Everyone is welcome to our event at Eno River State Park on Sunday, September 15^th, 2024. Please register here before 6:00 PM on Friday, September 13, to ensure we have enough maps.

On the day of event, you will first head to check-in at the Fews Ford shelter, just west of the loop parking lot at the end of Cole Mill Road (6101 Cole Mill Rd, Durham. GPS coordinates = 36.073616, -79.007005). Check in is open between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM.  This is where you pick up your map.

Beginner courses (White and Yellow) will have their start and finish at the shelter. All other courses will have a remote start. The remote start is about 300 meters from Fews Ford shelter, and you must cross the pedestrian hanging bridge to get there. Please do not run on this bridge.

You can start is any time between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM. Make sure that you finish by 3:00 PM because we will begin clearing the courses at that time.

If you’re new to orienteering, you may want to attend our Beginner Q&A at noon. Make sure you give yourself enough time to check in and pick up your map before the Q&A. In the meantime, beginners can prepare themselves by watching our introductory videos at the top of this page.

The control descriptions for the beginner (white) and intermediate (yellow) courses will be in English. Advanced and expert-level courses will use symbolic control descriptions. If you need to brush up on what these symbols mean, you can do so here.

You must return to the check-in area at the Fews Ford shelter after completing your course. This is where we will download your results.

• Beginner (White) 1.8 km, map scale 1:5000
• Intermediate (Yellow) 2.2 km, map scale 1:5000
• Advanced (Orange) 3.5 km, map scale 1:10000
• Expert Short (Brown) 3.7 km, map scale 1:10000
• Expert Medium (Green) 5.8 km, map scale 1:10000
• Expert Long (Red) 6.8 km, map scale 1:10000

Green and Red courses include 2 river crossings (both crossing are at named fords)

We will use LIVELOX so you can see your route on the map after the event, along with everyone else on your course. LIVELOX is great because you can learn a lot about route choice, and it is fun to see how others’ choices affect their runs. The easiest way to use LIVELOX is to download the LIVELOX app to your phone. Then, when you start your course, open the app on your phone, click “Start Recording,” and then “Stop Recording” at the end of your run. Later in the day, the event will be published on livelox.com, where you can select your course for viewing. You will be offered an event to choose from so you can see your and everyone else’s routes. (Instead of using the app, uploading your route from your Garmin or Strava account is also possible.)

BOK’s first score sprint was a success. The weather, while warm, was not as stifling as the average NC summer and the majority of the score sprint orienteers successfully completed their course. For this “score sprint,” competitors of all ranges competed on the same course with clothespins designating some to run farther than others as […]

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Join us for an Advanced Classic Radio-O event on Saturday & Sunday September 7 and 8th at Schenck Forest.

This is an Advanced event, so eperiance at a previous Radio-O event (or the cycleing transmitters at the Radio-O classes) is required.

We will have a classic course with 5 transmitters each day. If all goes well and it is forcast to be hot I will try to have the transmitters on at 8am for the early birds. If there are any updates they will be posted here and an email will be sent to the BOK Radio-O mail list.

• Saturday 2m:
  • 5 controls 3.3k straight line 3.9 effective length
    • Need to cross the stream
  • 4 controls 2.6k straight line 3.2 effective length
    • No major stream crossing
  • Foxes: 144.5 MHz
  • Beacon: 145.55 MHz
• Sunday 80m:
  • 5 controls 3.4k straight line 4.1 effective length
    • Need to cross the stream
  • 4 controls 2.4k straight line 2.9 effective length
    • No major stream crossing
  • Foxes: 3.510 MHz
  • Beacon: 3.545 MHz

Registration Closes Friday 6pm

• Saturday 2m Sept. 7th
• Sunday 80m Sept 8th
• Location:
  Schenck Forest
  35.816338, -78.720376
• Event Types:
  • Advanced Radio Orienteering
  • 2m Course on Saturday
  • 80m course on Sunday
• Starts are from 9 – 10 AM.
• Course Closes at 1:00 PM: You need to be out of the woods by 1 PM.
• Event Directors: Joseph & Ruth

Here are the final details:

• Location: Fred Fletcher Park, 820 Clay St, Raleigh
• Turn on transmitters: 8:45am
• Set out transmitters: 9:00
• First Start: as soon as we are all back

• Slow 3.52
• Spectator 3.55
• Fast 3.57
• Beacon 3.60

I will set up SI-Timing for Start, Spectator, & Finish if you want to time your sprints. Results won’t be published, but you can see your result on the Tablet.

We are going to start up the Radio-O advanced practice sprints again in preperation for the US Champs in October. The first practice will be at Fred Fletcher Park, 820 Clay St, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. The plan is to start at 9am. We meet and each sets out a transmitter bamboo pole or two and then we come back and run the sprint. When we are done with the first sprint we will do it again. The whole event should take about 2 hours.

Everyone experianced in Radio-O is welcome. We won’t have beginner instruction. Sprints require fast locating and good memory. Practice, practice and more practice – make evaluating the field automatic. After this first practice we will try and do some weekday evenings.

Notices regarding Radio-O are sent out in the BOK-Radio-O mail group. To subscribe, send an email to BOK-Radio-O+Subscribe@BackwoodsOK.org.

Coming up on August 25 is the final BOK sprint event of the summer. This will take place at Dix Park in Raleigh (35.7713540, -78.6618298) and will feature a score event based on Cristina Luis’s presentation at the Orienteering USA March Monthly Forum. In place of the race, beginners and newcomers may select to do the Explorer course, which will be an all-controls, do-what-you-can map.

Registration will close on Friday, August 23 at 9:00 PM.

This mass start event is meant to be “self-handicapping.” At many controls orienteers will find a clothespin they take denoting they are to run an additional leg. This design is intended so that all orienteers might finish the course around the same time. If you are interested in checking out the general idea of the race, watch this OUSA club forum.

For the race, there will be a required pre-briefing at 9:30 AM at the parking lot to hand out maps, discuss rules, and walk together to the start. The mass start will be at 10 AM.

The longest possible length of the course will be 4.9km, while the main course will be 2.9km. There will be opportunities to run a shorter course explained during the briefing. The map will be 1:5,000 with 2.5m contours. Due to construction in the southern section of the park, all orienteers are asked to pay close attention to the out of bounds areas marked on their maps. Furthermore, everyone should be aware that the cemetery is out of bounds. For all courses, including the Explorer course, runners must finish by 12:30 PM when control pick up will begin.

There will be no required start time for the Explorer course; however, we ask that participants plan to begin the course soon after 10 AM. A Q&A session will be offered around 10:15 AM and newcomers are encouraged to check out our videos at https://backwoodsok.org/event-info.