Discussion: Saltese Uplands control placement

Some finishers (I was one) cast some doubt on the placement of two controls at the June 7 Saltese Upland event of the PNWOF. So I volunteered to pick up controls in that area, and had a closer look while not on the clock.

Control 109 (#6 on Longer Advanced) is shown on the course map at a boulder cluster, but I found the flag about 50m east of that location, at the southeast corner of the boulder field next to the green strip and gully. It was hung low behind the rockiness and some shrubbery, just on the brink of the steep drop into the gully, therefore not visible from the direction of the circled boulder cluster; you had to be pretty much on top of it, on the verge of plunging down the dropoff, to see it.

Control 119 (#5 on Shorter Advanced, #10 on Longer Advanced) is shown on the course maps at a tiny rocky area (two teensy dots of stony ground symbol), but I found the flag about 35m SSW of that location, on another rocky area mapped identically, as two tiny dots. Complicating things is that the feature where the control was actually located (the SSW two tiny dots) was obscured on the map by being exactly underneath the purple control circle (7mm diameter on the 1:10 000 map, hence 35m radius from the indicated feature), and therefore invisible to me (and presumably others) until very careful examination long after finishing; and the control flag was obscured in the terrain by being hung low and behind a chunk of the rock, and some unmapped shrubbery which obscured both the rockiness and the control from the direction of the circled rockiness.

I was hesitant to post this on Attackpoint. John H (the chief organizer of today's event) and all of the other PNWOF organizers have done such a huge amount of work to put on these events, and I'm grateful to them all. I've had a lot of fun at every event so far, including today's, and I expect that to continue through the finale Sunday at Fishtrap. Especially out here in the eastern edge of Washington (and adjoining Idaho and Montana), with the organizing being carried out by a very limited number of very-hard-working locals augmented by some imports from Seattle and farther, I don't think anything's gained by filing protests or insisting on higher levels of perfection. If this would have been a national championship or national ranking event, then perhaps additional eyes of controllers and vetters would have been brought to bear on the situation, and the misplacements perhaps avoided. But this was simply an informal event in a week whose purpose is to let orienteers have fun, and I suspect that demanding more cross-checking would be far more likely to result in the event not happening at all than happening more perfectly.

So ultimately I decided to post this only to reassure any runners who may have questioned their own navigation at these two controls. I'm glad to see that the organizers have posted splits / results on Attackpoint (even if it shows me as DNF/MP), rather than declaring the results to be void and posting nothing. I hope the same happens with the official results (not sure if that will be on the Cascade or Eastern Washington website), with perhaps a mention in the writeup of the situation (hopefully more concise than my verbosity).

#119 - I figured out that's what happened once I finished and looked at the map closer (and saw the two dots under the circle). It was frustrating at the time, but at the end of the day, it was the same for everyone; what they chose to do with it (mp or be stubborn and find the damn thing) was up to the competitor. And I echo the hard work of a few volunteers trying to expand the sport.