Tahoe Weekend
Spooner Lake and Burton Creek State Parks
Date: Aug. 23 - 24, 2014
Location: Lake Tahoe Area
Event Director: 
- 415.566.7990
Course Setters: Deron van Hoff, Nik Weber (GCO)
Type: B; Classic events for beginners through advanced—Saturday at Spooner Lake, Sunday at Burton Creek
Spooner Lake Course Setter's Notes
Burton Creek Course Setter's Notes
Spooner Lake Course Setter's Notes
Spooner Lake State Park, NV
Saturday, August 23, 2014
By Deron Van Hoff
Note: To account for U.S. Forest Service rules, we have decided to require that you be a member of an OUSA orienteering club to participate on an advanced course at Spooner Lake. If you are not a club member, you may join BAOC at registration on the day of the event and still be able to participate on an advanced course.
August 20th Update:
- Bruce Wolfe vetted portions of the Spooner Lake courses this past weekend (Thanks Bruce!), and indicated the courses are longer than usual for our Spooner Lake map. My estimate, based on running times at last year's Little Truckee Summit courses, is that a 100-point runner should be able to finish at the upper end of the time range for a Classic course (e.g., 75 minutes on Red, 80 minutes on Blue, etc.). Don't forget that most of us are not 100-point runners, so if you want to finish your course by course closing at 2 PM, make sure you start early enough.
- I also want to mention that the advanced starts will be self service. There will be Clear and Check units, self-service start lists, and water at the Start and Finish.
There will be different competition areas for the advanced courses (Brown, Green, Red, and Blue) and the beginner/intermediate courses (White, Yellow, and Orange). The advanced courses will use the portion of our Spooner Lake map of U.S. Forest Service land on the west side of Highway 28, while the other courses will be within Spooner Lake State Park on the east side of the highway.
Registration, E-punch, refreshments, etc. will be set up in the day-use area of the State Park. The White/Yellow/Orange Start and Finish are near the registration area.
The advanced Start is a 1.4 km walk from the registration area (or drive if you prefer), and the Finish is a 0.6 km walk back to the registration area. The Start is located along the road accessing the Spooner Summit boat inspection area, located on the west side of Highway 28, just north of the intersection with U.S. 50. There is parking for about 20 vehicles in this area. They also have a portable toilet. Make sure not to interfere with the functioning of the boat inspection station if you choose to park along the access road. Also, please be very careful crossing Highway 28 as you walk to and from the advanced courses.
Course statistics are as follows:
Course Length Climb Controls White 3.1 km 40 m 12 Yellow 3.1 km 70 m 11 Orange 4.7 km 220 m 14 Brown 3.7 km 150 m 13 Green 5.8 km 275 m 18 Red 7.7 km 320 m 22 Blue 9.6 km 370 m 27
Keep in mind that the course lengths are measured along the straight lines between controls, so your actual distances will almost certainly be longer. The amount of climb is along the "ideal route" (i.e., as determined by the Course Setter).
The area around Spooner Lake is very picturesque, so I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with that aspect of your orienteering experience. I certainly would be tempted to pause at a couple of the control locations to take in the views.
Advanced Courses
For the advanced courses, the vegetation boundaries are difficult to discern, old logging roads are overgrown, and most of the many mapped rootstocks are long gone. For this reason, most of the control locations are on features that Mother Nature hasn’t had a chance to alter over the last 20 years from when the map was originally produced. That means boulders and topographic features. There are some controls, however, on lone trees, copses, rootstocks, and dead snags. The map shows rootstocks and snags both as a brown ×. On the control descriptions, snags are differentiated by noting the height and using the ruined-lone-tree symbol as opposed to the rootstock symbol.
The terrain is often quite runnable, although there are some areas of slash and expansive areas with a nasty low-growing (sometimes waist high) shrub with inch-long thorns. For this reason, I would recommend long pants and/or gaiters. You can often (but not always) pick your way through these areas, but it will be sure to slow you down. Some of the undergrowth is mapped, but there are areas that are not mapped. If I was asked to generalize, the shrubby undergrowth seems to have taken hold in the areas that were previously logged (i.e., some of the open areas and logging roads depicted on the map).
Beginner and Intermediate Courses
The map seems to be much truer for the beginner (White and Yellow) and intermediate (Orange) courses. The same comment as for advanced courses applies in terms of rootstocks versus snags. The map shows rootstocks and snags both as a brown ×. On the control descriptions, snags are differentiated by noting the height and using the ruined-lone-tree symbol as opposed to the rootstock symbol. Also, be aware that there will be a wedding party somewhere at Spooner Lake, although the rangers couldn’t tell me where since they don’t know either. Make sure that you hug the bride and groom if you have to run through the wedding party.
All Courses
The route from the GO control to the Finish is not flagged. They are very short legs (50 m for the advanced courses and 75 m for the WYO courses), but don’t turn off the navigation portion of your brain until you’re actually at the Finish.
Have fun!!
Burton Creek Course Setter's Notes
Burton Creek State Park, CA
Sunday, August 24, 2014
By Nik Weber
Come out and join us for a fun weekend in Tahoe! Sunday’s courses will begin and end at North Tahoe High School, home of an apparently pretty impressive cross country dynasty. All courses are much flatter than our Bay Area venues, and so runnable for the most part that you will be left wondering what to do with the rest of your day after the race (might I suggest control pick up?). The Start for all the courses will be off the northeast corner of the upper parking lot, by the big garages, and the Finish will be near the northeast corner of the school.
There is good news and bad news for our Burton Creek regulars. The good news is that some kind soul has gathered up about 100 tons of slash (fallen trees and branches) and piled it up into 10 foot tall “haystacks†in various areas in the west and northwest areas covered by some of the courses (Red and Blue, Orange, and possibly Green). This makes these areas incredibly runnable, and increases visibility greatly through the woods. The bad news is that so far they have left the other 499,900 tons of slash out there on the ground for us to climb over (but I have tried to avoid as much of it as possible because I don’t like it either). The other bad news is that the vegetation on the map (specifically rough open/light yellow) in these haystacked areas is now quite inaccurate. You shouldn’t have to use “rough open†vegetation to navigate in the haystack areas, so it shouldn’t be an issue. Green vertical lines on the map indicate bad slash; these areas are not very accurate to use as navigational aids either, so I have tried to avoid them as well.
There has also been a lot of trail work all over the map. Some old trails have been removed and new trails have been made. I have tried to correct the map as much as possible, but I could have missed something along route choices that are less than ideal. Some of the indistinct trails are more easily visible by looking for the vegetation along the edges of them; most of these are mapped as narrow rides or long narrow clearings. The roads have not changed at all.
Watch out for mountain bikes! There are a lot of them careening all over the park on the roads and trails. Give them the right of way, since it is more humane for you to step off the trail than it is for them to crash off the trail. Other hazards include the lack of oxygen, and high sunburn potential, that are fairly typical in Tahoe; wildlife including but not limited to bears, squirrels, and birds; cliffs (please do not climb), and rocky ground. Any sharp foliage is generally less than knee high, so gaiters and shorts should be adequate protection.
As is fairly typical on our Tahoe maps, the rocks are mapped well where there are not many present, and not mapped all that accurately where there are rocks everywhere. Probably the map would just be black in those areas if they were all mapped, and that would make navigation really hard. Every attempt was made to avoid control placement in questionable areas. But since both your Course Setter and Event Director are geology fans, you all get to visit some pretty interesting rock features; mostly basaltic flows and inclusions, but also a lot of glacial till and erratics. You also get to cross one of the dollar-point fault lines—there is a creek there that you will notice.
The course details are as follows:
Course Length Climb Controls White 2.2 km 50 m 10 Yellow 2.3 km 60 m 9 Orange 5.4 km 120 m 10 Brown 3.9 km 60 m 8 Green 5.6 km 115 m 10 Red 7.6 km 170 m 15 Blue 9.1 km 200 m 20 (that’s 2.2% climb!)
Keep in mind that the course lengths are measured along the straight lines between controls, so your actual distances will almost certainly be longer. The amount of climb is along the "ideal route" (i.e., as determined by the Course Setter).