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Spring Lake Regional Park

Date: (Sun.) Dec. 4, 2022
Location: Santa Rosa, CA
Event Director: - 415.456.8118
Course Setter: James Roney
Type: C; Beginner and intermediate/advanced courses. This park is suitable for first-timers.

Course Setter’s Notes

By James Roney

I hope you can make it up to Spring Lake with us! We are excited to be back in a park that offers a complex blend of forest terrain and urban-park features. This is also the park I do my regular running in, so it is exciting to share it with you! This map features exposed rock, stony pits, and our more traditional forested hillsides.

Courses

For those who make the trip, I have done my best to ensure the advanced courses share as few controls as possible (Brown and Contour share 3 controls, Contour and Green share 2, Brown and Green share 4). In the cases where controls are shared, they are approached from different directions. The hope is to keep the courses as interesting as possible for those who wish to do more than one, while trying to offer all things for all people.

For those who wish for challenge or as a training exercise, I have created a custom contour-only map from the normal Spring Lake map with all the colors except brown (and cliff black) turned off. This course can be run on its own, and is somewhere between a Brown and a Green.

If you run multiple courses, I encourage you to run the Contour first, so you do not have a memory of the terrain. The Contour control locations are standard difficulty, so your ability to navigate will need to be precise (of course, you also have your compass). Contour+Brown would be something of a normal Green/Red, Contour+Green would be something of a normal Blue.

Spring Lake is flat and fast, although in the spirit of BAOC, the longest course finds the one major hill on the property and goes to the top. Even then, the total climbs are benign, as shown in the stats:

    Course     Length    Climb   Controls   Map Scale
    White      1.7 km     20 m       9       1:5000   
    Yellow     2.4 km     40 m      13       1:5000
    Brown      3.0 km     75 m      13       1:4000   
    Contour    3.5 km     80 m      10       1:7500
    Green      5.4 km    195 m      15       1:7500 *

Map

The map is generally accurate, at least accurate enough for me when scouting and placing controls at walking pace. Please note it is a Sprint map with Sprint symbols, but you do not have to follow Sprint rules. For the Contour map, I have resized the symbols for the 1:7500 scale.

I have made some minor edits in the areas near some controls where necessary. Two things that are not mapped well are a number of ruined barbed-wire fences, and strands of wire that protrude from the ground in a handful of spots​—​just enough to trip over. As always, be diligent in your running.

Additionally, I came across some paths/animal trails that have worn into the terrain. Some of these are unmapped.

Note that there are large out-of-bounds areas on the sides of dams and in the group campsites in the southern area of the map. These will not be specially marked, but they should be evident in the field. For the campsites, please keep a wide berth to be considerate of other park users. Entering an out-of-bounds area typically results in disqualification.

Comments

For those of you on the Green course, it is not my intent that the climb from control 1 to 2 be dangerous. As it might rain before or during the event, the ground might be wet or slippery, in which case please be aware of your limitations if you attempt to scale the cliffs directly to the control. (Or alternatively, don’t scale them​—​go around them.)

We will not be placing water on the courses, but the courses pass by a number of drinking fountains should you need to quench your thirst.

We hope to see you this Sunday! Thank you again for making the trip up to Santa Rosa.