What is Orienteering?

Events

Maps

About Us

Huddart Park

Date: (Sun.) Nov. 4, 2018
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 & Matthias Kohler

The Bay Area Orienteering Club returns to the beautiful redwood forests of Huddart Park (http://parks.smcgov.org/huddart-park) on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. We will be based at the Werder Shelter. Parking, registration, the Finish, picnic tables, restrooms, and a kids’ playground are in close proximity.

Seven courses are being offered. These are the statistics:

                                         Water  Navigational  Physical  
    Course    Length    Climb  Controls  Stops  Difficulty    Difficulty
    White     2.2 km     90 m     10       1    Very easy     Easy   
    Yellow    2.4 km    130 m     11       1    Easy          A little harder
    Orange    3.9 km    205 m     15       1    Moderate      Moderate
    Brown     2.9 km    195 m     15       1    Difficult     Moderate
    Green     3.6 km    285 m     14       1    Difficult     Difficult
    Red       4.9 km    410 m     23       2    Difficult     Very difficult
    Blue      5.7 km    505 m     25       2    Difficult     Very difficult

Maps for the White and Yellow courses are printed at the scale of 1:7500; all others are at 1:10000. The contour interval is 5 meters.

All the courses will use a remote Start. For the White and Yellow courses, it will be a fairly level 1 km walk from Werder along a road. All others will continue past the White/Yellow start, a total of 1.75 km walk from Werder with a moderate elevation gain. The five courses at the more distant Start have a short trail run to a common first control.

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. Runners on the Orange, Brown, Green, Red, and Blue courses will encounter some very steep slopes, and are advised to wear cleats or hiking shoes with good tread. Those doing White and Yellow should wear sturdy running or hiking shoes.

Hazards

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 on to 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.

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.

Red and Blue: The course brings you somewhat close to Kings Mountain Road, the winding road you drive up to reach the park. Please use caution if you choose to run along this road. The lack of a shoulder, blind curves, and road habits of both drivers and bicyclists can pose a hazard. The course also skirts the archery range in the upper part of the park. The area is marked out-of-bounds. A couple of controls are close to this area, so be cautious in your route choices.

Map Features

Vegetation (and how it is mapped) merits some comments. Most prominent are the redwoods. There are areas, particularly in the upper part of the park, with 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). Some of these stands have been used as control locations. For these controls, we use the “copse” description; 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 (none are used as control points). There are innumerable huge redwood stumps, and many of the largest of these have been mapped, using the green × symbol. When used as control locations, the description of “distinctive tree, ruined” is used. The brown × represents a rootstock. Only the largest or most prominent of these have been mapped, usually over 2 meters high. 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. Course setters over the years have attempted to refine the vegetation in many areas, but all the advanced courses still have legs where runners will have to deal with this not-quite-white terrain.

In the lower part of the park, boulders on the hillsides tend to be fairly isolated, and some may be as small as 0.5 meter high. The upper regions, on the other hand, are rich in rock features, and mapped boulders generally exceed a meter height. Major creek beds are also home to large numbers of boulders, and generally only the huge ones are individually mapped.