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26^th Annual Golden Goat & Golden Kid

Pacheco State Park

Date: (Sun.) Nov. 2, 2025
Location: Hollister, CA
Event Directors: - 707.567.3496, - 650.248.0909
Course Setter: Carl Hoel
Type: C; Extra-long "Goat" course, and a long "Kid" course, with a shared mass start; and a regular beginner course with separated starts

Course Setters Notes

By Carl Hoel

Courses

Three courses are available for this event:

    Course          Length      Climb     Controls
    Adv. Beginner   2.7 km   190 m (7.0%)     7  
    Golden Kid      5.6 km   420 m (7.5%)    11  
    Golden Goat    10.4 km   800 m (7.7%)    16  

The Advanced Beginner (Yellow) course generally follows clear features such as trails and fences. The faint trail between controls 2 and 3 is hard to follow, and is therefore marked with streamers or small flags in the terrain. For the slightly more-advanced runner, several legs can optionally be done by taking shortcuts between clear features.

For the Golden Kid and Golden Goat courses, the terrain is open, and the visibility is very good, so the technical difficulty is limited. However, due to the hilly character of the park, careful route selection is important.

The Golden Kid course allows skipping one control. Any single control can be skipped.

Runners of the Golden Goat course need to visit all the controls. Numerous forks are used, so most other runners will not be heading to the same controls as you are. Run the course on your map, and pay no attention to the other runners! The Golden Goat course has a map-flip close to halfway through the course.

Terrain and Map

Pacheco State Park is hilly, with generally open terrain, interleaved with patches of oak trees. All streams are dried out. In some areas, the boundaries between areas marked with different vegetation types are not super clear, so relying more on other features for navigation is recommended.

The map scale is 1:10,000 with a 5 m contour interval.

Water

Water is available on the Golden Kid course (1 water stop) and Golden Goat course (2 water stops), but not on the Advanced Beginner course.

Start/Finish

The Start is located 800 m (40 m climb) from the Assembly Area. On the way to the Start, you will pass the Finish, about 350 m from the Assembly Area. The Golden Goat and Golden Kid are, as usual a combined, Mass Start at 10 AM. To get everyone to the Start on time, we need to leave the Assembly Area at 9:45 AM and walk to the Start. You must be ready to leave the Assembly Area at 9:45. Late starters will be treated as though they started at 10 am!! So do not be late!

As usual, there is a four-hour time limit on both the Kid and the Goat.

Fences

There are several well-maintained fences in the park. They are fairly easy to cross by selecting one of the larger gaps between the fence posts, and either crawl under or squeeze between the wires. Please be very careful when doing so, to not get cut on the barbed wire. The courses are long and allowing a few extra seconds to carefully cross the fences will not affect your chances of victory. Do not jump over or climb over a fence — don't risk damage to yourself or the fence.

Vetter's Comments

By Misha Kreslavsky

I vetted the Golden Goat & Golden Kid courses set by Carl Hoel. They are a masterpiece, believe me! (I still cannot decide which control I would skip on the Kid. 😉)

Running conditions in Pacheco are almost perfect: the ground is already soft, but not muddy yet, the dry grass is down, those slopes (oh!) are as easy as they can be, the weather forecast is nice, perhaps just a little too warm. The map (updated by Bill Cusworth a few years ago) is good.

For our beginners: The Beginner course is special! It is of "Yellow navigation difficulty" (meaning simple), but it goes mostly off trails — it allows you to discover the feeling of advanced orienteering.

And, of course, Pacheco is beautiful. In addition to the views, I saw deer, elk, coyotes, bobcats, and a lot of smaller animals.