Discussion: Montana orienteering

Hello AP community,
My name's Siri, and I'm an orienteer moving from Seattle to Bozeman for college. I know there hasn't been much orienteering in Montana in recent years, but I'm looking for possible map training opportunities and orienteering connections to make in Montana. I figured I'd post here to see if anyone knows anything about Montana maps and/or is interested in helping start up a small O club in Bozeman in a couple years. :)

Tom Murphy, former president of OCIN, lives in Bozeman. I also got an inquiry a while back from a guest ranch / conference center that was interested in a map. Send me an email and I'll try to put you in touch with Tom. If you are interested in trying your hand at field checking, we ought to be able to set you up with some pretty decent base map materials.

Try contacting Leif, he may have made some maps.
https://www.attackpoint.org/userprofile.jsp/user_6...

The Montana Outdoor Science School (MOSS) looks like it might be a good organization to partner with if you end up going the 'start a club' route. Eager, outdoorsy kids can be awesome! They even held an O 101 course a couple of years ago.

Cruising Google Maps, it sure looks like there's an abundance of incredible terrain around there! Best of luck with your new adventure.

I've got a small dataset of lidar for the City of Bozeman, but there isn't much there to map. Maybe a few parks and schools. I haven't looked for any sort of state-wide or 3DEP lidar there in over a year.

There are also two Bozeman residents who do radio orienteering.

This is supposed to be the most up-to-date lidar inventory information, but I'm not sure.

https://coast.noaa.gov/inventory/

It's definitely worth calling local and state GIS offices to see what they know.

If you google the state name plus "lidar", you can usually find lidar mapping planning with a schedule. 3DEP is a federal program that helps states fund lidar, and it ensures free access to it at some point.

There was a club in Kalispell with a proper O map, though that's five hours away. (Not much closer than Stanley Idaho or the Salt Lake City area, sadly, or than Medicine Hat, Cranbrook/Kimberley, Calgary, Boise or Spokane for that matter. But at least some proper O maps and even events within range of a weekend excursion.)

Montana is the best!

Take up backcountry skiing, climbing, mountain biking, trail running.

Orienteering will still be there for you in four years, and you'll have a bigger aerobic base and broader perspective on endurance sports.

I was going to ask a similar question as I'm off to Big Sky/Yellowstone in the summer, guess I'll just do some running!

acjospe>>If the goal is to reach a top level in orienteering, then I don't think skipping it during four prime years of potential development is the way to go... On the other hand, if the goal is simply to enjoy the sport, then I agree with you.

@andrewd: we have a quick-n-dirty map of the Old Faithful area (created remotely, no field checking). Email me for a copy. You will probably not be able to run through the area, but we got up early one morning and did a course at a "brisk walk" pace

@BorisGr, I guess I assumed that the choice had already been made given the choice of university location. Never assume, especially online. Oops.

If each club were to use its regional ranking day, then with some weekend trips one could get from Bozeman to events in Utah, Idaho, eastern Washington, plus a couple of longer trips (Europe, Yukon or Laramie), and some events near Calgary and Kimberley. Maybe even get ranked. Combined with training with friends on local maps made from lidar, DEM or OSM, and physical training of the sort above, one could stay active and practiced. The Scandinavian model seems to be each club organizing one major event per year, training locally, and traveling to other clubs' events. This seems like a better model for much of North America than the traditional model of each club organizing a full slate of events for its members.

@andrewd: if you would have time or inclination to visit Idaho's Stanley area before or after Yellowstone, our club CTOC has two wonderful maps out there used for the last year USA Champs. https://attackpoint.org/eventdetail.jsp/event_3321...
World class glacial moraine terrain. Let me know. I may send you maps with courses or you may pick them on your way.
@schristoph: you are welcome to Stanley area too :) Let me know about maps.
Sergey

Starting with Open Street Map and importing in to Open Orienteering Mapper or better yet OCAD 12 one has a very good base for an urban orienteering map of Bozeman and particularly the campus of Montana State U.
Siri a lot of young and very competitive orienteers are skeptical when I tell them this but one of the best ways to improve map reading skills is to take some time making maps. You cannot forego the physical training and speed work, map reading on the run etc. However a sharper eye and an improved understanding of what the mapper is telling you comes from map making. So if you don't find maps in Bozeman go out and make them. If you don't find a student orienteering club at MSU recruit some friends and form one. You may find yourselves the ones to dislodge the US Intercollegiate crown from West Point's head.

+1 on mapmaking as one very useful kind of training

Agreed with Gord and JimBaker on mapping - definitely worth developing the "eye of the mapper". Cedarcreek can provide excellent base map materials - enough for training, and then you can improve those materials into "real" maps.

@maprunner - have emailed you

@Sergey - thank you but won't be able to get that far, family holiday for a wedding with 2 kids and 2 grandparents in tow.

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm going to be focusing on training for my last JWOC this coming year, and then who knows what's next? There are new activities to try, a new place to (re)introduce the sport of orienteering to, maps to be made...
To those that gave me contact info, I just sent you emails, thanks for reaching out.
I really appreciate your responses, thanks everyone for the support!!

I think my internet searches were noticed by algorithms or something:

http://blog.bozemancvb.com/blog/8-reasons-to-stop-...

Yes, of course they were.
It doesn't matter where we search on the Internet our search is soon going to be followed by a deluge of ads and promotional material reinforcing our search.
So if you are looking for a surprise gift for your wife make sure you do not search on a computer she is likely to use or the element surprise will surely be lost. (Sad face)

You don't even have to search. We had an incident at work that made it pretty clear that our phones are eavesdropping on us all the time.

Better yet, search for an intentionally misleading item on the shared computer, perhaps a cliched practical, non fun item.

Eavesdropping phones? Care to give a few more details on this?

Open a browser on the phone and start typing something, see what search suggestions come up. Don't actually do a search, just close the browser tab. Then with the phone sitting there, have a conversation about something related to what you had started typing. Open the browser again and start typing the same thing, and look what the suggestions are now.

That sounds like it wouldn't correlate cause and effect. Either skip the first part (type and close tab), or talk about something unrelated (and not "in pop culture") in the second part (conversation next to phone).

Honestly, I do so many searches on so many things, and repeat searches with gaps of many years, that any reliable tracking system could offer suggestions simply based on past searches and clicked links and do a credible job of surprising me.

I typed in a search phrase, closed it, sat in silence for a few moments, then opened again and retyped the same phrase. I had pretty different suggestions. It would be a lot of work to eavesdrop all the time for not a lot of gain -- we already give companies all kinds of more useful information whenever we do anything online.

This was pretty specific. We were wondering about the fewest pitches in an MLB game, and it came up with that as the first suggestion after entering "fewest". The first time it happened, there had been no previous search for anything, and I doubt I had ever searched for anything baseball-related on my phone. Tried it on multiple phones, and on iPhones, it even said "Siri suggests...". (There, back on topic!)

"An incident at work" ...... "fewest pitches in an MLB game" (translation probably needed for Aussies)
Interesting bit of work.

The "incident" was a discussion at lunchtime about baseball. Pitches are like... balls bowled?

It might be that lots of people were having lunchtime discussions of baseball, and maybe musing about fewest pitches at an MLB game. But, it may be that enabling voice commands on your phone means that it's constantly listening to, and using, what you're saying. Some of the tech companies seem highly keen on obtaining and using as much such information as they can, as part of their business model. Maybe worth reading the terms and conditions, all several hundred pages (which then change week to week), to see if it includes such a provision.

And is the connection with the thread subject that orienteering in Montana might get you far enough from the overhearing phones?

No, the OP is named Siri.

Ah, good point.

@jjcote: just tried the same exact thing with no talking. Chrome desktop, Chrome iPhone, Safari (Siri Suggests) all concur:

Apparently, as @JimBaker suggests, this is a more pedestrian search than you might have assumed. :)

That said: lots of tech does this kind of listening. Sometimes it even laughs at you, probably while it's plotting the revolution.

We had multiple cases where a phone didn't do that until after a discussion, but a computer was unaffected. This particular phrase is possibly polluted by our experiments at this point. Try other unlikely searches and see how it goes.