Occoneechee Mountain — 10 January, 2021

Filed under: Latest News by David Waller on January 2nd, 2021

All of the spaces for this event have been filled, and so registration is now closed.

Join us on January 10 for small orienteering event in a fantastic new venue — Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area in Hillsborough, NC.  We have a new map of this special area, and will be offering three courses for expert orienteers.  (Sorry, but Covid restrictions have drastically curtailed our ability to offer more beginner-friendly events.)  Anyone who has successfully completed an expert-level course (i.e., brown, green, red, or blue) is welcome to attend.  Register here before midnight on Friday, January 08 to reserve your map.  When you register, you must select a specific half hour window between 10:00 AM and noon. Once ten people have chosen a window, it will be closed. Also, please read the following general notes carefully, because this is a new venue for us and it has some atypical characteristics for BOK events.

The map will be printed at 1:7500 scale, with 5m contour intervals.  Course lengths are: brown = 3.0 km; green = 4.1 km; and red = 5.3 km.  The courses should feel like a cross between middle-distance (i.e., fairly short distance, lots of controls, and lots of direction changes) and classic (i.e., longer legs, longer winning times) design formats.  The terrain is extremely steep in places, and there can be significantly dense vegetation — take these factors seriously in planning your routes.  Thick vegetation is generally passable, but slow.  Extremely steep terrain at Occoneechee is completely impassable and dangerous.  In addition to testing your route planning abilities, all courses will be relatively physical, and despite their relatively short distances, we expect that winning times will be comparable to those at other venues.

To protect yourself and others, you must wear a mask when you are not on your course.  As with previous BOK events during this period, you will not receive your map unless you are masked.  Even when you are on your course, you are likely to encounter other park visitors, and may want to carry a mask with you.  Please don’t give other park users the impression that orienteers are recklessly uncaring about others’ well-being and/or the common good.

Iff you are masked, your map will be available from a picnic table near the western corner of the parking lot, located at 36.060463, -79.116976.  Map bags will not be provided — please bring your own letter-sized bag.  Because the pandemic has resulted in increased park attendance, parking is likely to be limited.  If/when the parking lot becomes full, you will need to wait at the park entrance in a queue.  Park management has advised us that earlier arrivals have a better chance of getting immediate parking.

2 Responses to “Occoneechee Mountain — 10 January, 2021”

  1. Are there MGRS maps available for this course?

  2. The map is custom-made orienteering map processed from Lidar and hours of field-work. It is much more detailed than a typical military, USGS, or MGRS map. Users do not need to plot coordinates, and upright on the map is aligned with magnetic (not true or grid) north.