Discussion: Permanent Courses - any tips?

I am working with the Canmore Nordic Center (in Alberta) to create a permanent orienteering course. There will be three foot-O courses (beginner to intermediate) and one mtbO course. The courses will be changed three times a year. We are putting 100 stands in the park and will buy 50 SI control units to move between those stands as the courses are changed. I am developing a Skills Progression document that will help participants develop their orienteering skills from raw beginner to intermediate level.

We are hoping these courses will get lots of use from locals wanting to try orienteering & develop navigation skills, and from tourists who are interested in a fun way to spend time in the park. Also I'm hoping that groups (schools groups, hiking groups, and such) will use the facility.


My hope is that this venue will become extraordinarily popular and that this model could be duplicated at other venues with similar facilities (good map, supportive management, rental/sales shop on site, etc). The hope this that more people will be exposed to a positive introduction to orienteering.

Any tips / suggestions based on similar experiences would be very welcome.

If it is all on the Nordic Centre's property - fine, but if not, check with forestry to see if there are any future plans for the area.

I've never designed a permanent course, but I have seen few outcomes that were less than perfect.

One problem I've seen is a yellow control that has one obvious attackpoint. A trail can develop that may or may not be acceptable to the park. It also turns the control into a white control.

Your description sounds like this will be an amazing permanent course. In Alma, did you see the aluminum SportIdent plates that lock down the control units?

Interesting concept compared to the usual unchanging permanent course - kind of like climbing gyms changing the routes every so often. Ambitious too.

I presume the CNC will be running an associated SI rental/clear/check/download/print splits operation. Maybe posting regularly updated results for the current set of courses so people can see where they stand and be motivated by competition.

It would be nice if it's connected somehow with web. Maps downloadable in pdf. Opportunity to log your time and compare with others. What about a central database of permanent courses?

There used to be once a year (or every second year?) changing permanent courses with epunch at Idre Fjäll, Sweden. I guess they still have. Would be good to know what their experiences are like. I have taken some of those controls once, there was a sort of unmapped path going straight to the control at controls near the ski center. Maybe bubo knows more?

Splits may not be important here, but will splits be affected by clock drifting? If drifting is +-1 sec/week, it could mean something like 20 sec errors after 3 months. In once per year setup over minute errors. At Idre Fjäll they used Emit so they didn't have this problem.