Discussion: A new discipline for orienteering

Let's get a team together!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWxVVBIuk7E&fe...

Or forget about the ice boats...and just snap long Swedish blades onto your Solomon SNS bindings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMvOXY0pcg

I found out about this event roughly an hour before it happened, or else I would have been there with my speedskates and my handheld sail.

Here is the map. Shore and contours from ME GIS 2' lidar.


Damariscotta Lake


This is a marvelous lake; has a North part as well. Perfect for Ice Boat and Canoe Os. I'll post before next O event.

The big challenge for both ice boats and ice skates in the US, is to find natural ice, that is fresh, not eroded or covered with 6" of snow.

Here's three University of Alaska - Fairbanks students on hockey skates, in their quest to catch the ice when it is still fresh...but not too fresh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ciQTQ3BoQ

This is some pretty sweet ice, from Yukon. Almost unreal looking in places. Orienteering connection is the poster of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkehIIJQWak&t=...

We get often fine ice around here - Maine - being close to the coast and consequent rains that makes the snow into eastern powder but also into shining ice. So keep your XC boots on and grab the skis or the Nordic skates.

Fine ice!

In addition to fresh ice, not eroded or covered in snow as chitownclark mentions, wind is needed. People ice boat around here, sometimes, and I'm guessing there are only a couple of times during a normal winter when the conditions are good for iceboating. The ideal, from what I understand from an ice boater I know, is to have a thaw (to get rid of any accumulated snow on the ice) followed by some very cold temperatures and no snowfall for a while. Then hope that wind comes up, or else be willing to drive long distances to where good ice and wind are both present.

The iceboat enthusiasts from New England made trips to Montana, Ontario, and Sweden in the past month, but this year had some decent conditions locally as well. I was out skate-sailing twice this year on days when I shared the lake with iceboats (plus some when I was alone).

It doesn't take a lot of wind to get an iceboat going! (Although I have been out skating on days when they were becalmed.)

Yeah, the iceboater I know says people will drive many hours to find good ice and good winds! Which would make the chances of setting up an orienteering course at a certain location and a certain date, and have conditions be suitable for it, would be very small.

Iceboat races seem to always be arranged on short notice. But they expect that, and they're ready for it.

(For that matter, I fly hang gliders, that's also a last-minute deal.)

Had the pleasure of ice boating on my Dad's iceboat when I was kid here in Michigan. Definitely one of the most thrilling things I've ever done. Somehow the thought never occurred to me to combine it with orienteering, what a great idea!!

Hans, what was the wind direction on the day of the event?

A new discipline was born.

Alpine ski orienteering

We did one of those at Killington, Vermont, USA in 1992.

One of the controls was inside a lodge -- You had to answer how much a cup of hot chocolate cost. Overall route choice was tricky since you had to consider terrain difficulty as well as what lifts were available at the bottom of the run.

I have a friend in Colorado whose passion is downhill skiing, and he told me about some similar events here in the US, at multiple ski resorts, probably 5-10 years ago.

They essentially re-invented an orienteering score-o. My googling right now isn't seeming to find these events.... did anyone else happen to see these? The video linked above seems pretty similar.

Looks like a lot of fun, I'd definitely do one!