The 2002 version of the Spooner Lake orienteering event was a joint effort between BAOC and GCO, and also was a Pacific Region ranking event. It was held on Sunday, August 11, 2002, on a gorgeous, warm day on the east shoreof Lake Tahoe.
Spooner Lake is an alpine lake, and the surrounding terrain is quite steep and sandy, which makes climbing and contouring difficult because of slippage. However, it is an absolute delight to run downhill because of the open woods with minimal deadfall and soft sandy soil. In an effort to lessen the climb, the advanced orienteers were shuttled by van to the top of Spooner Summit. However, that only decreased slightly the total amount of climb for the green, red, and blue courses. Brown was mainly downhill.
I tried to utilize the flatter, more technical area at top for some short legs on green, red and blue courses, and then provide one long leg on greenand red and two long legs on blue (each about a km in length) in order to allow some route choice. The brown course is much harder to design at Spooner because of the steepness of the terrain. I designed the courses on paper, but Nik Weber and Stew Hintz did all of the field work, vetting, map corrections, test runs, and most of the hanging of controls. It certainly made designing courses easier not having to drive up from the Bay Area toTahoe several times to do the field work. Since GCO is relatively short of experienced course setters, if more BAOC'ers offered to paper design courses, perhaps GCO could put on more events.
There was a lower turnout than at most BAOC events, but that was probably because Tahoe is about a 4-hour drive from the Bay Area, and many people did not feel that it was worth while for that long a drive for a one-day event. Unfortunately, it is much more work to have a two-day event, especially if there is only one course setter for both days. Perhaps with Dan Stoll-Hadayia moving up to Reno, soon to be followed by Thorsten Graeve, more events will be able to be held up in the Tahoe area. There was a small but enthusiastic group of white, yellow and orange participants, mainly local, with 5 people or groups doing second courses.
The blue course was a relatively close race between Vladimir Gusiatnikov and Dan Stoll-Hadayia. Dan was leading until the 13th control, which was a 1 km long leg, when he made about a two-minute error, and Vlad pulled ahead. Vlad kept the lead to the finish, winning the 7.7 km, 450 meter climb course in 80:21, with Dan coming in a little less than 4 minutes later.
The red course was dominated by Europeans. Sergey Grushin won the 5.375 km, 370 meter climb course with a time of 65:41, making only two errors of less than 1 minute each. Otti Bisang, on sabbatical from Switzerland and living in Berkeley until November, came in second in 79:18. Vivian Lee was the first woman with a time of 119:47.
Yelena Krasnova won the 3.575 km, 245 meter climb green course with a timeof 63:56. She had about a 6-minute error on the 1 km long leg and dropped briefly to second, 17 seconds behind Alan Glendinning, but then recovered and finished 51 seconds ahead of Alan. Chuck Spalding had problems on the first, second and 5th controls, but otherwise would have had an excellent run, and came in third with a time of 67:58.
Brown was the most popular advanced course, and was won handily by Gary Kraght with a time of 36:25. He made a two-minute error on the 3rd control and briefly dropped behind Bjorn Widerstrom, but then Bjorn made a 9-minute error on 4, and Gary pulled back ahead and finished strong. Joan Roos hadan excellent run, and came in third overall and first woman with a time of52:43.
Dave Best had the fastest time on orange and won the 3.875 km, 200 m climbcourse in 1:21:44. Brenda Giese came in 2nd overall and first woman with atime of 1:34:45. Three groups had run yellow first, but liked it so much,they came back and did orange as a second course.
Judy Vuong was the only single competitor on yellow, and won with a time of1:31:50. However, the fastest time was a group of 3 adventure racers, Sly Lung and Pat and Ken Ilejay, who finished the course in 56:25. Sly, Pat and Ken then went on and did well on the orange course finishing with a time of1:45:07, not bad for first-time orienteers.
Stan Paher won the white course decisively with a time of 29:29, and thenwent on and did the yellow course in an excellent time of 62:27. Ten year old Bevan Waite came in second on white with a time of 1:11:36.
I want to thank everybody who helped out. At the top of the list are Stew Hintz and Nik Weber. They made multiple trips to Spooner to check the control sites, make map corrections, test run the courses, and offer suggestions on how to improve them. Deron von Hoff also vetted many controls and carried all of the water out onto the courses. None of the normal registration people were able to attend, so Jim Waite and his son Bevan helped out. My wife Jill also spent most of the morning doing the registration. Electronic punching was handled by Stew Hintz, Rosemary Johnson, Dan Stoll-Hadayia, and Jeff Lanam. The starts were manned by the GCO crew of Ellie Lightfoot, Patty Hintz, Jennifer Kerr, and Pete Olsten. The finish was handled by Dan Stoll-Hadayia, Thorsten Graeve and DeanFrench. Steve Gregg and Stew Hintz helped with the set up. I particularly want to thank Olivia Graeve for driving the shuttle van all morning. This may be the last trip for Ol Blu, as it overheated going up to the summit, and the brakes overheated coming back down. Time for a new van, I guess. Dan Stoll-Hadayia and Pete Olsten were early runners and carried spare EP units in case any of them had failed to turn on. (All of them worked fine.) Alan Glendinning and Meg Gerstner helped break down the assembly area and carry all of the equipment back to the van. And finally, there was a whole crew of eager people who wanted to pick up controls. I particularly want to thank Chuck Lyda and Carole Schick who made a special trip just so they could pick up controls, since they were not able to attend the event itself. Chuck picked up most of the far blue controls. Vladimir Gusiatnikov, Dean French, Steve Gregg, and Patty Hintz also picked up controls.
Pl Name Club Class Time White (2.875 km, 50 m climb, 10 controls) 1 Stanley Paher WMV 29:29 2 Bevan Waite WMJ 1:11:36 3 Ed Cassada WMV 1:23:07 Groups 1 Doug Peterson, Jan & George Loveday WG 1:35:07 Yellow (3.175 km, 100 m climb, 11 controls) 1 Judy Vuong YFA 1:31:50 Groups 1 Sly Lung, Pat & Ken Ilejay YG 56:25 2 Garrett & Mark Pitsenbarger YG 59:25 3 Roberta & Kristen Pitsenbarger, Diane Hall YG 59:38 4 Andrew Bell, Theresa Jones YG 1:02:51 5 Tammy Thorne, Greg Olberg YG 1:11:02 6 Scott & Dakota Dutcher YG 1:12:14 7 Dave, Faye & Nicole Martin YG 1:21:02 8 Rich & Dana Vega YG 1:37:27 9 Austin Pickering, Roxana Morales YG 2:15:50 Second Course Stanley Paher 1:02:27 Ed Cassada 2:12:31 Orange (3.875 km, 200 m climb, 14 controls) 1 Dave Best OMA 1:21:44 2 Brenda Giese OFA 1:34:45 3 Vasya Volkov OMJ 1:38:19 4 Dima Volkov OMJ 1:39:58 5 Paula Walkins OFA 3:00:27 Groups 1 Web Jordan, Linda Koziol OG 2:00:35 2 Mark & Kathy Turner OG 2:04:13 3 Bruce Worden, Janice Jian OG 2:15:35 Second Course Sly Lung, Pat & Ken Ilejay 1:45:07 Andrew Bell, Theresa Jones 1:55:39 Greg Olberg, Tammy Thorne 2:12:15 Brown (2.350 km, 120 m climb, 8 controls) 1 Gary Kraght BAOC BrMA 36:25 2 Bjorn Widerstrom BAOC BrMA 47:20 3 Joan Roos BAOC BrFV 52:43 4 Brent Williams BAOC BrMA 1:02:52 5 Ellie Lightfoot GCO BrFA 1:03:55 6 Jennifer Kerr GCO BrFV 1:10:18 7 Lauren Wemmer BAOC BrFA 1:13:54 8 Trinka Gillis BAOC BrFA 1:16:14 9 Jayanth Majhi BAOC BrMA 1:21:12 10 Meg Gerstner BAOC BrFA 1:22:21 11 Nancy Lindeman BAOC BrFV 1:27:24 12 Dean French BAOC BrMV 1:29:39 13 Rosemary Johnson BAOC BrFV 1:35:48 Groups 1 Chatzi, Tsochantovidis BAOC BrG 1:24:16 2 Guoqiang Chen, Li Yan BAOC BrG 1:40:09 Green (3.575 km, 245 m climb, 11 controls) 1 Yelena Krasnova BAOC GFA 1:03:56 2 Alan Glendinning BAOC GMA 1:04:47 3 Chuck Spalding BAOC GMV 1:07:58 4 Bob Cooley BAOC GMV 1:17:10 5 Evgenia Matveeva LAOC GFA 1:30:05 6 Elliott Delaye BAOC GMA 1:31:32 7 Abby Wolfe BAOC GFA 1:33:01 Red (5.375 km, 370 m climb, 17 controls) 1 Sergey Grushin BAOC RMA 1:05:41 2 Otti Bisang Basel RMA 1:19:18 3 Alex Krasnov BAOC RMA 1:29:51 4 Gunne Rostrup SMVFIV RMA 1:31:02 5 Rob Williams BAOC RMA 1:36:05 6 Jim Waite BAOC RMA 1:37:39 7 Pete Olsten GCO RMA 1:41:41 8 Mikhail Matveev LAOC RMA 1:45:00 9 Vivian Lee BAOC RFA 1:59:47 10 Ben Wahlstrand BAOC RMA 2:05:38 11 Richard Jerrard LAOC RMA 2:50:11 Blue (7.700 km, 450 m climb, 22 controls) 1 Vladimir Gusiatnikov BAOC BlMA 1:20:21 2 Dan Stoll-Hadayia BAOC BlMA 1:24:08 3 Thorsten Graeve BAOC BlMA 1:30:00 4 Steve Gregg BAOC BlMA 1:37:30 _______________ Key to classes: [course] [gender] [category], where course is "W" (white), "Y" (yellow), "O" (orange), "Br" (brown), "G" (green), "R" (red) or "Bl" (blue) gender is ("M" or "F") is omited for groups category is "J" (junior, <=21), "A" (adult, 21-49), "V" (veteran, 50+) or "G" (group).