Indian Valley Open Space Preserve
Date: (Sun.) Jun. 12, 2011
Location: Novato, CA
Event Director: 
- 415.895.6039
Course Setter: Deron van Hoff
Type: C; White and Yellow beginner courses, Orange intermediate course, Brown advanced course, and a Sprint course
Course Setter's Notes
By
For those who haven't had the pleasure to orienteer at the Indian Valley event in past years, it is a beautiful 333-acre college campus. The campus buildings take up a small portion of the map, and are surrounded by oak woodland and open meadows.
Except for the Brown and Green courses, which share many controls, each of the courses listed below is fairly distinct, so arriving early and going on multiple courses is encouraged.
The course statistics are as follows:
Course Length Climb Controls Map Scale
White 2.1 km 60 m 11 1:7,500 Yellow 2.0 km 100 m 13 1:7,500 Orange 4.0 km 230 m 11 1:7,500 Brown 3.2 km 190 m 9 1:7,500 Green 5.1 km 300 m 16 1:7,500 Sprint 2.6 km 90 m 13 1:5,000
E-punch will be used for all the courses. I used the course setting guideline of no two controls closer than 60 m, and no two controls on similar features within 100 m. With that said, there are a lot of controls, so make sure you know you are at the right control before continuing on.
I recalculated the climb after the maps were already printed, so the climb indicated on the maps is probably overstated. I think the climb listed above is closer to the truth if you follow the optimal route.
The wildlife has been outstanding while setting the courses. I have seen wild turkeys and their poults, many many deer, two deer being chased by a coyote, gopher snakes and California king snakes (no rattlers, but they are in the area), grasshoppers, dragonflies, and mosquitoes. The wildflowers were amazing also, but they are tailing off now.
There seems to be a fair bit of poison oak. It will be fairly difficult to avoid all the poison oak on the courses, with the exception of the White course, though I didn't see any more than knee high.
Hope to see you all on Sunday!