McCartney Creek - training Wednesday Evening Training

Organizers: Alison Schoenhardt (Event Director), Joanne Woods (Membership), Robyn Rennie (Assistant), Graeme Rennie (Coach), Adam Woods (Coach)

Map: McCartney Creek

Thanks to Alison for another great training session. Timing results are purely for testing. Competitors did a selection of loops ranging from Easiest to Hardest and learned lots about reading contours and vegetation features.

Description

With the Western Canadian Orienteering Championships coming up, this is your opportunity to do some forest-specific orienteering training. Orienteering in the forest is a different challenge to our mostly urban Vancouver-based maps. In the forest you'll have to rely on contour features, using handrails, having solid attackpoints, and have some relocation skills in your back pocket.

Schedule

6:15 - 6:45pm Map walks with a leader (map walk should take 20 minutes)

8:15pm Course Closure, participants must report to the Finish before leaving.

Courses

For the training event, we're offering a short map walk to get you familiar with the terrain, the contours, etc. This is a great skill to develop as at major orienteering events there is a model map offered, which allows you to go out into a small piece of terrain to familiarize yourself with the terrain and how the mapper has chosen to represent the terrain.

Next, there is a short course. We will not time you for this course, and speed is not the main goal here. Instead, the goals are to focus on using good orienteering techniques, to read, interpret, and use the land forms/contours as much as possible, and to not rely on using trails as the only navigation aid. We recommend that you spend a few minutes checking out the course and either marking on your handrails and attackpoints with a highlighter, or just thinking about them in advance. NOTE: if you are going to the Western Canadian Champs, this is a great opportunity to really focus on not relying on the trails - so try to choose contour features to use as handrails. (read this handout for more information - just ignore the parts about the exercises).

If this is your first orienteering event, sign up for the beginner course!

Safety Precautions

Always use good judgement and common sense. Carry a whistle at all times. Headlamps are essential to see and be seen. Take care when crossing roads and parking lots. Watch out for other runners, cyclists, and trail/sidewalk users.

Parking/Start Location

Meet at the top of Berkley Ave at Hyannis Drive (see map below). This area gets very busy with trail users and there's not a huge amount of parking, so please car pool as much as possible or consider taking transit (the 214 from Phibbs Exchange takes you within 4 minutes walk from the start). Street parking is available. There's also parking at Blueridge Park. Please be respectful of residents when parking!

Without volunteers, these events cannot take place. A hearty thanks to all those helping put this event on. If you would like to volunteer/help at upcoming WETs/WJRs or would like to organize a WET please let us know.

Location