Backwoods Orienteering Klub

On June 29 and 30, Backwoods Orienteering Klub held a unique advanced event at a new venue: Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area in Alamance County. The rocky and overgrown terrain coupled with sweltering conditions summoned an inspiring display of fortitude and adaptability from all participants.

Kevin McCabe and Debra and Jeff Rezeli dared to start it off in the dark with a Saturday night 2-hour score-o. Their experience helped temper expectations leading into Sunday’s scrabble-o, where they placed first and second respectively at this format, which is detailed in the event announcement.

Incidentally, Kevin won this event’s compass contest as discussed on Attackpoint by guessing “jokegitvqzwaxrpybunchm” as the winning route. The highest scoring submission belongs to Shawn who guessed “jaxucinqwertympvozhdsbfgkl” forming 7 words for 207 points. Yes, vozhds is a word.

Though it generated some head shakes back at camp, hm is also an acceptable word per scrabble dictionary. Overall, the scrabble-o format received positive feedback from participants and may be deserving of consideration for future events. It certainly seems to help diversify route selection. [Edit: scrabble-o scoring errors were identified and corrected since publishing this post.]

For those not interested in spelling, there was a traditional score-o. Both Vladimir Stemkovski and Brian Thompson visited an impressive 15 controls within 2 hours, but Vladimir was able to get to some higher scoring controls to secure the win. Upload and/or replay routes at the event Livelox page.

Thank you to Alamance County Parks and Recreation for allowing orienteering in Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area. Thank you to Dave for his help with organizing this event. Thank you to Greg and Kathleen for control pickup. Fun fact: Greg and Kathleen were the only ones who visited control T. Full results below.

Filed under: Event Results, Latest News by Matt Kirk