Orienteering at Blue Mountain

What?

Grizzly Orienteering is hosting another event at Blue Mountain. We will offer a new selection of courses, once again ranging from beginner to advanced. As usual, beginner instruction by experienced orienteers and all necessary equipment will be provided.

Date and Time

The event will take place Sunday, December 13, between 10:00am-2:00pm.

Location

Blue Mountain Recreation Area. NOTE: We will run the event from this parking lot at the bottom of the big sledding hill. If that lot fills up, we will streamer walking directions from nearby parking lots. The overview map on this webpage does not show the exact correct location. Please use the link above.

Covid-19 Precautions

Please wear masks the entire time you are in the registration, start, and finish areas.

Hand sanitizer will be available at check-in.

For the purposes of beginner instruction, you will be assigned to one of our experienced volunteers. Please respect their space and maintain proper social distancing.

Equipment

We will provide specially created maps with pre-printed courses for each participant.

We will also provide loaner compasses. Please return these when you are done. The compasses will be sanitized after each use.

Wear clothing that is comfortable for activities in the woods and off-trail. Please bring your own snacks and hydration. A limited supply of single-serving snacks will be provided, but due to Covid-19 precautions, selection and supply will be limited. Also due to Covid-19 precautions, water will NOT be provided. Please bring an adequate supply, you can get hot and sweaty doing orienteering.

Courses

You will be able to select from four different maps (courses): Beginner, Advanced Beginner , Intermediate, and Advanced courses. The distances indicate the shortest, straight-line distance for visiting all the controls and returning to the finish. You will certainly cover more distance than that.

Besides differing in length, courses differ in difficulty levels - the beginner course stays exclusively on trails; advanced beginner offers opportunities to take some shortcuts and shorter off-trail excursions; the intermediate course requires some traversing of the terrain off-trail; and the advanced courses often do not have trail options for some of the route choices.

We recommend that you pick a relatively easy course if this is your first event. If it goes quickly and you enjoy it, you can try another, more difficult course, right away. We recommend going out individually or in groups of no more than 2-3 so that everyone is able to get the hang of map reading and navigation.

Beginner Instruction

Beginner instruction will be provided by several experienced orienteers.

Start and Finish

You will need to check in with one of our volunteers at the start. They will provide you with the appropriate map and will keep track of who is out and doing which course. When you have found all the controls on your course, return to the finish and check in with a volunteer there. Even if you decide to quit your course before finding all the controls, please check in at the finish so we do not go out searching for you.

Take as much time as you want on the courses, but please be back by 2:00pm. At that time we will start taking down control flags.

Results

Event officials at the starting table will record your start and finish times, and the results will be posted on the Grizzly Orienteering website the evening of the event.

At a typical orienteering event, participants are given an electronic timing chip that is used to check in at each control location. Due to Covid-19, we have decided not to do that at our event, in order to minimize the number of surfaces competitors come in contact with.

Instead, we suggest that you show that you have visited each control point by taking a picture of the flag with the control code visible.

Split times / electronic timing (optional)

If you are feeling competitive and would like to see your split times between controls, follow the steps below:

1) On an iPhone or Android, download the UsynligO ("Invisible Orienteering" in Norwegian) app. This is a GPS-based app that will track your progress along the course and play a musical tone when you reach each control. It will also allow you to see your route and split times for each control.

2) Open the app and give it permission to access your location at all times.

3) Click on "UsynligO events."

4) Select "Grizzly Orienteering Blue Mountain - 12/13/2020"

5) Select the course you plan to do

6) Select "Start"

7) You will get a notification saying "Not at Start. X,XXX meters to start. Do you want to start from here instead?" Select "Automatic Start."

8) Leave the app running in the background - do not actively close out of it. Then, once you are at the start, the app will automatically start timing you and your progress on the course. You should hear beeps when you reach the start point.