Point Pinole Event Poster
(click on it to enlarge)
Point Pinole Regional Shoreline
Date: (Sun.) Feb. 8, 2026
Location: Richmond, CA
Event Director: 
- 510.407.1876
Course Setter: Steve Gregg
Type: C; Event for beginners through advanced; beginners and non-members are welcome; free beginner instruction will be available
Related Event Information
Course Setter's Notes
By Steve Gregg
I believe I can guarantee that no control sites will be underwater at this year's Point Pinole event! The current long-range forecast calls for dry weather in the days leading up to the event. Unfortunately, the poison oak is as bad as ever, although in early February, it has mostly not leafed out yet, and currently takes the form of bare brown sticks. You will almost certainly come into contact with it on both of the Orange courses, so be sure to take the usual precautions.
There seems to have been no goat grazing or controlled burns in the open areas of the park since last year, so the terrain there is not particularly pleasant. In particular, there are a lot of unmapped chest-to-head-high, dead-looking thistle plants covering much of the west side of the map. You might want to wear a long-sleeved outfit if you are sensitive to that sort of thing. At minimum, these plants may well affect your ability to run in the optimal straight line between controls.
The courses offered are the same as they have been the last couple of years. The Sprint Orange course features many short legs — as technical as the map allows — while keeping you out of the really bad poison oak areas. The Long Orange course is more of a "runner's course", featuring longer legs, with more time spent in the open areas and on trails. Additionally, due to last year's problems with control theft, I am setting what I am calling a "Point Pinole White". This means that several controls will not be on trail junctions, but instead will be on features 100% visible from the trail, but 5 to 10 meters off the trail. My hope is that this will deter casual control theft, while not making the White course more technically difficult in any way.
There will be no water placed on any of the courses, so please carry any water with you that you might need. However, there is a park water fountain halfway through the Long Orange course, on a reasonable route choice between two controls, and the location of that water fountain will be indicated on the map, should you decide to use it.
This year, all the maps will be printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. The scale will be 1:5000, except for the Long Orange course, which will be printed at the "usual" 1:7500 scale. The contour interval is 2.5 meters.
Here are the course stats:
Course Distance Climb Controls
White 2.2 km 30 m 11
Yellow 2.7 km 55 m 13
Sprint Orange 3.3 km 70 m 16
Long Orange 5.0 km 100 m 15
Combo Orange 8.3 km 170 m 31
- Beginners should be aware that the course length given is the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. Your actual distance could be significantly longer (although, going straight [off-trail] is sometimes possible at this park). The climb numbers represent the amount of ascending that would be done on the "optimum route" (in the Course Setters' opinion), without regard for any descending.
- The Combo Orange course requires an E-stick with more capacity than the (ancient) SI-Card5 (ID < 500000) and the (old) SI-Card8 (ID 2xxxxxx). (The rental E-sticks have adequate capacity.)
For the Combo Orange course, you will start with the Sprint Orange map. After punching the last control on that course, you will head directly to the start, pick up a Long Orange map, and then proceed to control 1 on the Long Orange course. You will not punch a control at the start area — all you need to do there is pick up your second map. The Sprint Orange and Long Orange courses share quite a few controls, but for the most part you will be approaching them from different directions on each course, so there will be some fresh navigational challenges.