The Arctic Orienteering Club (AOC) welcomed orienteers to Alaska for several days of orienteering in varied terrain. There were intricate forests, wide open alpine, a SUP ferry, and snow!
The events were a short forest event at Earthquake Park, classic NRE at Willow Creek, a Mountain-O at Craigie Creek (Hatcher Pass), and a Classic at Mirror Lake.
Livelox for Willow Creek Classics
45th Billygoat Run!
Rochester hosted an Ultralong NRE course with wave starts. This enabled a mass start experience with the people in your own age class.
Host: Rochester Orienteering Club (ROC)
Venue: Mendon Ponds Park, Rochester, NY
Event Director: Rick Worner
Course setter: Sergey Dobretsov
Two Sprint NREs in one day in the western NY city of Buffalo.
Host: Buffalo Orienteering Club (BFLO)
Venues:
Event Director: David Cady
Course setters:
All photos by Evalin Brautigam.
Photo album from Evalin Brautigam
Unfortunately, the planned Saturday afternoon relay event was cancelled due to the winter weather, which had caused a 2-hour delay to the morning event.
The photos above are all by Evalin Brautigam and the West Point Public Affairs Office
Hosts: Orienteering Cincinnatti (OCIN) and Indiana Crossroads Orienteering (ICO)
Venues:
This event features some wild weather, cancelling Sunday’s long race, and a fairly unique urban middle distance race on Sunday.
Photos above by Evalin Brautigam and OCIN.
Host: North Texas Orienteering Association (NTOA)
Venue: Sid Richardson Scout Ranch, Bridgetport, TX
This event was a two-day Classic distance NRE, and also the Interscholastic and Intercollegiate Championships.
Hosts: Tucson Orienteering Club & Greater Phoenix Orienteering Club
Venues: First six races southeast of Tucson, AZ. Seventh race in Tucson. Final three races northeast of Phoenix, AZ
SWSW is an almost-annual weeklong festival of casual orienteering in warm Arizona.
Website: southwestspringweek.org
Photos by Evalin Brautigam
Crowdsourced photos on the Tucson Orienteers Facebook Group
Host: Bay Area Orienteering Club
Venues:
This event served as the Team Trials for the Junior World Orienteering Champs (Fri, Sat, Sun) and the World Orienteering Champs (Sat, Sun). Additionally, combined scores for the best two of three days were used to determined the winners of the Western State Champs, an informal competition for orienteers residing in one of the western states (those states with a peak above 10,000′).
Photos by Evalin Brautigam and Cristina Luis
Shortly after sending out the December, 2024 OUSA Newsletter I received an email from Jim Pugh with the 1979 WOC team photo you see above, and the suggestion to include it in an upcoming newsletter. This seemed like a great idea. With a few more photos from Jim, plus some stories and maps from Peter Gagarin, this little look back into the past was born. Enjoy this peak into the US team’s past!
–Cristina
Some memories from Peter Gagarin from the World Orienteering Championships in Tampere, Finland, in 1979 –
The team was selected at Team Trials in May at Quabbin (days 1 and 3) and Mount Hermon School (day 2) in Massachusetts. Women: Sharon Crawford, Beth Skelton, Betty Andersen, Linda Taylor, Virginia Lehman. Men: Eric Weyman, Mikell Platt, Steve Tarry, Jim Pugh, Peter Gagarin. Many of us lived in the Northeast and we got together on several weekends for training before heading to Finland in late August.
It was really hard orienteering. The forests were hilly with lots of thick vegetation; the ground was very soft and hard to run on. There were just two events, individual and relay, with the maps for both drawn at 1:20,000. And yet we had some excellent results, especially from our women. Sharon Crawford was 32nd out of 69 in the individual, certainly one of our best results ever, and the women finished 10th out 17 in the relay, which I think is our best ever. Eric Weyman was our best in the men’s individual, 53rd of 78, and the men finished 14th out of 19 in the relay. [Link to results on the IOF webpage.]
The women’s relay team was really something. Beth Skelton ran the opening leg, a good run for her, and then Sharon on the second leg had her usual good run. Third leg went to Betty Andersen, though that was in doubt until the last moment – she had taken a fall in the individual, landing on a stump someplace on her ribs, and was really hurting. But she wanted to run. I put her through some sort of test that morning to see if she really could run and she passed, and so when Sharon came in, off went Betty on the anchor leg.
There was no GPS in those days, no TV from the forest. I think there were a couple of radio controls, but at the finish you just wait, as the better teams keep coming in. And then there she was, 10th, first of the English-speaking countries, ahead of Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain, plus France and Poland for good measure. It was really amazing.
I ran just the relay, first leg, not perfect but a good run. It was raining. My map case wasn’t sealed, and the map got wet, and the ink for the courses wasn’t waterproof and it started to run, but it held up just well enough to tell where my controls were. The ink kept running for quite a while after I had stopped running, so it looks almost impossible to read now. It wasn’t that bad.
The map for the individual shows the routes of the medalists and my map for the relay is shown. Also, just for comparison, the next map I went orienteering on back home, Estabrook Woods in Concord, Mass. Quite the difference.
