Discussion: NAOC Control 6 (Red), 7 (Blue)

Michael Eglinski posted some cool photos of infamous control on the first day of the NAOC at his blog page at
http://okansas.blogspot.com/
There are some comments related to this control. Would be nice to receive your opinion and account of your experience with it. No cursing please :)

My own - coold place but unfair location.

I went out and checked this checkpoint out on Sunday afternoon with my wife and daughter. My daughter quite enjoyed exploring in the rocks - as did I during the race. The map is fine although at the time I didn't think so. What cost me my time was not thinking that the opening in the rocks was actually where I had to go in (the two pics on the Spike's web site). So I ran back and forth looking where to go in costing me almost two minutes. It was certainly an advantage to seeing somebody come out from that site but I think I was the first M21 starter that day. It would have been cool to have had a sprint and short course race in that area.

I don't think that the control was unfair. I didn't see the opening first, but I was sure that I have to go left and took a closer look and then I saw it. I noticed a similar opening on #3 (M21) so I was not too surprised at #7.

Check also the short video I took:
http://cgi.cae.wisc.edu/~eglin/control1.shtml

I'll second Mike's quote, sort-of: "The map is fine although at the time I didn't think so." There is a second crack above and slightly N of the one that the control is in, however on the map that crack is mapped as extremely narrow, while in reality is it wider than the widely-mapped crack that the control was in. The exit crack at the bottom along the trail was less than a meter wide, but its mapped as wide as the grand canyon going into Green control #116 just to the N. I'm pretty small and I think I had to turn slightly sideways to run down it. Both cracks are indeed on the map, but I think their realtive sizes are wrong and that threw me big-time on course. I lost 6.5 mins here. I guessed that the narrow crack was too small to be mapped. If I had read more carefully could probably have figured it out, but I didn't see it until after I finished. The proximity of the Green control #116 (ours was #115) just 40m away, also in a "slot" was not very nice. Simply leaving the Blue/Red control out and sending us all to the Green course control would have been cleaner. I'll admit it was a nifty spot, but I don't think the map and proximity to another similar control allowed for its use. Someone protested a less-dodgey location on my red course last spring and it was upheld...that still irks me.

What was the control discription for this control? Was it useful? Was there a note about this control in the pre-race notes and was it useful for finding this control?

The clue was the IOF "narrow slot" symbol, which was the correct description. One might argue that there was more than one narrow slot in the circle, but I don't think that was a factor personally. No additional notes about the control in the pre-race notes, and there should never have to be. I did put a note in my course setter's notes about the control on my old red course, but that should have been a tip for me to use a different location (actually I didn't think it needed support in the notes, but one of my advisors did, so it went in). In general, pre-race course notes should not exist except maybe for special safety concerns. The clue sheet should say it all, and if it doesn't the locations should be reconsidered. That was a hard-learned lesson for me.

I feel partly responsible for this control, as it was me who advised to the course setter to put 4-5 controls along the cliffs (not this in particular although). In original version of this day courses there were no controls on the cliffs at all but I said the people should see the cliffs, as it is unique place.

The map. If all cracks (corridors) here were mapped exactly in correct scale you would not see many of them on the map at all. Also the map was originally drafted for 1:15000 scale. So there was no choice but draw some corridors schematically out of scale.

I am still not sure if it fair or not to put control at the location like this. I incline to that the control was good. If you running from control #5 you see bridge and crack after it (which is 100% sure point). Now you run around the big cliff (either left or right) and you come to the corner where the right hole should be. If you did something like this you would never confused the place and thus would never overlooked the hole even if it was extremely small. Also you can notice (if you read the map carefully) the small black spike from the back cliff, which suppose to show that entrance into the corridor is very narrow. So, all of you just need to do is slow down (might be walk) and be very careful in this extremely saturated with features place.

Regarding the crack on the north that Eddie mentioned. It is seemed to be very narrow on the map because of stony ground is shown in it. And I know for sure that it is narrower than one with Green control.

The description. The description was corridor. That’s all. It did not help at all. I think it should be south corridor or something like that.

When I saw the cliffs my first impression was it would be great to have a short course here. I meant 2 courses semifinal and final in one day. The semifinal could be somewhere without cliffs and final all on the cliffs with the map in 1:7500 (or even 1:5000) scale. It turned out it was original idea of NEOC but the decision was made by USOF to have two classics. I think it was thoughtless decision because all circumstances were not taken into consideration.

There was also an idea to run fundraising sprint event on the cliffs first day evening. But I thought that NA Champ was so important event for all competitors that we could not distract them with any recreational events. Might be I was wrong…

There was a possibility to indicate the width (1m or 0.5m) of the corridor in the descriptions. Might be it would help.

Those rocks were some of the coolest part of the terrain. I've run in similar terrain in the Czech Rep, this was a piece of cake compared to what they sent us through.

It's a real shame that the two course format didn't take place, those tend to be such awesome days, why we don't have more is a mystery for me. That map would have been perfect for the type of race you suggested.

Actually, I think the Ritchie Ledges area was overrated in terms of being an interesting orienteering area. Yeah, it's the only rocks in Ohio, but the truth is that it's really a linear feature, and the only challenge is to know how far along it you are. The people who had trouble with control #115 didn't have any trouble getting to the right place, by and large (or within 10 meters anyway), but just found themselves faced with what looked like a solid wall of rock. For other controls, like #116, or whatever the Blue one was after #115, it was only mildly interesting from a navigational perspective: run along the cliff line, and look behind the right rock. (It was a very cool place to see, but not necesarily while orienteering.)

The course that suffered the most from Ritchie Ledges was actually Yellow. Taking a tour past the cliffs was fine, but the course did almost a complete clockwise lap of the hill, which was excessive. The problem was that this made the course 5 km, which is too long for Yellow. If, after seeing the east side of the hill, the course had just headed straight for the finish by cutting off a couple of controls (7 and 8, I think), it would have been fine.

But this kind of terrain also has an additional problem. The mapping standards and techniques were created with "normal" forest in mind, and aren't really well suited to this sort of stuff, in my opinion. The scale is one issue, and blowing the map way up (to 1:5000 or more) would help somewhat, if there was a corresponding increase in detail. In general, I don't like the idea of increasing the scale to add detail, but in order to use a place like this for a sprint event, it would work.

Even so, though, one problem is that all the black stuff completely obliterates the contours, which are really important. If this was the predominant terrain type in the world, I think we would have developed a very different kind of map. I've run on a few maps that have this general kind of terrain (Garden of the Gods, Vasquez Rocks, and some others), and I've never really been satisfied with the maps. The mappers did excellent work, given the task they had. But the mapping standards fail. In Garden of the Gods, if you hadn't been there, you wouldn't look at the map and expect to see these giant plates of rock sticking up into the sky. There's no way to know how tall some black blob is going to be, and in the really detailed areas, the contours all vanish and you don't know what's going on. Yeah, you can get some of it by context, and people manage to get by and navigate anyway. But it's not nearly as good as the way normal forest gets mapped.

I've thought about trying to put something together in Moab, Utah, which is a place with very interesting terrain, and good facilities (due to its appeal to mountain bikers). But there's lots of sandstone terrain out there, and one problem is that orienteering maps don't really capture this stuff well. (There are also other terrain types that would be better served by some different type of map.)

Ok, here's my mapping beef. A trail and a line of cliffs basically look the same. On an area with a line of cliffs, trail running along the top and trail running along the bottom, it gets pretty hard to separate it all out. Not to mention the bridge, which is also a pretty similarly mapped feature.

As for the cliffs area at NA Champs, I thought it was really cool. I was really careful at #7, basically crossed the small bridge and started looking for a way to get in behind the cliffs. I ran past both entries to the control location before stopping and looking carefully enough to see an entry point (I ran in and out the 2nd entry point). I must say, I was super relieved to get out of there without any significant time lost.


blend into one.

Very nice web page for this thread, Mike E. I wasn't there, but the story and pictures describe the situation very well.