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Bear Valley Ski-O

Date: (Sun.) Mar. 1, 2009
Location: near Arnold, CA
Event Director: - 650.793.8764
Course Setters: Neil Hunt, Julie Raymond
Type: Ski-O; Point-to-point ski-O event with five courses (White, Orange, Green, Red, and Blue) of standard lengths

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Event Write-Up

By

Julie Raymond and Neil Hunt designed some of our best ski-O courses, but circumstances worked against our having a well-attended event. The courses were a bit longer than usual because we were racing only one day, but the climbs were wonderfully minimal, probably the least that we've ever had at Bear Valley. As we are seeing with our ski-O courses these days, there were lots of route choices and, at this event, even a maze of secondary trails in the Blood's Creek area. Each of the advanced and intermediate courses had at least one control to find in the maze. The only problems were one misplaced control (off by 50 to 75 meters and on the wrong trail) that we were able to correct early on, and we had a wet storm headed our way. The storm turned out to be very mild for most of the day, and it kept conditions perfect for competition. It was a shame that most of our skiers decided not to attend.

In the end, only 11 people showed up. Fortunately, we didn't need much in the way of volunteers. I set the controls the day before the event, Rosemary Johnson set up the GeBe printers so that we could run self-service E-punching. Bob Baylor took care of registration. After the event, Matthias Kohler, Rosemary Johnson, Nancy Lindeman, and an employee on a snowmobile picked up the controls.

I have to take some of the blame for the low attendance. I had been preoccupied with other things, and had not publicized the event. The threatening storm also frightened off some people. Having only one day of skiing, when our other ski-O events are bunched together, probably made it less desirable for people to travel to this event.

I did get a chance to talk with the owner of the resort about ways that we could improve our attendance for future years. We decided to try to make this a two-day event next year, possibly even link it to the five events at Lake Tahoe. The resort owner said that we could make use of the Nordic Loft hostel, which provides very affordable housing at the event location. It would also help if I continued to get others more involved with the event organization, because I have been increasingly distracted by work and my personal life. It would definitely help if we planned the events early, such as in the Spring of 2009, so that Nancy Lindeman can handle the publicity over the summer, and generate more of the excitement that we really need for this event. The resorts are typically happy to arrange things early, though we might have to wait on some of the resort fees until they are set in the Fall. If anybody would be interested in helping with this, please contact .


Results

Bear Valley Ski-O

Bear Valley, CA
Sunday, March 1, 2009

Also see control-by-control timing in the WinSplits results (http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/show_event.asp?id=11128). You can see the event map with the actual routes traveled by participants, and draw your own route for comparison, in the RouteGadget (introduction; this event (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=167)).


  Pl  Name(s)                          Time
White Course   (2.2 km, 6 controls)

      Fillan Swift                     DNF


Orange Course  (5.0 km, 7 controls)

   1  Rosemary Johnson               1:55:41
   2  Nancy Lindeman                 2:36:52
   3  Sharon & Ruth Evans            2:45:19


Green Course   (8.5 km, 11 controls)

   1  Bob Cooley                     2:08:28
   2  Damian Swift                   2:50:13

      Larry from Bear Valley           DNF


Red Course     (9.6 km, 13 controls)

   1  Matthias Kohler                1:12:58
   2  Kent Ohlund                    1:21:48
   3  Bob Baylor                     1:35:39

_______________

DNF = Did not finish (missed one or more controls)