Another weekend of orienteering on the coast wrapped up Sunday at one of our favorite venues, Bear Island. The day before, many of us also ran middle distance courses on Shackleford Banks. Having events at the two islands in the same weekend really highlighted the differences between these two venues: Shackleford is complex topologically, but relatively gentle, with scattered patches of medium/thick vegetation. Bear Island is quite a bit steeper, with large sheets of impassable vegetation, cut periodically into labyrinths of rough open sand. These labyrinths offer excellent locations for controls and for route choices that can take you way off the straight line.

In addition to the higher complexity of the terrain, Bear Island offered us much less hospitable weather. It was so hot that many people needed to come off their course before finishing. Nonetheless, impressive performances were turned in by Ethan Johnson and Phil Tosteson who finished first and second, respectively, on the red course. Kudos, too, to Micah Rodriguez, the only NJROTC cadet to finish the red course. Watch how people attacked their courses on Livelox: Shackleford; Bear Island. Results that include splits analysis are also available on Attackpoint.

By 2:00 on Sunday, runners were exhausted and those that were still on the island really wanted to catch their ferry back. It left us worrisomely low on volunteers to help with control pickup. Thankfully, Lily Addicott, Ethan Johnson, and Matt Craig could be convinced to go back out and collect our controls. The fortitude displayed by Lily and Ethan, who collected the most distant controls, earns them a place in the pantheon of control pickup heroes, right next next to the great Lindberg Bear Island control retrieval of 2025.

What are my thoughts for next year? When one of our best competitors (jokingly) says that she feels like she has memorized the Bear Island map, perhaps it’s time to take a break from it? I’ve toyed with trying to do an event at Jockey’s Ridge state park, but am not sure that it would draw many people. Maybe we’ll go back to Cape Lookout? Or maybe the east side of Shackleford? Such thoughts suggest that there’s a decent chance that we’ll go someplace brand new next year.

Finally, I need to apologize one last time to those who ran brown on Saturday. These folks accidentally received an earlier version of the course, which had three of their control circles on features that were 10-45 meters away from where the controls ended up being placed. Results follow