Big Basin Redwoods State Park
Date: (Sun.) Sep. 14, 2014
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Event Directors: 
- 650.906.9672, - 831.439.9822
Course Setters: Nick Corsano, Nick Giori
Type: B; We return to this beautiful park, after a long absence, for point-to-point courses for beginners through advanced
Course Setters' Notes
By Nick Corsano & Nick Giori
The Bay Area Orienteering Club celebrates National Orienteering Week amid the glorious forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. This is our first event at Big Basin in nine years, and the first time we have used the western part of the map since 2000.
Six courses are being offered. The statistics are shown below.
Course Length Climb Controls Technical Difficulty White 2.1 km 80 m 10 Easy Yellow 2.3 km 90 m 11 A little harder Orange 3.6 km 210 m 15 Moderate Brown 3.9 km 235 m 15 Difficult Green 4.7 km 290 m 18 Difficult Red 5.8 km 380 m 21 Difficult
Beginners should be aware that the lengths shown are the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. Your actual distance will be somewhat longer. The climb numbers represent the amount of ascending that would be done on the "optimum route" (in the Course Setters's opinion), without regard for any descending.
Important! Everybody must check in at the assembly area and download their E-stick, whether they finish their course or not. That's how we know you're not lost in the woods. Everybody must be back by 2:00 PM.
The White and Yellow maps are printed at a scale of 1:7500; the rest at 1:10000. There is a hike of about 1 km along a trail through a jungle of huckleberry bushes, with a climb of 120 meters, to get to the start. There are no restroom facilities beyond the assembly area.
Due to a course setter's error, one control circle is at the wrong location. This affects the Brown, Green, and Red courses. The maps are being corrected manually. We apologize for the inconvenience.
There is water at one control on the Orange course, and at two controls on Brown, Green, and Red. There is also water at a control on the Yellow course, on a trail section used by both White and Yellow.
All the courses have a 100-meter trail run to a common first control (there will be two punches there). All the courses end with a 500-meter downhill section along a small hiking trail that is often narrow and hemmed in by thick bushes. Please be considerate of people trying to run past you, especially if you are traveling in a group.
Club veterans are sure to have vivid memories of orienteering at Big Basin, but for the rest of you, I will try to give you an impression of orienteering in this incredible redwood forest. The terrain is steep, but except for a couple of spots, the area we are using is not out of the ordinary by Bay Area standards. What is more likely to slow people down is the abundant deadfall on the ground—everything from tiny twigs to fallen branches to huge downed redwoods, all on top of a thick layer of redwood duff.
Here is an introduction to mapping conventions related to redwood forest:
- Many areas feature continuous expanses of redwoods. These areas are mapped as open (white) forest.
- In other places, stands of redwoods (often circular) are embedded in mixed forest. Many of these are mapped, using the vegetation boundary symbol (black dots).
- Redwoods also account for three types of point feature on the map.
- A few exceptionally tall and wide trees have been mapped with the small green circle symbol (identifying "distinctive" trees in a forest where 50-meter trees are common is obviously subjective).
- When a redwood tree meets its demise due to natural causes, it either is uprooted, or splits above the ground.
- In the first case, the rootstock soars into the air like a bizarre multi-armed sculpture. Many of the most prominent rootstocks are mapped using the brown × symbol.
- In the second case, the largest stumps or snags are mapped using the green × symbol.
- On the clue sheets, both of these types of feature are indicated with the ×-inside-a-circle (stump/rootstock) symbol; you will have to rely on the color of the map symbol to indicate which you are looking for.
- Since the huge fallen trees present significant navigation obstacles, many have been mapped, using a thin black line oriented correctly and with length to scale. When one of these is used as a control location, the "distinctive tree, ruined" symbol combination is used.
Finally, a word about contour lines. The map was made originally in the 1980's, and neither the available technology nor the experience of the European mappers dealt very well with terrain where the forest canopy was so high above the ground. Areas close to our courses show some of the more egregious results. There are index contours with as many as seven and as few as three intermediate contours. There are contours that run into a mass of dark green and just die. Within small areas, the contours usually reflect the shape of the ground reasonably well, but you can't always count on that.