Discussion: Ortonville rec

Hey Igor. Anyway to map Ortonville Recreation Area? That place has some amazing terrain

Agreed, the streamer course Lemieux and McWilliams set up was a lot of fun, very enjoyable terrain even in 2' of snow.

My proposal, until auto veg is available, is to have an event without the map. Use USGS and get some fit local (cough cough) to jog all of the trails over the winter (also at Bald Mountain and Holly and anywhere else that's good).

Could also try non expert field checking, which would be better than none, as long as course setters were mindful of it.

My other proposal is that we'd trade OUSA an A meet for them producing a field checked map (they contract map production, etc.)

Can we get someone out that way to host??????!!!!!!

Here is what I had for the southern part of Ortonville about three years ago:
https://storage.googleapis.com/arborace/ortonville...

If somebody could run trails and give some rough indication if there are any crazy green areas to avoid then we can definitely have an event there.

The contours look pretty good.

Also, for an event we need reasonably sized parking and permit.

For a training we just need somewhere to park a couple of cars. So please go ahead send me updates with trails and anything else, I'll update the map gladly.

those are some pretty sweet contours

This might work for parking, although last time I was there in person there were about 24" of snow on it. Lemieux might know of options.

I've been trail running out there for a few years. I've been using this map:
http://www.hikingmichigan.com/PDFinfo/BigLoopTrail....

If racing in the southern park we could use the Bloomer #3 parking area. I've bike thru there on the dedicated bike loop which would be the outer loop of trails.

I've run through the area between sawmill road and fox lake. If I remember it was rolling hills with the legacy trail (marked blue) running from fox lake down to the parking. I'm not sure how big that parking area is. The old gravel pit has ample parking if the DNR opens it up and lets us park there.

The section north of fox lake is awesome. Lots of really nice terrain and fairly good running. I've tried to find a lot of the trails on the map. Some are still hiked but a few are hard to find. I went up as far as Hegel on some of the legacy trails. It gets more open (no trees) the closer you get to Hegel.

The section southwest of Tody Lake is nice with some big pine forests and some decent topography. There is a sweet overlook to the southwest...you can see for miles.

If we used the section north of fox lake we could park at the equestrian campground. Ample parking. There is also a medium size lot on fox lake by the power lines. The best start would be on fox lake directly north of the gravel pit. The road is wide enough to potentially park down the side of it if the DNR allows it. Fox lake is closed from the gravel pit all the way down to the private party. It is essentially a one lane road that the locals use to go mud bogging down.

I have several gps tracks of trails on the north side of fox lake. Igor - would you be able to get basemaps of that section? I'm more than happy to go out there and explore the trails and get them all mapped out.

I would definitely be willing to host out there.

Holly recreation are would also be another really good location for o-meets. Nice terrain and a ton of parking.

Nice resource if you want to go out looking for legacy trails in some of the local parks.

http://www.hikingmichigan.com/ParkMaps.html

The map shows a lot of trails around Big Fish Lake. I haven't run any of those so I'm not sure what the topography is like.

I love Ortonville because it gets very little use. And it's fun trying to find all the old trails. Biking is not allowed north of Fox Lake rd. I noticed that the trail markers say snowmobile are also allowed. I think this may be new because I never noticed that in the past.

I will look to see if there is any data in the rest of the park but two years ago the SW part was the only one with decent elevation data as it is in Oakland county.

Thanks for the trails map!

Great info, Tony.

Ken and Jeff McW's training course was full of snowmobile tracks on the trails.

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