Forty-three competitors enjoyed a beautiful day of ski-orienteering up at Royal Gorge. With sunny, clear conditions and temperatures reaching into the low 50s, it was a great weather change from the previous week's windy snowstorm at Bear Valley. Below are the complete results.
On the White course, Royal Gorge employee Bittina Kohlbrenner raced around her first-ever orienteering course in under 10 minutes per kilometer to take the win.
Area skier Blake Tresan barely beat out long-time BAOC orienteer Derek Maclean on the Short Score-O. Blake's wife Colombe, in a team with Collette Zemitis, came in 3rd. While Colombe and Collette came in about 2 minutes late, incurring a slight overtime penalty, they did get one more control than Collette's husband, Cedrik, who finished fourth.
On the Long Score-O, the day's most popular course, the 3-hour race was long enough to really tire people out. Several people stopped even when they had enough time left to get 1 or 2 more controls. While most competitors picked up the controls to the west and south of the lodge, the stronger competitors were faced with a long steep loop out to the east to pick up the toughest 6 controls.
The top 5 competitors managed to pick up all 18 controls, but only the first two arrived back on time. Kent Ohlund and Matthias Kohler arrived back in 1st and 2nd place with just over a minute separating them after more than two and a half hours! Dan Stoll, on his third (?) day on skating skis came in third, picking up all the controls and ending up only 89 seconds overtime. The top woman, Julie Raymond came in 4th overall, also picking up all the controls, and less than 9 minutes overtime, to beat her husband, Neil, in a race for the first time ever.
Congratulations to the winners and everyone who came out to face the challenging day of ski-orienteering.
Thanks to Royal Gorge management, especially Mike Grimmer, for their help in planning, equipment on the day of the event, and the fun prizes for several of the top competitors on the various courses. In addition we had several volunteers who helped out: Angelica Riley planned and field-checked the courses and helped with pre-event preparation; Tom Jahn, Adolf Jochnick, Matthias Kohler, and Brenda Giese helped me to hang and vet controls; Tom Jahn and Sharon Evans helped me at the start/finish/results area; and finally on control pickup, I got help from Tom Jahn, Matthais Kohler, Julie Raymond, and especially Neil Hunt (who retrieved the high Lola's Lookout control flag, along with several others).
WHITE 6.5km, 8 controls
1 Bittina Kohlbrenner 62:12
2 Robert Lewis 80:20
3 Janet Kowal, Matt
McNamara, Jen Childs,
Joshua Baruch * 138:55
*On snowshoes
SHORT SCORE-O 90-minute limit, 10 pts/control, -2 pts/min. late
Points Time
1 Blake Tresan 110 83:06
2 Derek Maclean 110 84:36
3 Collette Zemitis,
Colombe Tresan 106 91:25
4 Cedrik Zemitis 100 80:42
5 Carlo Alesandrini 70 82:22
6 David Dreyfuss 64 92:27
7 Trinka Gillis 52 93:58
Young Dreyfuss DNF Lost Card
LONG SCORE-O 180-minute limit, 10 pts/control, -2 pts/min. late
Points Time
1 Kent Ohlund 180 152:08
2 Matthias Kohler ** 180 153:32
3 Dan Stoll-Hadayia 176 181:29
4 Julie Raymond 162 188:41
5 Syd Reader 156 191:53
6 Adolf Jochnick 150 177:36
7 Brian Peterson 150 179:22
8 Tony Pinkham 148 180:54
9 Neil Hunt 144 182:59
10 Pete Olsten 130 173:50
11 Mary Cooke 120 113:14
12 Dan Greene 120 144:23
13 Nik Weber 120 150:10
14 Bob Cooley 120 155:55
15 Patty Clemo 116 181:40
16 Karen Sessler 110 171:25
17 Brenda Giese 110 179:20
18 Susan Petrick 102 198:41
19 Scott Aster 100 126:24
20 Rosemary Johnson 100 169:10
21 Aileen Abernathy 100 177:08
22 Bjorn Widerstrom 100 190:00
23 Martin Bergstrand 90 151:48
24 Lucy DuPertuis 84 182:16
25 Jae Gustafson 80 118:08
26 Sharon Evans 80 124:42
27 Deron van Hoff 80 179:45
28 Nancy Lindeman 60 146:30
** Helped set controls. While at a formal
competition this would make Matthias ineligible,
at this local event - given how far ahead of
3rd he was - he was declared eligible and
awarded 2nd place.