2018 Golden Goat & Golden Kid

23rd Annual Golden Goat & Golden Kid

Shell Ridge Open Space

Date: (Sun.) Mar. 31, 2019
Location: Walnut Creek, CA
Event Director: - 925.516.7622
Course Setters: Erin Schirm, Jay Hann
Type: 23rd annual event with an extra-long "Goat" course, and a long "Kid" course, with a shared mass start; and regular beginner courses with separated starts

Related Event Information

Event Announcement Online Registration (optional) (https://www.orienteeringusa.org/eventregister/a40/register/start/2019goat)


Course Setters' Notes

By Erin Schirm (Goat & Kid) & Jay Hann (White & Yellow)

Golden Goat and Golden Kid

Course Details 

    Course    Length       Climb      Controls
    Kid       6.6 km    465 m  7.1%      13   
    Goat     11.4 km    845 m  7.5%      24

Rules

The Goat will have three challenges:

  1. You can skip 1 control on the course.
  2. There will be a leg with forking​—​you have to choose one of the forkings to take, not both.
  3. There will be a king-of-the-mountain leg. This is a straight, climbing leg​—​winner of the split gets a special prize.

The Kid will have two challenges:

  1. You can skip 1 control on the course.
  2. There will be a leg with forking​—​you have to choose one of the forkings to take, not both.

General Comments

The terrain is very nice right now. The grass is not too high yet, so running is pretty good. Side-hilling is tough, and the trails are pretty muddy.

There are a couple places on the map where the park has closed off certain trails. These trials are still visible in the terrain, but are a little overgrown. There are a number of unmapped cow trails out there.

Cliffs and rocks are generally small and often not so visible. In many cases when on small cliffs, the control will be more visible than the feature.

Generally the courses are not technically hard, but there should be a good amount of route choice​—​and with the skip and fork, should make for a fun race.

There is little to no poison oak.

Beginner Courses

Course Details 

    Course    Length       Climb      Controls
    White     1.9 km    110 m  5.8%      11  
    Yellow    2.5 km    135 m  5.4%       7

Beginners should be aware that the course lengths shown are the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. Your actual distance will be somewhat longer. For a rough estimate of how far you will actually go, mentally change "km" to "mi" (e.g., for a "1.9 km" course, you might travel about "1.9 mi"). The climb numbers represent the amount of ascending that would be done on the "optimum route" (in the Course Setter's opinion), without regard for any descending.

The White course is set to British Technical Difficulty level TD1, and the Yellow is set to level TD2 (reference (http://baoc.org/wiki/Juniors/Youth/Course_Setting)).

Hazards

I didn't see any poison oak on the courses at all.

There are electric fences set up along some of the trails in order to keep cattle in their areas. Please avoid the fences. Neither of the courses require crossing the electric fences.

General Comments

Both courses provide wonderful views of the surrounding green hills. These courses are designed with very few shared controls, so if so inclined, you can run one after the other with all-new experiences.

Both courses satisfy the Boy Scout requirement for the First Class rank, #4a.