Fresh Snow Adds to Ski Orienteering at Teacup Lake

First and foremost, thank you Teacup Lake Nordic Club for hosting our event again this year.  I don’t recall when we first started, but this is somewhere between the 10th and 15th straight year we’ve been able to use Teacup Lake.

Second, our apologies to any of you who tried to make it to the event but found the newly expanded snow park to be completely full.  It appears lots of folks from Mt. Hood Meadows were using it as an overflow lot.  We had no idea this would happen.  

And finally, thank you to those who came to the event.  By all accounts everyone had lots of fun.

Earlier this month, six CROC members ventured down to Lake Tahoe to participate in the Sierra Ski Orienteering Festival’s public events around the ski orienteering World Cup races.  With teams and individuals from Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Lithuania, Finland, among others, the courses were designed as they typically are in Europe.  Even the public courses had this type of design.  The big difference is that whereas our courses have typically been designed around the main groomed trails, European ski orienteering involves using snowmobiles to add additional medium- and narrow-width trails between the groomed trails.  It also offers opportunities for cross-country navigation as we do when we are orienteering on foot.  It was a true learning experience for us.

Having done those types of courses Mike Poulsen and I agreed that we needed to start moving towards that kind of course design.  With that in mind I designed the courses in a way to begin to emulate what we saw in Tahoe:  controls closer together, fast decision making, route choices criss-crossing each other, and a couple of controls on trails I skied-in right before the event.  All of the controls were either up on the trails off of Lakeside and Stumptown or over on Meadow in the area of the meadow not too far from the junction with Wahoo.  None of the controls were on the lower trails.  Despite only using about 1/3 of the map we were able to even get a long course in.  The courses all emphasized route choice, so even if you know Teacup like the back of your hand, you had to pay attention to where you were and read the map.

After many inches of new snow on Saturday the trails were all groomed and ready to go, though it forced yours truly to re-design the courses Saturday night to avoid too much off-trail skiing due to the deep new snow.  Sunday’s weather was pretty much perfect for skiing, not too warm nor too cold and from time to time the mountain peeked out from behind the clouds.  Thanks to Mike Poulsen for help setting controls, Vanessa Blake for registration and start/finish, and the clean-up crew of Mike, Vanessa, and Karen and Bob Williams for picking up controls, packing up the event supplies, and hauling it all back to the parking lot.

Click for here for results.