Dan Stoll-Hadayia running in at Coyote Hills, 2000

Las Trampas Regional Wilderness

Date: (Sun.) Jan. 16, 2005
Location: San Ramon, CA
Event Director: - 925.516.7622
Course Setter: François Léonard
Type: B; All seven courses, plus Long Orange (an Adventure Race training course)

Skip to the Results

Write-up by Marie-Josee Parayre & Francois Leonard

Melissa Criqui and Marsha Jacobs show off their "O in the Oaks" T-shirts for the Morgan Territory A-meet, October 2001 (Photo: Judy Koehler)

Henry Ford once said "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs". Following that philosophy, several brave orienteers found their way around Las Trampas Regional Park, armed with map, compass and courage. All courses were offered, including an Adventure Racing (Long Orange) course. Over 125 competitors participated in the event, and by some miracle of nature, blue skies and sunshine also showed up. A big thank you to the volunteers who made this event possible. Special thanks to Bill Papendick who tested the sturdiness of the rocks at Las Trampas with his forehead. (The rock required 8 stitches.)

Daniel and Philip Kopish were first and second on the White course, followed by the Davis group. Marina Keating won the Yellow course; Greg Ehrensing and Erin Magers were second and third.

On the Blue course, Ian Marsden took the lead after the 5th control and won by 3 minutes. Penny DeMoss was first woman. Bruce Wolfe, Tapio Karras and Matthias Kohler formed the podium on the Red course. On the Green course, Dan Dwyer was number 1 in 1:11:11 (get it?), followed by Bob Cooley and Bill Wright. The Brown course was won convincingly by Denis Wildfogel, the only runner during the day to break one hour. Gary Kraght finished in second place, followed by Joe Scarborough.

The Long Orange turned out to be true to its name. The winning time was almost 1h30min (John Bonwick), with several finishers taking more than two hours to complete the course. The Ridgeway/Bastis group was second, followed by newcomer Kevin McCarty. On the regular Orange course, Joe Maffi came in first; Brian and Jeremi Kirshner were second, and the team of Barbara Kreiss and Vicki Woolworth was third.

In general, Las Trampas is steep and fairly open, and the northern half of the map is difficult to use, so designing interesting courses can be a challenge. So, to add some spice to the first event of the year, the course setter decided to blank-out some areas of the map (to the event director's dismay) on the Orange and advanced courses. Here are the course setter's thoughts when designing some of the legs:

Click to enlarge - Montebello Open Space Preserve, looking from the start toward the finish (2004)


In general, I wanted to emphasize the following three skills:

Blue-Red-Green S-1: I wanted to make this an easy compass-bearing control. I was not very concerned that you would see the other competitors, since there were actually two different controls, one for Blue and one for Red/Green. Also, just taking a quick bearing should have sent you in the right direction anyway. That said, I was very surprised to see competitors not take a bearing on this first leg, and go in the wrong direction...

Blue 3-4: This was supposed to be a compass-bearing control.

Blue 5-6: The creek turns west before the control. I was hoping to catch a few competitors simply following the creek.

Blue 7-8: I wanted to make this a compass-bearing and pace-count control.

Blue 8-9: I agree that this control was too dangerous. The heavy rains really made it worse than when I originally surveyed it. In any case, you can always find a way to get into the reentrant downstream, and then follow the reentrant back up...

Blue 9-10: The plan was to have a long route, with easy initial navigation, but several choices at the end of the leg. The open spur north of the control is what I thought was the best route, although I'm told that there is a useful east-west animal trail from the path west of the control.

Blue 10-11: I chickened out of this one at the last minute. I had actually blocked the path junction south of the control, to make this a compass bearing through the forest, but decided that the reentrant was too nasty.

Blue 12-13, 13-14: These were supposed to be compass-bearing legs.

Blue 14-15: Compass bearing, but I was trying to throw you off by having the green patch in the bearing line. So if you were on a bearing, you had to take a significant detour off of the bearing line, and then decide to correct the bearing, or come back to the bearing line. Oh, and the map makes no sense around the control, so having a partial map was a blessing in disguise!

Blue 15-16: Did you see the fake controls? Anybody take the bait?

Blue 16-17: Pace counting to the north-south trail, then up the reentrant.

Red 5-6: Compass bearing and pace count.

Red 6-7: Compass bearing and pace count.

Red 7-8: See Blue 8-9.

Red 8-9: See Blue 9-10.

Red 9-10: Double bearing problem: first take proper bearing to get to your attack point on the trail. Then another bearing to get to the control.

Red 10-11: See Blue 15-16.

Red 11-12: See Blue 16-17.

Green 4-5: I chickened out of this one. I originally had most of the map blocked between the two controls. I decided that the terrain was too steep on the bearing line, so I unmasked it.

Green 5-6: There are three reentrants to cross before making it to the control, which makes it somewhat harder to follow a good line to the control unless the bearing is accurate and carefully followed.

Green 6-7: This was supposed to be a route-choice control, between going around the blocked area, or going through it.

Brown S-1: This is an interesting control, because I think the direction is counter-intuitive. The straight route requires crossing the stream just west of the start. Another route is to run along the path going west until you see the water hole, then take a bearing to the control.

Brown 2-3: See Blue 8-9.

Brown 3-4: A long leg with a lot going on, which can be helpful or confusing...

Brown 6-7: A route-choice leg -- through the blanked area or around it.

Orange: On the Orange course, I wanted to have just a few areas that were blanked out, just to show that you don't always need to have all the information to find a control. Also, I wanted to convey to the Orange runners that there are skills that can be learned to improve their orienteering.


Results

Las Trampas Regional Wilderness
San Ramon, CA
Sunday, January 16, 2005


  Pl  Name(s)                                  Time

White Course      (2.3 km, 75 m climb, 6 controls)

   1  Daniel Kopisch                           26:14
   2  Philipp Kopisch                          31:38
   3  Suzanne, Brian, & Juliana Davis          33:10
   4  Chris Liu                                39:50
   5  Nicholas & Alexander van Holf            41:16
   6  Jacob Simonds, Pei Fang Fang             43:15
   7  Aaron Wong, Vu Dang, Didi Ricasa         51:00
   8  Karel Bachand, Julien Varennes           52:16
   9  Debbie Wetmore, Denise Lee,
        Dennis & Sue England                   54:25
  10  Maria Bloomfield                         55:41
  11  Scott Luer, Suzette Flynt                57:03
  12  Mark, Pat, Sean, & Will Diamond        1:01:30
  13  Scott & Ben Peterson                   1:13:12
  14  Louie Hale                             1:20:23
  15  Andrea Mravca, Morgan & Jordan Hamel   1:22:59


Yellow Course     (2.9 km, 120 m climb, 9 controls)

   1  Marina Keating                           48:36
   2  Greg Ehrensing                           57:22
   3  Erin Magers                              57:47
   4  Joanne Thiel                           1:05:22
   5  Terry Englehart                        1:08:20
   6  Chris Bragg, Robin Pomerance           1:13:49
   7  N. Landau                              1:34:40
   8  Abigail & Kean Freeman                 2:04:30

      Jakka Karras                             DNF
      Andrew Liu                               DNF
      Jan Kraus Wolfe                          DNF
      Galina Shakhnovsky                       DNF
      Chris Tabith                             DNF

  Second Course

      Joe Maffei                               38:23
      Debbie Wetmore, Denise Lee,
        Dennis & Sue England                 1:21:07
      Aaron Wong, Vu Dang, Didi Ricasa       1:28:40
      Karel Bachand, Julien Varennes         1:30:25


Orange Course     (3.2 km, 232 m climb, 10 controls)

   1  Joe Maffei                             1:09:09
   2  Brian & Jeremi Kirshner                2:24:15
   3  Barbara Kreiss, Vicki Woolworth        2:25:54
   4  Carl & Gavin Williams                  2:27:57
   5  Jane Moorhead                          2:48:58
   6  Andrew Barrows                         3:13:20

      Barbara Straka                           DNF
      Karl & Cynthia Royen                     DNF
      Outdoor Deer Valley                      DNF
      Frank Markowitz                          DNF
      Alan Houser                              DNF
      Asimina Arvanitaki                       DNF
      Doug Stein                               DNF
      Al Martin                                DNF


AR Long Orange Course  (5.0 km, 350 m climb, 13 controls)

   1  Jon Bonwick                            1:27:53
   2  Kristi Ridgway, Thomas Bastis          1:38:05
   3  Kevin McCarty                          1:59:13
   4  Brian Ridgway                          2:00:25
   5  Alak Ghosh                             2:17:02
   6  Aaron Collage, Mark Simon              2:19:16
   7  Chuck Fancher, Dracy & Brandon Nugent  3:08:04

      Murray Wilcox                            DNF
      Nancy & Paul Lippe                       DNF
      Helena Eydelberg, Alex Krechetov         DNF
      Igor Ruderman, Jackie Wong               DNF


Brown Course       (3.7 km, 250 m climb, 8 controls)

   1  Dennis Wildfogel                         58:26
   2  Gary Kraght                            1:17:02
   3  Joe Scarborough                        1:18:44
   4  James Wilson                           1:25:10
   5  Stephanie Maclean                      1:35:44
   6  Mark Rice                              1:53:31
   7  Clima McKeegan                         2:13:43
   8  Oleg Shakhnovsky                       2:26:01
   9  Chad Davis                             2:26:08
  10  Yulia Yukina                           2:40:22
  11  Jay Hann                               3:01:56
  12  Jim Fish                               3:16:51
  13  Frederick Lee                          3:39:16

      Trinka Gillis                            DNF
      Nancy Lindeman                           DNF
      Dwight Freund                            DNF
      Rosemary Johnson                         DNF
      Jeff Lanam                               DNF
      Bjorn Widerstrom, Goutham Mallareddy     DNF


Green Course       (4.6 km, 345 m climb, 8 controls)

   1  Dan Dwyer                              1:11:11
   2  Bob Cooley                             1:27:02
   3  Bill Wright                            1:29:36
   4  Trevor Pering                          1:45:32
   5  Manfred Kopisch                        1:59:03
   6  Ilya Katnelson, Denis Trapido          2:17:11
   7  William Straka                         2:30:31
   8  Theo Verhoeven                         2:35:15
   9  Terry Gleason                          2:38:04
  10  Phillip Hoare                          2:54:16

      Suresh Yanamadawa                        DNF
      Vladislav Skvortson                      DNF
      Mark Irwin                               DNF
      Wes Erck                                 DNF


Red Course        (5.5 km, 375 m climb, 14 controls)

   1  Bruce Wolfe                            1:10:00
   2  Tapio Karras                           1:27:27
   3  Matthias Kohler                        1:29:50
   4  Derek Maclean                          1:31:27
   5  Kent Ohlund                            1:33:30
   6  Brett Lehigh, Rod Jaehn                1:39:57
   7  Peter Graube                           1:50:37
   8  Brad Wetmore                           1:54:33
   9  Chuck Spalding                         1:55:24
  10  Dan Greene                             1:57:48
  11  Eric Rosenzweig                        2:03:41
  12  Mark Blair                             2:04:23
  13  Peter Graham                           2:10:19
  14  Michael Behrens                        2:21:03
  15  Bob Strauss                            2:23:53
  16  Joachim Strobel                        2:56:52

      Bill Papendick                           DNF


Blue Course       (6.8 km, 500 m climb, 18 controls)

   1  Ian Marsden                            1:38:23
   2  Syd Reader                             1:41:17
   3  Mattias Eriksson                       1:42:12
   4  Andrejus Masalkovas                    1:43:59
   5  Mattias Vangbo                         1:48:50
   6  Steve Gregg                            1:48:59
   7  Jason Quinn                            1:57:13
   8  Penny DeMoss                           2:00:26
   9  Nik Weber                              2:04:02
  10  Nagy Attila                            2:07:44
  11  Bernard Hiller                         2:44:50
  12  William Gilmore                        2:57:51
  13  Dan Rathburn                           3:17:13
  14  John Lunsford, Tom Keefer              3:38:04

      Roy Malone                               DNF
      Dave Egbert                              DNF

_______________

DNF = Did not finish (missed one or more controls)