Discussion: Best terrain in the USA

Today (first day of the 2010 Classic Champs) was the best terrain I've been on in the USA. Fabulous.

Better than Pawtuckaway. Better than Harriman (by a lot). Better than Anza-Borrego. Better than Laramie. Better than lots of other really good places. And better, I think, than what previously held the top honor in my opinion, the terrain near Bend, Oregon, used for the 2005 Champs (day 1), (day 2).

I'lI post the map shortly.

I didn't go to Oregon but I agree that this ranks way up there...map was good as well.

Here's the map.

Course shown is GreenX (M50, M55, M60), 5.5 km.

A really fun run today in great terrain on a great map. But will have to see how tomorrow goes.

Yep - astoundingly good. Great course setting too.

When I flipped over the map at the start it was clear the race would be fun. I made a few mistakes that would usually be the focus of my post-race thinking, but today I just keep thinking about the incredible joy of running this course - even with the mistakes.

(As an advocate of the "race arena" I must add though that it was anti-climatic to end on the road rather than having a top-notch "arena" with the finish-chute in the perfect-spot-for-a-spectacular-arena, right by the lake, near the parking, where the registration area was.)

To end on a positive note - thanks to the volunteers that hauled all the water to the start and all the clothing back down from the start.

It was some of the most fun orienteering I've ever run. I had the same experience as AZ when I turned the map over.

Looks really cool from my desk here on the west coast! Almost Trondheim-like... how are those marshes to run through?

I personally feel that having race announcing and an "arena" is something very important for orienteering in NA. To raise the profile of our sport, to celebrate our athletes, to show onlookers and media that this is a race with top athletes, to help attract sponsors etc. Does the general orienteering community in NA agree with this? If so, how can we educate and help organizers to make it happen?

I spontaneously told PG that this was the best terrain in the US without having heard his opinion. Map not quite as high a standard as the terrain - but only almost perfect; terrain, perfect. EMPO significantly undersold this event - if you only came to one orienteering event this year, this should have been the one.

Marshes are slower than the surrounding forest by some way. It also rained heavily here the last 24 hours before the race, so they are quite wet.

Course setting, except for the finish area, also excellent.

I put my routes up on my log.

Marshes were wet and much slower, so only worth crossing to avoid a sizable detour. But they were of great help in navigating.

EMPO significantly undersold this event

I'm sorry to say that for me personally and at least for several others I know, associating this event with a Championship that should have died a few years ago was a dis-draw. This is not to rain on EMPO's parade. I'm sure the club had the best intentions and put the best honest effort forward. I am in the minority, but I'd rather race IOF-standard events in inferior terrain. This is by personal choice, and not to be taken against any person, club, or governing body.

... And I'm sure this terrain can accommodate a Middle + Long on Blue and Red, and be a perfectly fine draw for the U.S. Masters Champs, and the Masters Champs could attract fine sponsors if appropriately sold.

Results are posted at Winsplits.

a Championship that should have died a few years ago

Well, it was orienteering, quite excellent orienteering, and you missed out. Have fun in the inferior terrain. For my part, I don't care what label was hung on the event.

When I turned the map over I yelped!!! I hadn't been on such a complicated map since Norway, and that was a long long time ago! what a shock!!!
But soooo much fun (once I found number 1 of course!)
EMPO really delivered.

Day 1 results are posted here on Attackpoint and on the EMPO A-meet website.

Muchas gracias to vmeyer and kissy for their quick results links; and to Valerie for ALL her work helping EMPO with this event. I'm sure we couldn't have handled the electronic timing anywhere near as professionally without all her hard work.

and you missed out

Indeed I did, and the club missed on my entry fees, and the title sponsor who we were supposed to attract with the Classic Champs missed on the whole O-USA thing—or is it the other way round?—

Nice maps there PG. Really enjoyed having a look! Makes me want to run there one day.

Winsplits are posted for Day 2. Complete results will be on the EMPO site soon, and I'll post links here.

Complete results are posted on the EMPO A-meet site.

Did anyone on the G/R/B advanced courses recognize the view in the photo from the home page? :-)

PG, I think you have two west parts linked above.

Here's the west part and the east part. (Sorry that it's a little out of focus, I'll scan them better when home.)

Sorry, just changing for better scans -- here's day 1 GreenX course and here's day 2 GreenX course (GreenX was for M50, M55, and M60).

I'm putting my routes on my log.

Another fabulous day of orienteering. Bravo to EMPO.

how did you get to the start on day 1?! :l

Bus around the north end of the map, then on foot, about 1.5 km, 150m climb.

I'm assuming all the maps and start stuff got up there the same way, and all the extra clothing had to be hauled out.

Second day was just a hike up the trail, about 200m climb this time.

Both well worth it.

I didn't recognize the photo when I was admiring the view this morning, but I do now. :)

Thanks to EMPO for a great event, especially with all that hauling of stuff to and from the starts - I'm very glad not to have had to climb that on the clock...

@pi
I totally agree with you. I was at the BC events this summer and the COC's a couple months ago and the contrast between those events and the ones here in the US is striking. Canada is way ahead of us on this and a nice arena and announcing would raise the profile of our sport here which is what we need.

On the other hand, I have to sympathize with the organizers too that are strained as it is. I don't think EMPO is a big organization and they made the orienteering the priority. Still, announcing and an arena at our major events would go a long way to raising orienteering to the next level,

I'm reminded of the old Swedish comment about Norwegian events - 'the only things that were any good were the map, the courses and the terrain.' Better that way than the other way round...

Spectacular. I don't have enough superlatives for this event.

I'm afraid I won't be able to drive the stake in the heart of the "Classic Champs" if they are all like this one.

@feet: indeed. But WOC 2010 ought to put some of that notion of Norwegian events to rest.

Thanks EMPO for a fun weekend (well half weekend for me due to injury). There aren't that many places mapped in North America I know of that one can run straight line on almost every checkpoint and not come across any yellow, green, green stripes, monster hills, large rivers or big and obvious trails to make the navigation easier. With good simplification the courses allowed some good speed in the forest as well. Lots of fun and I only wish I was able to enjoy both days. While I was racing I was thinking how awesome it would be to have a long distance race on this area. Too bad it is on the wrong side of the Hudson for the Billygoat. This is where an exception to that Billygoat rule should be made. Thanks again for some fun orienteering.

Well, the Billygoat has already been on an EMPO map west of the Hudson (Thacher), and the Divinely Appointed Billygoat Steering Committee has disbanded, so who knows what might happen in the future.

I still have a smile on my face from memories of a wonderful weekend at Moreau and in Saratoga. I do wish that my course would have taken me to the top of the plateau which everyone is raving about, but I found the woods and the terrain, AND THE COURSE SETTING, to be fabulous down below. Fortunately, Moreau is close enough that we can go there to train, so I'll get to experience it myself. Kudos to EMPO, the little engine that could.

I want to put in a travel tip for anyone who returns to the area for future events. Saratoga Springs is a historic spa town with a fascinating history, interesting geology, and a lively ambience. It has the only geyser east of the Rocky Mtns. The town and the Sarataga Spa State Park (sprint venue) have numerous natural mineral springs, most of which are "enshrined" by ornate pavilions, and most waters can be sampled if you bring your own cup. The visitor's center provides a short film on the geology, the natural history, and the social history. You can get maps of the springs and a chart of the mineral content of most of them. Many are carbonated! And, best of all, the historic Roosevelt Baths in the state park are open and reasonably priced. I recommend the mineral bath and 30 min massage for only $70. That's a hot bath in the natural spring water (orangy from all the minerals), along with the other amenities of the marble-halled, greek-columned building. And, there's an inlaid compass rose in the entry hall!

Imagine the competitive edge you'd get from "taking the waters" before orienteering on the land above them.

I'll organize a spa trip for the next event. :) Seriously! This could be the site for the first Women's Orienteering Event! (Not that we'd exclude the men. . .)

Thanks again to EMPO for hosting such a terrific event.

Just big Thank You to: Glen (course setter), Susan (Information and registrar), Phil - (meet director), Mark and Barb-"Candy Girl"(mappers), Start, Fish and Results Crews members. I would love to come back to race on this map in the future.

Hear hear Balter! Fantastic, amazing area, wonderful courses, and very impressed by the results that beat us back from the finish. Great stuff. I hope I will be back!

Wow! Two days of fun courses, great terrain on a really good map. Thanks to EMPO for going with this area and the great event that we all enjoyed.

RouteGadget coming shortly.

One tiny, but appreciated, detail among the many fine facets of the weekend: top quality maps cases were used

From my viewpoint - working results/download, but not competing - these are a few of the things I appreciated being done well:

Very well organized block vetting done by an excellent group of orienteers, as well as an extremely organized control retrieval process.
First aid at the Finish (or as nearby as possible).
A person dedicated to getting the results printed and hung on a regular basis.
Where needed, importing volunteers from other clubs for Starts (2 different ones each day), Finish, and the Download/Results area. All of these areas worked exceptionally well together.

For a weekend where I didn't compete, I did not go away feeling like it was all work and no play. I had a great experience. Thank you EMPO!

RouteGadget for the US Classic Champs is now available, as well as the Niagara Falls Sprints and the Saratoga Spa Sprint Finals. Note, for the US Classic Champs, there are separate events for White-Brown since it was on a smaller portion of the map.

Thank you all organizers for such wonderful event! We know how much hard work and effort you put into this! We are looking forward to returning again to this beautiful area for more fun and competition in future! It is, indeed, one of the best orienteering terrains in NA!

From the Meet Director-

Thanks to all for your comments, and (of course) especially for your support of what we tried to do, and mostly succeeded in doing. We always strive to do better next time, even when we thought we had it nailed last time (which neither we, nor anyone else can do perfectly).

As has been noted by others, we are a smaller club, and still we strive to put on big events periodically, thanks to the support we can get from some of our larger neighbors. This should be a hopeful sign to other small clubs that you too can handle big things, because you can get help! Just ask (early and often). The big clubs may have the person-power, but they don't always have the terrain, or the local enthusiasm to create a suddenly-unique event.

Not to re-raise an old issue here, but I feel I must say that I think the US (and perhaps Canadian) orienteering community voted with their feet (and dollars) that they like having a 2-Day Classic Championship event, regardless of what the IOF is pushing thee days. I know that the next event like this is already on the books for 2011, and I sincerely hope it continues ad infinitum.

From the record, the attendance at the U.S. Individual (SML) Championships this year was ~330 (West "Coast"), at the North American (SML) Champs, ~410 (West "Coast"), at the Canadian (SML) Champs it was also ~410 and at the U.S. Classic Champs, in superior terrain to the other three, it was ~380. The people have indeed voted and I think it's fairly clear the larger community likes all of these formats. But that's average temperature for the hospital as they say.

Nobody is pushing the SML down anyone's throat, all some of us ask for is to make the SML the exclusive Championship format for M/F-21+ and perhaps under. The Classic Champs should quite possibly remain available in perpetuity for those 35+ (or 40+), with SML offered concurrently at the same event to M/F-21+ and perhaps under, almost certainly without Championship status. This latter request has long been the stumbling point, not the question about the merits of the two-equal-course format vs. SML.

To reframe this debate as "pushing" is counterproductive. It seeks to accuse the opposing side of actions it does not intend. Again from the record, 23 of 33 U.S. A meet races in 2010 for M/F-21+ employed/employ one of the Sprint, Middle, or Long formats (of the rest, one was Ultralong and one, Night; the remainder were Classic), so I'm not even sure "IOF is pushing" is anywhere appropriate, it's a grassroots-driven, customer-ordered landslide at this point. If there has been pushing, it's the other way round. The issue has long been that some quite established in their ways people sought to impose the entrenched format onto others who were no longer convinced of its validity, ostensibly because to split up the Champs would lessen the sponsor appeal. Fortunately this situation was remedied with the introduction of the Individual (SML) Champs.

No, the total at the US 2-Day was 420.

Jeez, I'm really sorry to have re-opened this. I am not trying to re-frame anyone's "debate". I just "know what I like", and yes, "I like what I know".

I am now off Attackpoint for another 10 years. See ya!

BG 2012 perhaps. If you go due west from the center of the map you will hit the Hudson River, so the map is indeed "East of the Hudson".

I'd like to add my thanks for the wonderful event. Ross and Sam were worthy winners and I hope they inspire many younger orienteers to work and train hard so they too can one day be US Classic Champions.

With the way the iof is going, it was refreshing to run a competition where the orienteering was the priority, with great courses on great terrain. Kudos to EMPO and the ever-smiling organisers!

Heck, as a newbie who's run in most countries in Europe, I don't care what kind of event that was. The orienteering was some of the best I have ever done, and I am thoroughly glad that the time and effort was put into it to make it happen.

No, the total at the US 2-Day was 420.

I took my numbers from the Winsplits total for highest-attended day. I didn't get the Classic Champs right, the highest was Day 2 at 391. If you count regisrtations and not e-punch starts, the totals at the other three events will certainly increase but I don't have these numbers.

My guess is that the Classic Champs attendance would have been (1) marginally higher if the M/F-21+ were non-Championship ML, (1A) a bit higher than that if you throw in a WRE, (2) considerably higher if you retain the all-Classic Championship format and there were no Individiual SML Champs in Washington, and (3) even higher if these were to have been the SML Champs. Of course, I also only like what I know.

I am sure this was a great event; sounds like everyone enjoyed it and there is a consensus that the best terrain known to date has been discovered. The question that feet originally brought up is whether this excitement could have been shared with more people, which should be of no small importance to the club, but is also of a great importance to the Federation, which can certainly use the sanctioning fees. (If the total fees for the year are the important metric, then (2) and (3) are not the best options but one of (1) may have been.)

It sounds highly unlikely that the enjoyment of the terrain would have been diminished by having IOF-standard courses; the terrain could have certainly supported them.

I just "know what I like", and yes, "I like what I know"

...the words of another PG.

PhilHT - maybe 10 years till you come back to AP, but hopefully sooner to the next great event ;-)

Good point about small clubs hosting great events. The NAOC's in BC this last summer is another example. Jim W can give us the numbers, but I believe the organizing club has less that 10 members before the event!

With the exception of running along using the bottom of the escarpment for a handrail for 500 metres or so the two day Classic was the most intense orienteering I've experienced in a long time. When I plotted my route on Route Gadget I could not be sure on some of the longer legs where on a small ridge I'd climbed or where I'd descended. A lot of the plot is guess work or working backwards from known points.
Is it a parallel error or a perpendicular one when you stop one ridge, valley, marsh or re-entrant too soon? I had more than a few of those errors.
Here is a mystery though: did anyone else hear someone walking along a trail on Sunday and yelling "NO RUNNING IN THE WOODS!" I'm not sure whether it was another orienteer teasing me or whether it was a local gentleman intent on 'protecting' the environment.
PS Not to extend the debate but in my opinion Two Day Classic was the right event for Moreau. Without a finish area on the ridge all sprint and middle courses would have had to start and finish in the relatively bland area around the lake.

There was a hunter (full camo and rifle) near the middle of the map (half way to #2 on blue). He advised me that the trail was "over there" as he pointed to my left. I thanked him and kept moving.

Might it have been an excited orienteer yelling "MO running in the woods!" ? Looking forward to More O' at Moreau sometime in the future.

Without a finish area on the ridge all sprint and middle courses would have had to start and finish in the relatively bland area around the lake

Seems that a start/finish combination that supports a Classic Green can support a Middle Blue. Fitting in a Middle Red would have perhaps required compromise. My hypothetical suggestion did not impose other Middles, nor a Sprint on this particular area.

Same mental 'gasp' when flipping over the map. "OMG, I have to do all this?" So many little features to pay attention to...

And very impressed with the rest of the field in M21, ~20 of which "did all that" with ~5 minutes of mistakes or less...

My reaction was completely different. It was more like, "Oh my, I wasn't expecting anything like this, it's going to be GREAT!".

;-) to J-J

That was our secret. Glen and I, at least, knew it was and is champs-worthy terrain. Wish it was just a bit more accessible, but it's definitely worth the work to get there.

"Wish it was just a bit more accessible"

One might say it's on a pedestal, above the rest.

Upon turning the map over, I immediately thought "thou shall not lose contact"....