Catégorie : events Page 8 of 11

John Charlow set two courses  for ski-orienteering and three for snowshoeing.  In planning the courses he was restricted by park rules that required to stay on trails, avoiding possi-bilities for building in “short cuts”.  The courses were thus on the easy side with only the simplest of route choices offered.  No complaints received, though!

The ‘shoers surprised us a bit – outnumbering skiers by more than 2 : 1.  The combined participation was 65, boosted by a number of members of the Montreal Outdoors Adventure Club. There was plenty of snow on the ground but a mild temperature and a bright sun gave some of the skiers waxing problems.

Thanks to those who helped and made the event possible: Bruce Glen and Elaine hung half of the flags on Saturday afternoon and, along with Jake Brennan and Sarah Wilson, picked up all 33 flags after the meet. Dmitri Galovanov handled all of the timing and Gloria Charlow manned the Registration table.

Check the results here (pdf)

The results :

Women :
1. Aurore Varela 500
2. Jessica Auer 480
3. Julie Larivière 390
Nancy Bourassa 390
Denise OBriain 360
6. Sarah Shipley 310
Catherine Meinrath 310
8. Sylvie Gagné 280
9. Lina Gavrilov 240

Men
1. Thomas Kneubühler 1:27:03
2. Francis Falardeau 1:27:12
3. Matthew Hrycink 1:34:17
4. Stephen Novosad 1: 36:40
5. Lukas Wildi 1:38:12
6. Stephane Rousseau 1:54:16
7. Nicholas Barrière 1:59:36
(all with 600 pts)

+ Complete results are posted on the Results page

+ The Report by John Charlow is available here!

CTV Ottawa recently featured Orienteering on their « You’re Never Too Old » segment. It was filmed at the relay event during the Ottawa O championships Week.

Watch the video!

It was an exciting O-week in Ottawa, with a spectacular terrain on Sunday full of lakes and beaver dams. Several members of the Ramblers OC participated. Three medals came back to the Montreal Region, thanks to Aurore Varela, Gloria Charlow and John Charlow  (category W35-44, W75+, M75+, Long Distance event). The full results are here.

The Long Distance event created some discussion around the topic of « uncrossable features », as many legs created route choices involving lakes and beaver dams – see the following example:

To swim or not to swim? And if so, are you allowed? Should you be allowed? Follow the controversial  discussion «Forbidden Features at COC Long» on Attackpoint.org.

More maps and routes from all the COC events here on Route Gadget.

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Update: The discussion « Thinking the uncrossable » has now received 131 posts. For those don’t have time to read them all, here some treats:

Orienteering is a running sport, but it is not a track sport. Or a trail sport. It is a battle with nature. It is a race over terrain, through muck and green. If you’re too much of a pussy to get your feet wet, you’re no Canadian champion in my book.

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Some countries have a liberal view of land ownership and a « right to roam » so that « settlement » does not imply « out of bounds », others regard the land around a house as automatically private. Cultivated land might have different meanings in different places: always out of bounds, or out of bounds sometimes but not right now. Some countries have vast differences between the seasons, others may be fairly stable.

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I find it equally strange that citizens of the « caution: this coffee is hot » culture aren’t more concerned about liability. But in any case, isn’t the point that you should be able to tell if a feature, for example a cliff, is crossable from the map without having to go to that feature to look?

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Its still up to the mapper to decide what is crossable or not – even on sprint maps – and I often don’t agree with what they decided. So the map hasn’t told me the truth. I’m pretty good at climbing fences and I’m not a bad swimmer, and I can often find ways up or down « uncrossable » cliffs. Just because the mapper can’t climb a fence doesn’t mean no one else can.

In other news: Thierry Gueorgiou just talked  this map on Twitter. Anything uncrossable here?