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Huddart Park

Date: (Sun.) Oct. 23, 2011
Location: Woodside, CA
Event Director: - 650.906.9672
Course Setters: Matthias Kohler, Nick Corsano
Type: B; White through Red courses in a beautiful redwood forest

BAOC returns to the beautiful redwood forests of Huddart Park on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Woodside. We will offer six of our standard courses (all except Blue), so there will be something for everyone from beginners to advanced orienteers. The usual times and fees will be in effect, and electronic punching will be used. Course statistics will be published soon. (Spoiler: Expect a good deal of climb!)

Huddart is a steep park. The contour interval is 7.5 meters, and there is certainly some imprecision in contour lines (typical of redwood forest). As a result, it is often impossible to judge just how steep a hillside is from the map alone. Advice to advanced runners: wear cleats, trust your senses, know your limitations, and have a Plan B. Most of the park is mapped as runnable, and while there are many stretches of delightful open woods, many areas are more nuanced in reality — featuring thick clusters, downed trees, or undergrowth which will slow your progress. The course setters have applied many map corrections, especially in the areas around controls and along the most likely routes, to attempt a more accurate depiction of the vegetation.

We will be based at the Werder Picnic Shelter (which is near the location used in previous years). Parking, registration, the Finish, picnic tables, restrooms, and a kid’s playground are in close proximity. We will be using two Starts: the White and Yellow courses will start close to the shelter, while the intermediate and advanced runners will enjoy a brisk uphill walk of about 0.5 km with 120 m of climb to reach their Start.

Huddart is popular with equestrians, and it is mandatory that all runners yield 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, too.

No dogs are allowed in the park.

Here are the details of the courses that will be available:

    Course    Length    Climb   Controls

    White     2.0 km    135 m      12
    Yellow    2.7 km    225 m      13
    Orange    3.5 km    315 m      13
    Brown     2.5 km    190 m      13
    Green     3.3 km    335 m      16
    Red       4.2 km    420 m      18

For more information, or to volunteer to help, please contact the Event Director, Nick Corsano (info above).

Course Setters' Notes

We will begin with some cautions:

• All courses: Huddart is popular with equestrians, and it is mandatory that all runners yield to horses. If you encounter people on horseback, you must stand by the side of the trail and let them go by. Also, do not jump out of the woods onto a trail if there is a horse nearby.

• All courses: Although Huddart has been notorious for poison oak in the past, this year the growth is fairly sparse. However, runners should still be on the alert.

• Orange, Brown, Green, Red: The Start, and some of the early controls on these courses, are fairly close to Kings Mountain Road, the winding road you drive up to reach the park. Kings Mountain Road is out of bounds. You may not stand, walk, or run alongside, on, or across Kings Mountain Road. The lack of a shoulder, blind curves, and road habits of both drivers and bicyclists make this unsafe. It isn’t a sensible route choice in any case.

There is water on every course except White.

The White and Yellow course maps are printed at 1:5000. The Orange, Brown, Green, and Red course maps are printed at 1:7500.

Huddart is a steep park, as reflected in the climb figures for the courses, although only Green and Red have legs with really tough uphill going.

Vegetation (and how it is mapped) merit some comments. Most prominent are the redwoods. There are areas, particularly in the northern and western part of the park, where there are 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, 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.
• 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 “distinctive tree, ruined” is used.
• The brown × symbol represents a rootstock. Only the largest or most prominent of these have been mapped, usually over 2 meters high.

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. We have attempted to refine the vegetation in several areas, but all the advanced courses still have legs where runners will have to deal with this misleading “white” terrain.

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