Huddart Park
Date: (Sun.) Oct. 16, 2016
Location: Woodside, CA
Event Director: 
- 650.906.9672
Course Setters: Matthias Kohler, Nick Corsano
Type: B; Standard 7-course B-meet in this beautiful redwood park
Course Setters' Notes
By Nick Corsano
The Bay Area Orienteering Club returns to the beautiful redwood forests of Huddart Park on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. We will be based at the Werder Shelter. Parking, registration, the Start, the Finish, picnic tables, restrooms and a kids' playground are in close proximity.
Seven courses are being offered. Here are the statistics:
Navigational Physical
Course Length Climb Controls difficulty difficulty
White 1.9 km 110 m 12 Easy Easy
Yellow 2.5 km 150 m 12 Somewhat harder Easy
Orange 3.4 km 220 m 15 Moderate Moderate
Brown 2.6 km 190 m 14 Hard Moderate
Green 3.8 km 340 m 20 Hard Hardish
Red 4.9 km 435 m 22 Hard Hard
Blue 5.4 km 565 m 28 Hard Very Hard
All the maps are printed at the scale of 1:7500 (i.e., not the more typical 1:10000 scale).
Important! Everybody must check in at the Werder Shelter 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.
Huddart is a steep park, as reflected in the climb figures for the courses. The contour interval is 5 meters. What is new about the map this year is that the contours are based on LIDAR data, which provide a far more accurate depiction of the park's topography than the original club map did. The biggest difference this makes, in my opinion, is that a runner can distinguish between steep slopes and very steep slopes, and make more informed decisions about route choice than were possible with the old map. Speaking of steep slopes, BAOC regulars will recall McGarvey Gulch, the gigantic re-entrant that bisects the park. This year, your benevolent course setters have made it possible for runners to make every crossing on a trail.
We recommend that advanced and intermediate runners wear cleats or hiking shoes with good traction. Be extra careful if it is wet (as the forecast promises).
There is water on all the courses except White. The Red and Blue courses have two water controls.
There are a few cautions:
- All courses: Huddart is popular with equestrians, and it is mandatory that all runners yield the right of way to horses. If you encounter people on horseback, you must stand by the side of the trail and let them go by. If you are about to emerge from the woods onto a trail, take a quick look for horses first. There will also be hikers, picnickers, and other group events in the area. Please be considerate of them.
- All courses: Be careful crossing roads within the park—there is occasional traffic. In addition, the Orange, Brown, Green, Red, and Blue courses all go near Kings Mountain Road (KMR) for a short distance. This is the winding road you drive up to reach the park. In this area, there is ample room to run off the road surface. Please be aware of traffic, and do not run on or across KMR.
- All courses: Although Huddart has been notorious for poison oak in the past, this year the growth is moderate, but runners should still take precautions.
Vegetation (and how it is mapped) merits some comments. Most prominent are the redwoods. There are areas, particularly in the northern and western part of the park, where there are large expanses of redwoods. These are the most runnable parts of the terrain. 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, often forming a circular shape). Some of these stands have been used as control locations. For these controls, qualifiers such as "northern edge" refer to the stand of redwoods. Redwoods also account for three types of point feature on the map. A few exceptionally tall and wide trees have been mapped with the green circle symbol. There are innumerable huge redwood stumps, and many of the largest of these have been mapped, using the green × symbol. A brown × represents a rootstock. Only the largest or most prominent of these have been mapped, usually 1.5 meters or higher. Remember that there are many more of all these features that have not been mapped.
The mixed forest is generally mapped as white, although much of it should probably be mapped in some shade of green. In these areas, a runner is likely to encounter fallen trees, patches of underbrush, or dense growth that impede forward progress. The course setters have attempted to refine the vegetation in several areas, but there is still a lot more to do.
Boulders on the hillsides tend to fairly isolated, and some may be as small as 0.5 meters. Creek beds are home to large numbers of boulders, and generally only the huge ones are individually mapped.
I want to thank my co-Course Setter, Matthias Kohler, whose persistent efforts made it possible to merge the LIDAR contours with the other features of our club map to produce the map you are using today.