Golden Gate Park "Tour of Fog"
Date: (Sat.) Aug. 5, 2006
Location: San Francisco, CA
Event Director: 
- 510.681.6181
Course Setters: Dwight Freund (GCO), Vladimir Gusiatnikov
Type: C; White, Yellow, Orange, Long Orange, and USOF Sprint courses
Course Setter's Notes
By Dwight Freund and Vladimir Gusiatnikov
Thanks to Rex, we are about to have an O' weekend that was just a gleam in the eye a mere month ago. This Saturday we will celebrate in Golden Gate park in SF. Vlad is setting a sprint, and I have set White, Yellow, and Orange courses. These will start at the ususal times in Marx Meadow, which is a short distance West of the Hwy. 1 flyover.
Course Stats
White 11 controls 2.6 km Yellow 9 controls 3.9 km Orange 7 controls 4.7 km
All courses will use a mixture of environmental and pie-plate control points, and you will have to mark multiple-choice answers on a sheet to prove you were there.
The Orange course will be a useful exercise for advanced orienteers. Although it is not possible to find technically difficult control points in this park, all the legs are quite long and will pose interesting route choice challenges.
Hazards
Although there are probably some small poison oak plants around, I'd be more worried about cars, bikes, and the occasional resident homosapiens. Saturday is not, as far as I know, a road closure day, so be careful crossing the many roads that invade the park.
Map
It is constantly being updated, but then, so is the park, so there may be features and trails on the ground that do not appear on the map, and vice versa. In particular, there are areas posted as being under revegatation regime, so be circumnavigatory or circumspect.
Glad runnings,
Dwight Freund, course setter
Sprint CS'er Notes
There is automobile traffic in the park. Please don't get killed. Nineteenth Avenue is out of bounds, and shown as such.
Scale is 1:5000, contours 3 meters. The map is not ISSOM, but some ISSOM symbols are used, in particular gray to indicate a multilevel crossing. Actually what this map could use the most is not a different symbol set, but some fieldchecking, of the vegetation in particular. The various greens give you a good idea of where you can and cannot pass, but their boundaries are not surveyed at the level of precision expected of a Sprint map. The vertical green line symbol is misused.
Course purple lines are drawn around some uncrossable objects, but not others. All objects shown as uncrossable or out of bounds remain such. In particular, it is not allowed to cross high fences, lakes and ponds, and anything hatched with purple. The way purple lines are drawn around the object does not indicate the best route choice.
Control equipment is regular orange and white flags with manual punches. There are no control codes. There are no controls near each other. People live quite close to some of the control sites. I plan to take measures to prevent equipment walk-off, but there is always a chance a flag will go missing.
The length of the course (2.36 km) is measured along straight line. The optimum distance is approximately 3.1 km. The climb is 75 m.
Vladimir