapped areas - apart from a few fields and lakes, I guess almost everything within a 100km was mapped... and I wouldn't be surprised if you could do Turku-Tampere-Helsinki essentially without leaving mapped areas...

Finnish Orienteering maps on map according to the Finnish Orienteering Federation

http://kartta.ssl.fi/karttarekisteri/www_visualiso...

In reply to Oxoman. Kooyoora has 39,000 objects. Bendigo Diggings Rush may be the largest map in Australia, combining 5 forest maps and 4 street maps for 42,400 objects. Neither of these would be anywhere near the map of the area around Stockholm. Can't get my hands on the household copy.
I seem to remember that OCAD has a definite areal limit. The challenge would be to get as close to that threshold as possible.

I guess I over-estimated :) Still, there are probably old areas which are mapped but not listed? most of the maps on the FOF site have been recently updated...

ndobbs, I think you got it about right. I guess about 10% of maps are shown, only new ones.

Biggest printed O-maps near Helsinki are Nuuksio map and Sipoonkorpi map, both are quite old ones, both were combined out of smaller regular O maps and sold for hiking or other recreational outdoor activity purposes, not the actual orienteering.
Link: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1953001
There is 20 km between and I most of it if not all mapped for winter street O use.

Just for balance, a comment on British O maps - the area to the west of Windermere in the Lake District is almost all mapped (mainly by Bilbo I think). The area between Bigland in the South, Claife Heights in the East, Holme Fell in the North and the various Torvor Commons in the West could be joined together on one sheet if required. I reckon this must be in the 150sq km range? All fantastic terrain too!

and I reckon if you joined all the New Forest maps together - the New Forest has a total area of about 500 sq km, and a lot of this is mapped - then that would be a pretty large area too!

Hi Superoman, that map we worked on in New Zealand doesn't qualify for the current discussion, as it isn't an ISOM map. It's drawn at a scale of 1:20,000 using MTBO track symbols and also used for rogaining. The 1300 sq.km includes the capital city Wellington which due to interesting topography has extensive green areas within a stone's throw of the seat of parliament.

But the discussion does underline the shift that has occurred from discrete "maps" to "mapped areas" from which a map is extracted for a particular event. There would be many large areas which are mostly covered by orienteering mapping, and via choice of paper coordinates or links to real-world coordinates can be exactly joined together. So what is a "map" in this context? One OCAD file? (I like to keep my eggs in several baskets.) Absence of gaps? (Well you can just fill them in with dark green.)

Maps around stockholm, sweden.
NW
http://www.orientering.se/stockholm/files/%7BF5159...
NE
http://www.orientering.se/stockholm/files/%7BCE410...
SW
http://www.orientering.se/stockholm/files/%7B78CDD...
SE
http://www.orientering.se/stockholm/files/%7B3861C...

The mapped areas that are one contigous area would not be suitable for print but would definitely be one really large area. :)

From a 'printing point of view' it may also be noted that these maps belong to maybe 20+ different clubs.