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Presidio of San Francisco, Fort Scott

Event #3 of 6 in the BAOC 2019 Summer Series

Date: (Sun.) Jul. 7, 2019
Location: San Francisco, CA
Event Director: - 415.456.8118
Course Setter: Deron van Hoff
Type: C; This event will be part of the 2019 Summer Series — one course for Beginners, who are very welcome, and one "advanced" course — the courses will be "easier" than usual because of the nature of the park


Course Setter's Notes

By Deron van Hoff

The Presidio is beautiful right now, and the wildflowers seem to be at their peak. Come beat the heat, and spend a day at the Presidio!

I may repeat this several times​—​please do not cross residential yards!! It may be the best route choice if it were to be allowed, but it is not allowed as a condition of our permit and by orienteering rules. Residential areas, as well as some other sensitive areas, are indicated on the map with purple vertical lines. All of these areas are out-of-bounds and are not to be crossed.

Courses

Two courses are being offered: a "beginner" course; and an "advanced", Orange-level course.

Although the beginner course is navigationally easy, there are some route choices to make, and there is nice, picturesque running.

The two courses share only one control, so if you want extra distance, you may elect to run both courses for the same entry fee. Just make sure that you arrive early enough so that your second start is no later than 12:30 PM.

The course statistics are as follows:

    Course          Length    Climb   Controls
    Beginner        3.2 km     85 m      12  
    Orange          5.0 km    140 m      15
    Both courses    8.2 km    225 m      27  (two separate starts)  

The Orange course will be the ranking course for the 2019 Summer Series.

Map and More

Here are other useful notes regarding the map and park conditions.

The map scale is 1:7500 since the map has quite a lot of detail. The contour interval is 20 feet.

This event is not on a Sprint map, so if you can cross it, feel free, as long as it not marked as out-of-bounds.

As mentioned above, areas indicated on the map with purple vertical lines are out-of-bounds and are not to be crossed.

The map is not perfect, but very detailed and not bad. Some areas that are mapped as runnable forest (white), clearly are not. I did not attempt to remap these areas as it will be evident when you are there. I checked some, and hopefully the best, route choices, and had to add and subtract trails, though there's no guarantee that I took every conceivable route.

There will not be any water placed on the courses, so if you think you will need it, please carry it with you.

You may encounter poison oak on your route. It seems to be at its peak along with the wildflowers. Most is about shin high, is prevalent in the undergrowth, and grows right up to the edges of the minor trails. Thus, shorts might not be the best choice of pants for this "summer" event.

Here is a clarification about poison oak: Control placements on both courses are such that you can avoid going through poison oak, although it is prevalent in some areas if you were to choose to bushwhack. I'm mostly warning that if you choose a route through dense vegetation, you’re likely to encounter poison oak. Also, it may be hard to avoid entirely on some of the minor trails as it grows close to the trails. However, compared to our wilderness venues, the poison oak quotient is still low.

Unfortunately for those that want to bring their dogs, both courses use some of the trails and surrounding terrain that have postings that indicate they are closed to dogs because it is the middle of coyote pupping season. I saw more than one coyote while I was vetting courses. More details are provided here (http://www.presidio.gov/presidio-trust/planning/coyotes-in-the-presidio).

Hope to see a bunch of you on July 7th!