Discussion: Permits are in hand

... many emails and phone calls, four environmental impact reviews, and $1639 later, we have them. I am updating the webpage and it will go live this evening, hopefully, with the updated info.

One major remaining caveat is that all of the Golden Gate Park checkpoints are subject to review in terrain and approval. The review will take place during most of this coming Saturday. We also will have someone on site early Saturday, the day of the event, to make sure the CPs actually go where we said they'd go. Given that we didn't cause any complaints with our 2011 event, that preliminary courses have been reviewed and approved, and that BAOC has held local events at Golden Gate Park for two decades, I don't anticipate problems, but just in case, we are keeping one other venue on standby.

The schedule has been reshuffled a bit, or more than a bit. Friday's event is still at Land's End, still starting at 3:30 pm. All of Saturday's Stages (and the Middle) will be at Elk Glen, Golden Gate Park. The three Sprints will start at 9:30 am, 11:30 am, and 2:30 pm; we'll pick a place for lunch within walking distance.

There are very few changes to the excellent existing maps of Land's End (by Bill and Heidi Cusworth) and of SF State (by Rex Winterbottom). For Golden Gate Park, the total mapped area is 1.4 km², of which about 0.9 km² was mapped by Vladimir Zherdev in 2011, and about 0.5 km² is being mapped by me this November. Tournament's Stage Three, and most of the Middle, will be on the new map.

We are keeping McLaren Park as a standby venue. We did get permission to map and use its expansive southern part, so far not used for orienteering, but the conditions of its use are such that fair and interesting courses are hard to achieve. If we do end up using McLaren because too many of the CP sites at Golden Gate Park end up denied, we will use the existing map. We hope it doesn't have to happen.

Sunday's event will instead be at SF State University, first start at 9:30 am. Being able to host all event participants, not just Tournament contenders, at SF State is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the campus is a spectacular example of urban terrain, with complex geometries, obstacles galore, and just a bit of multiple levels, bringing much needed variety to the forest-centric event. On the other hand, much (almost all) of the vegetation is sensitive, forbidden to enter, and is marked with olive green. There is not a chance to tape around it.

Life is too short for too many niceties, so our request is to please leave the I-can-go-wherever-I-damn-want attitude for the forest events, and kindly honor the conditions of the permit. Assume all bushy stuff is forbidden, and please go around it. Jumping over with your feet not touching the ground counts as entering. We can't have monitors everywhere; it's up to the participants to make this a fair event for everyone.

We have expanded the Tournament to 36 people (6 brackets of 6, with animals starting at Stage Three). Full qualification details will be posted at the back-online website shortly.

Dinner will be at Delancey Street Restaurant, same place as in 2009 and 2011, with menu coming shortly (vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options are available).

P.S. The regular entry fee deadline is extended to this Monday 02 December.

This looks awesome!

Two free entries are available for Juniors who haven't yet entered. Inquire within.

Glad you were able to get things worked out!

Not entirely through the trees yet, with one more round of approvals, but very close. As I said before, this seems to have been a perfect storm of permitting headaches, and these difficulties may or may not mean similar difficulties in the future. I do know, however, that the new policy of no advertising of events in SF Parks without a firm permit is serious (as in, intended to be a revenue generator), and the lead time seems to be about two months.

T/D your efforts are appreciated.

Nice work, T/D!

How are you doing with Run Black Diamond permits?

I think we need to converge on the choice Sprint venues first. There are some important considerations that shouldn't be made lightly.

Hi BP, sorry your emails started to bounce. We are appropriating your entry fees to BAOC juniors, we all are saying thanks! Two have entered and there will be a bit left over.

T/D good to know thanks :) and a pity I can't be there. BTW for email just switch out prodigy for comcast!

OK will do.

Re Run Black Diamond, the problem is that Oakland Marathon is in town that Sunday and Sunday is the best day for colleges, as it turns out pretty much across the board, to have Sprinters on campus. We're working on exactly how much of a problem the marathon is going to be; unlikely to be a permitting problem, but the logistics of having four separate venues just got even more complicated since off-freeway driving in most of East Bay (west of the hills) will be a problem.

Public transportation?

I'll answer that one. It's a 50 minute bus ride from the BART station to Black Diamond, and a 2.3 mile walk from the nearest bus stop. Or it would be, except that bus doesn't run on weekends.

Edit: I tried a different website (511.org) and found a bus that runs on weekends, about 25 minutes. Same walk, though.

I think Barb was refering to the possibility of using transit on that Sunday, when it'll be very hard or impossible to drive in Oakland/Berkeley. Yes, it is possible to reach the proposed Sprint venue(s) by BART.

Black Diamond Mines (itself) is only the venue for the Middle. It's not particularly convenient to get there, or to the Long venue, by transit.

Are there worthwhile sprint venues other than UC Berkeley? Anything in the 680 / 580 / 24 / 4 corridors?

Yes there are. Actually there is a list of about a half-dozen sweet Sprint venues in the Walnut Creek/Concord area that will all be nice to have mapped (if only people would come to Sprints). However: The WOC Sprint is urban, I felt a strong desire for the Trials Sprints to be urban, not just from myself. The only urban map in that are that is finished has been used twice for A events, and to the opinion of several attendees, provides an unfair advantage to locals (to the ones that do come to Sprints). There are two other ready venues, but both are forested.

So it'd be another mapping project, and we don't feel that we have time.

We're good to go, Golden Gate Park permits are final. But, we ran out of time permitting the newly mapped areas. Stages Two and Three will still be in Golden Gate Park, existing The Last Herd/The Lost Herd maps. Stage Four will be in McLaren Park, northern portion, first start at 3:30 pm.