Director’s Notes:
It was a beautiful morning in Almonte. The Gemmill Park and town of Almonte had 34 controls placed, sometimes in unusual places, for example outside the principal’s office at the local school. I had to explain what I was doing to someone working overtime on the Sunday morning when I was hanging the control flag. Other controls were at the river walkway with white water streaming by a few feet away, or in a lane beside the local post-office, well tucked in behind a tree, making it hard to spot from the street.
This
event was a mass start for the advanced courses. To get a spread and not allow
too much following I used “butterfly loops” people had to take in different
order, before continuing on the rest of the course. The loops probably confused
some people but most seem to succeed in taking them in the right order. (See
attached map example from the Short Advanced course).
I have to apologize for a couple of mistakes on the Short
Advanced course, there was no control 13 on the map; the course went directly
from 12 to 14. Two of the three butterfly loop alternatives had got the wrong
control descriptions; the control order for 
the
loops did not match the map. I hope this didn’t cause too much problem for
those affected. The mistake was due to some last minute improvements to the
course, and then being short of time for map and description printing. I should
have known better…
From
the comments afterwards people seemed to like the mix of orienteering; forest,
parkland and some urban street orienteering. The switch from fast running in
parks and on streets to tricky map reading in the downtown area caused many to
miss the optimal route choices. It is not easy to see the underpasses through
buildings if you don’t stop and study the map (see map example of the town
controls).
Thank you to the registration team (Linda Connell, Trish Larkin, Lorna Guttormson), Eric Teutsch doing the SI-timing, Kevin Lafleche for controlling the event, and all the people helping talking in controls. Everyone’s help made the work easy.
Regards,
Stefan
Time-keepers notes:
The times that you got on Sunday were all 1 minute 57 seconds too long. The official results have been corrected. Also the wings of the butterfly loops where not tracked, instead they show as “extra punches” in italics. Everybody had to have at least the correct 6 extra punches. Unfortunately I had to declare two people as having a “missed punch” after the event.
