Hot and dry conditions greeted about 50 regional orienteers on Sunday to one of our historically lesser-used venues, Raven Rock State Park. The park’s distance from the Triangle and its aging map have, over time, rendered it a once-per-year orienteering venue. All that changed on Sunday, as we unveiled a brand new map of the area, field-checked and drafted by Will Dickinson, from Wild Terrain Navigation in Wisconsin. Will came down to NC for several weeks in early 2026 and worked assiduously on creating a great new map, with increased focus on vegetation mapping. Sunday’s orienteers were generally very satisfied with the new map – it’s definitely a huge improvement from the old one. A few runners came back with reports of things that they thought should be added to the map. The great thing is that, going forward, it will be very easy to add small edits to this map very accurately, as it is fully georeferenced.
Here’s an example of a comment that several runners reported. In the image below, runners targeted the circled cliff, coming from the south. Their idea was to use either the black cross or the trail junction as an attackpoint; but both of these features are extremely hard to see from the ground, and a few runners lost time looking for them. The gravesite is very small – just a headstone or two – and is easily missed. Will’s original map showed this with a black X, but Brian and I decided to change it to the cross symbol – a deprecated symbol that is no longer part of the official ISOM symbol set (while 527 ‘Fodder Rack’ remains). (That change didn’t really matter because at 1:10000 scale, the cross appeared to many as an X, anyway.) But for those who wanted to use the trail junction(s) as an attackpoint, note that: (a) the trail that heads southwest is mapped as being ‘indistinct’; and (b) there is a gap between the trails at their junction. This gap implies that the junction may not be fully visible. And the fact that it’s mapped as being indistinct means that, even when you’re on it, it may not look a lot like a regular foot trail. Thus, very careful runners might have realized that these attackpoints could be hard to decipher in the field, and could try to use other features to hone in on the control.
The advanced courses were hard – rugged and green. Many legs forced runners to decide whether to take a direct line to their target by plowing through relatively thick mountain laurel, or potentially waste time by going around it. In several places, very accurate navigators could use Will’s vegetation mapping to take routes through the mountain laurel that were less dense. Some of these routes and decisions can be played back on the LiveLox page for this event. And those who watch the replay of the red course are welcome to submit a caption for this image:
A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make an event like this happen. Other than some early work that I did with course designs, nearly all of the event preparation was handled by Brian Pike, one of the club’s budding new directors. Brian is one of the hardest working, most upbeat, and earnest people in the club, and was a pleasure to work with on this event. Be sure to thank Brian for all his hard work, including – but not limited to – removing hundreds of spider webs from the forest with his body. Here’s one of Brian’s photos from setting out controls:
Many thanks, too, to Matt Craig, Clint Lloyd, and Lina Lindberg for help with control pickup and cleanup. Great meet guys! Results follow:
