Big Blue Adventure Series Training Event

Livermore
Sunday, Jun. 8, 2003

Contact: Mark Blair, 925-462-2254

Every year for more than twenty years now, BAOC orienteers have enjoyed running across the open forest slopes and rolling grasslands of Morgan Territory Regional Wilderness north of Livermore in the East Bay. This year will be no exception. This land of oak and madrone is steep in some places but almost flat in other places, and includes some terrain so ideally suited to orienteering that it was used as the site of a World Ranking Event (WRE) in the "O' in the Oaks" A-meet hosted by BAOC in October of 2001. Our new map of this area was extended and completely redone for that event, and it now stands as one of the largest and most painstakingly accurate maps that the club has produced.

This year we'll offer the "standard 7" courses. There will also be a special "Long Orange" course intended as a training course for the "Adventure Racing" crowd, although anyone else is of course welcome to try this course also. Course setter Dwight Freund has cleverly engineered everything so that all courses, even the White and Yellow beginner-level courses, are centered on the ideal terrain mentioned above. The amount of climb on the advanced courses will be moderate compared to years past, although the navigation involved will be no less sophisticated. I expect the winning times on all courses will be quite fast.

ALL COURSES will use a remote Start about 750 m from the Registration area near the parking lot. Plan on a comfortable, level walk of 10 or 15 minutes to get there. The Finish for all courses will be located about 250 m from the parking lot. Registration will open at 9:00 A.M., with start times available from 10:00 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. ALL COURSES WILL CLOSE AT 2:30 P.M., so please plan to start so that you'll have enough time to complete your course before this occurs.

Here are the course lengths (measured as bee-line distance from one control to the next) and their amount of climb (counted as uphill climb only, along the "most reasonable" route from one control to the next):

              controls   length(km)   climb(m)
    White         9         2.5          95
    Yellow       13         3.2         120
    Orange       12         3.7         175
    L. Orange    17         5.6         250
    Brown        10         3.7         170
    Green        12         4.6         250
    Red          15         6.4         295
    Blue         23         8.4         395

To get to Morgan Territory, go east on I-580 toward Livermore. Take the exit onto North Livermore Ave. and head north a few miles to a forced left bend onto Manning Rd. Proceed for another half mile or so on Manning and turn right onto Morgan Territory Rd. Follow this road (which is quite narrow in some places) 5.6 miles to the Morgan Territory Regional Wilderness parking lot. Park admission is free.