Discussion: Wild Canyon Games

Here's yet another event on the fringes of orienteering & adventure racing, with a slick website, social media, videos, sponsors, and all of that other "stuff" that we don't really do in traditional orienteering events. It's June 1-3, 2012.

This one is notable to orienteers for two reasons:

1) It takes place at the same exact venue as the epic Big Muddy rogaines (near Antelope, Oregon).

2) One of the events is a 5-hour geocaching score-o, which is essentially a mini rogaine, but without a map. But, they provide the locations two weeks in advance, so you could plot them on a USGS topo, in a create-your-own-rogaine format. (For those looking for some humor, a team got lost in the 2011 event.)

Basically, this is a 7-person relay event. On Saturday morning, 3 members of the team do a triathlon relay, and the other 4 do the geocaching challenge (two teams of two). Then there are fun challenges and socials during the remainder of Saturday. On Sunday morning, there's a seven-person relay to the top of a mountain, where there's one swimming leg and one biking leg.

Sounds like a fun event if you've got a team of one swimmer, one biker, one runner, and four orienteers.

I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it yet, since it started in 2010, is only a state away from where I live, and it uses the same venue as a popular regional orienteering event.

103 teams! That's impressive for the second year's running. We'll see if we can get Henry Coe from its 70 or so teams in the second year to well over 100 for the third year—there's hope that including mountain bikes and perhaps "challenges" during the mandatory camp-out (new feature) will drum up some more interest.

A big portion of success in similar ventures is obviously promotion, including sleek web design and copy, and we'll be working hard on that for 2012.