Big Basin Redwoods State Park
Date: (Sun.) Aug. 14, 2005
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Event Director: 
- 831.439.9822
Course Setters: Nick Corsano, Anneliese Steuben
Type: B; Standard 7 courses, plus Adventure Race (Long Orange) course
Course Setter's Notes
By Nick Corsano
This Sunday, BAOC returns to the spectacular redwood forests of Big Basin for the first time since 2003. Eight courses will be offered: White, Yellow, Orange, Long (Adventure Race) Orange, Brown, Green, Red, and Blue. Here are the nearly final course specs.
Course Controls Length Climb Tech. Diff. Physical Difficulty
White 10 2.0 km 25 m Beginners Easy Yellow 11 2.7 km 85 m Adv. Beginners Moderate Orange 10 3.1 km 220 m Intermediate Moderate AR Orange 13 4.0 km 280 m Intermediate Moderate Brown 9 2.8 km 220 m Advanced Moderate Green 13 3.8 km 290 m Advanced Moderately Strenuous Red 18 4.7 km 380 m Advanced Strenuous Blue 23 6.7 km 510 m Advanced Very Strenuous
General Logistics
White and Yellow Courses
Start and Finish are a short walk from the registration area. Maps are printed at 1:7500 scale. Both courses cross the main park road (Highway 236) twice.
- *** BE CAREFUL WHEN CROSSING THE ROADWAY! ***
White and Yellow use the more heavily used trails near park Headquarters. Please be considerate of other park users.
Intermediate and Advanced Courses
These courses all use electronic punching. Maps are printed at 1:10000 scale. The courses are at the eastern end of the park, and require a short shuttle drive in both directions. (NOTE: Volunteers are needed for driving — please contact Event Director Sharon Evans if you can help out.) It is a steep 1-km walk from the shuttle stop up to the Start (see note on "Water" below). It is a short, fairly level stroll from the Finish back to the shuttle stop.
Water
There will be water on all the intermediate and advanced courses (about every 2 km or less), and also at the Finish. Instead of hauling a ton of water up to the Start, I am thinking of having a water stop at the bottom of the hill, so runners can drink before starting the climb (or bring their own water bottle to the Start, of course). If any of you have strong feelings about this, please let me know.
The Redwood Forest
The soaring redwoods are, of course, the most distinctive feature of the park, and not surprisingly, they are also responsible for several special features of the map.
Redwoods have shallow roots, and when they fall, they create enormous rootstocks that dot the forest floor like many-armed abstract sculptures. The larger (generally at least 2-m high) rootstocks are mapped as brown X's. As control locations, they are represented by the standard rootstock symbol.
There was extensive logging before the park was created in 1902, and the larger stumps are also mapped. The map legend will say that they are green X's, but the mappers were inconsistent about this, and many were mapped as brown X's. I have changed some back (especially at or near control locations), but I can't promise you won't see stumps mapped as brown X's. Major snags (where the trunk of the tree has broken off) are also mapped as green X's. When used as control locations, both stumps and snags use the lone tree symbol with the ruined qualifier.
In some areas of the park, the longer fallen trees themselves were mapped, as thin black lines. White and Yellow runners will see many of these, and Orange and AR Orange will see a few. The areas used by the advanced courses were not mapped in this way.
Redwoods often grow from the roots of a parent tree. After the older tree dies, the mature younger trees grow in a circular ring formation. The more distinctive rings are mapped as a circle of small black dots, the vegetation boundary symbol. When such a ring is used as a control location, the vegetation boundary symbol is used.
Hazards
There is very, very little poison oak in the areas we are using. In some places, there are enough mosquitoes to be annoying, though there are fewer than there were earlier in the summer. On a recent field checking trip, I picked up the first tick I have gotten in hundreds of hours in Big Basin over the past 30 years.
General Notes for Orange Courses and Above
The terrain is very steep in places. Cleated shoes are recommended on the Orange and Long Orange courses, and very strongly advised for the advanced courses. Stream banks and hillsides that appear steep on the map can be EXTREMELY steep in reality. As a general rule, ridges are the most readily navigable linear features, and a spur generally provides faster going than an equally steep reentrant.
Dark green on the map is mostly huckleberry, and while it is not nearly as lethal as other "favorite" Bay Area vegetation, it does grow very thickly and constitutes legitimate "fight".
There is a series of wooden power poles across the area, which are abandoned (i.e., no power lines). They are mapped as small black T's, and although on the map they stand out clearly, in the field the visibility varies greatly, depending on the nature of the surrounding forest.
Map quality varies. The redwood canopy severely limited the accuracy of the original aerial photography and the resulting base map. A lot of field checking went into making the map usable. Most of the terrain being used was diligently checked for "A" meets in the 90's, and the quality there is quite good. To reach a usable Finish, the advanced courses go over a ridge that did not receive the same attention. The lack of vegetation detail is a give-away. I have tried to compensate by using the most straightforward handrails and attack points on these legs.