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Joaquin Miller Park

Event #4 of 6 in the BAOC 2018 Summer Series

Date: (Sun.) Jul. 8, 2018
Location: Oakland, CA
Event Director: - 510.681.6181
Course Setter: Daniel Å ebo
Type: C; Beginner and advanced courses; part of the BAOC 2018 Summer Series

Please note that fees and time limits apply, unless otherwise mentioned below. Events are typically not canceled due to bad weather.


This event is part of the BAOC 2018 Summer Series.

Adventure in the cool shade of the redwoods! Celebrate 40 years of orienteering in the park where it all started (for BAOC, that is)! The map has gone through many versions over the years, and the recent ISSOM map clarifies some of the mysteries that lingered over the years in the gently undulating plateau region that used to flummox many (or, most) of the expert orienteers. However, that's not to say that it's totally tamed.

Schedule

  9:00 AM – Registration opens; you can register anytime until noon
  9:30 AM – Beginner's clinic instruction (free)
10:00 AM – Starts open; you can start on courses anytime until 12:30
 2:00 PM – Courses close, checkpoint pick-up begins

At registration, all juniors must be accompanied by parents or legal guardians, or bring with them a waiver signed by their parent or legal guardian (the registration form is available here (PDF/100KB)).

The beginner's clinic provides an introduction to orienteering and enough instruction to be able to complete a beginner (White) course. See more about the beginner's clinic below.

Everyone must check in at the Finish by 2:00 PM and download their E-stick even if you don't complete your course, so we can have everyone accounted for and start checkpoint pick-up on time so those volunteers can get home.

After you finish, enjoy free snacks and refreshments, and socialize with other participants!

Costs

The following fees apply at this event:

  $3 for juniors (age 8 through 20) on the Beginner course
  $8 for adults on the Beginner course
  $5 for juniors on the Advanced course  
$12 adult member price for the Advanced course
$18 adult non-member price for the Advanced course
  $1 for a compass rental (optional)  
  $5 for an electronic fingerstick rental (if you don't own one, you'll need one to complete the course)
$15 for the lowest-cost individual one-year BAOC membership (optional)  

Note: We are able to accept payment only by cash or check​—​no credit cards or electronic payments.

For extra people on a team (i.e., completing the course together), add $5 per adult on the Beginner course or $7 per adult on the Advanced course (with lower prices for juniors).

If you have the inclination (and can start before 12:30), you can do a second course for a much-reduced fee.

More information about event pricing is available in the club FAQ. All the prices are also shown on the standard entry form (PDF/100KB), which you can print and fill out in advance to save some time at the event. (You will need one entry form for each group of people going on a course together.) Please note that the form has a second page for signatures of group members.

"Hands-on" Beginner's Clinic Course

Pioneered by the pioneering Jeff Goodwin, and implemented by Daniel Å ebo, "we will be offering a repeating, guided, short course at the beginner's clinic. The course is only 600 meters, with 7 controls and 20 meters of climb. All the controls are accessible from trails, and someone will walk all the beginners through it." (You could be that someone​—​contact if interested.)

Here are the details:

We’re going to offer a bonus course and clinic for orienteering beginners at the Joaquin Miller event. To build on the usual ad-hoc introductory clinics, we’ve set up a mini-course for folks to try out before they take on the beginner course.
OK, so how does this affect me?
  • If you’re interested in orienteering, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet, this is the perfect opportunity to get your feet wet. The clinic will provide all the essential info you need to take on the beginner course, and we’ll all walk through the mini-course together. No one will (metaphorically) get thrown to the wolves. I’ll be starting the clinic at 9:30 AM from the registration area. Please arrive by 9:15 so you have enough time to register and get your rental equipment.
  • If you’re an experienced orienteer, but have friends that you’ve been trying to get on board, bring them on Sunday! Everyone is welcome to join the clinic at 9:30 and course walk through afterwards, but the mini-course will be open all morning and we’ll have plenty of maps. Feel free to use the mini-course whenever with whoever you’d like to bring.
High-fives to Daniel Å ebo for creating the mini-course, and to Rex for helping pull all the pieces together.
Hope to see you on Sunday.
Jeff

Location in the Park

The Assembly Area will be at the Redwood Glen picnic area, close to Skyline Blvd. There is some parking in a dirt siding on Skyline Blvd not far from the Redwood Glen picnic area (see directions below).

The picnic area has benches and tables. There is a water fountain and restrooms nearby.

What To Bring

For the Beginner course, comfortable outdoors attire and shoes are fine.

For the Advanced course, leg cover or gaiters are recommended, as well as shoes with some extra grip on the soles.

Courses

Preliminary course details:

    Course      Length    Climb   Controls
    Beginner    2.3 km     90 m      19  
    Advanced    4.4 km    240 m      31

More details about the courses are in the Course Setter's Notes below. Please read them!

One very important note: The naturalists in the park have asked us not to go off-trail through certain gullies and out-of-bounds areas. These areas are marked on the map by special lines and the classic out-of-bounds hash. Please be careful to observe these areas, and do not pass through these areas off-trail, or we might not be able to orienteer here in the future. However, it should not be very hard to avoid the out-of-bounds areas. Each time a course goes through a gully, a control will be placed on a trail crossing to force people not to pass through the gully off-trail.

2018 Summer Series

This is the fourth event of the BAOC 2018 Summer Series. The Series consists of six events, each of which has a "ranking course" for the overall Summer Series results. At this event, the Advanced course will be that ranking course.

Please Volunteer

Be the face of the club! Encourage the new faces to return. When we create family at our events, those new faces will come back again and be part of our family.

In particular, we're looking for the following: Assistant Event Director (you can still run a course), Beginner's Clinics Assistant, Starts, Finishes, Registration, Greeters/Hospitality, Snack Procurement, and the all-important Control-Picker-Uppers.

Contact if you can help.

Getting There and Going

(There are Driving Directions below.)

It's the dirt parking area on the downhill side of Skyline Blvd between the Roberts Recreation Area entrance and the Chabot Space and Science Center entrance. From Joaquin Miller Road, turn onto Skyline Blvd, go up the hill through some twists, and after passing the Roberts Recreation Area entrance on the right, within a 1/4 of a mile you'll see the "dirt parking" on the left. If the "dirt parking" is full, there is a lot further down the road on the right, or Chabot's lot, or Roberts' (which has a $5 parking fee.)

Note: Please don't go into the park before the trail from Skyline Blvd directly to the assembly area​—​just walk along Skyline Blvd to that trailhead. This is so nobody gets an unfair advantage of seeing where the controls are.

From the "dirt parking", it's a short walk down the paved road that starts on the edge of it to the Redwood Glen picnic area, which is buried in the trees on the left side of the trail. We'll leave some bread crumbs (streamer tape) to lead you.

If you gotta go, you gotta go​—​the Restroom situation. Close to our picnic site, there is now an excellent drinking fountain. The restroom building closest to it is one for the adventurous. I didn't mind using the men's room there when I checked on Wednesday, June 27, but I did notice the women's restroom was locked. There was a unisex portapotty that may still be close to our picnic site when we have an our event. If you're looking for the premiere restroom experience, carefully cross Skyline Blvd from the "dirt parking," and follow the streamers on the trails about 0.2 miles (according to my GPS track) to a palatial restroom building in Roberts Park.

Driving Directions

The approximate coordinates of the event location are 37.8140,-122.1768.

From Highway 13 (Warren Freeway) in Oakland, follow the direction signs for Chabot Space and Science Center, past the Roberts Regional Recreation Area, to the Orchard Trail trailhead. Specifically: From Highway 13 take the Joaquin Miller Road exit and head east, uphill about 1.2 miles to the stoplight at Skyline Blvd. Turn left and continue on Skyline Blvd about 1.1 miles to the trailhead.

There's a map here that shows the location of the event.

Public Transit

Take BART to the Fruitvale station, then take the AC Transit 339 bus to Chabot Space & Science Center. From the bus stop it’s about a 1/4-mile walk back on Skyline to where the parking is (i.e., the bus passed it on the way to your stop).

Note: Please don't go into the park before the trail from Skyline Blvd directly to the assembly area​—​just walk along Skyline Blvd to that trailhead. This is so nobody gets an unfair advantage of seeing where the controls are.




Course Setter's Notes

By Daniel Å ebo

Preliminary course details:

    Course      Length    Climb   Controls
    Beginner    2.3 km     90 m      19  
    Advanced    4.4 km    240 m      31

Beginners should be aware that the lengths shown are the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. Your actual distance will be somewhat longer. To estimate how far you might actually go, mentally change "km" to "mi" (e.g., for a "2.3 km" course, you might travel up to 2.3 miles).

The difficulty of the Advanced course is actually somewhere between intermediate (Orange) and advanced (Brown, Green, ...). The name is mainly to distinguish it from the Beginner course, and to identify it as the Summer Series ranking course. The course is doable even for only slightly experienced orienteers, since there are always trails within 100 meters of you.

Important note for the Advanced runners: There will be a map exchange at some control in the course. You will simply flip your map over, and the second map will be on the other side inside your map case. One map will show all the controls from the Start to a certain control, and the second map will show that "certain control" and all the controls from there to the Finish. This is because the park is relatively small, and some controls and control lines would be extremely hard to read.

Note: The Advanced course requires a high-capacity fingerstick, because it has more than 30 controls. The rental E-sticks are high capacity. Make sure your personal E-stick has adequate capacity (see here for reference). High-capacity loaner E-sticks will be available for people with low-capacity E-sticks.

Hazards & Other Information

There is some poison oak in off-trail areas and sometimes on the sides of trails. It is not as bad as in most parks in the Bay Area, and since it doesn't grow in massive clumps, it is usually quite easy to avoid. Most of the poison oak I have encountered in this park grew lower than my knee. There is one section on the Advanced course where you may choose to go through some vegetation and clearings where there is a bunch of poison oak plants. There is no good way for me to map this (since it grows so low), so you can't tell from the map that it is there. However, in all other parts of the park it is rare and easily avoidable.

Some people choose to let their dogs off-leash in this park, so be mindful of that. All the dogs I have met there are extremely friendly, but one can never know.

One extremely important note: The naturalists in the park have asked us not to go off-trail through certain gullies and out-of-bounds areas. These areas are marked on the map by special pink lines and the classic out-of-bounds hash. Please be careful to observe these areas, and do not pass through these areas off-trail, or we may not be able to orienteer here in the future. However, it should not be very hard to avoid the out-of-bounds areas. Each time a course goes through a gully, a control will be placed on a trail crossing to force people not to pass through the gully off-trail.