[Empire Orienteering Club]

Lapland Lake
December 23, 2007

The controls are all hung in the basement with care
in hopes that they'll dry 'fore the black spots appear.
An I and my laptop settled in for a evening
to summarize the events of the day just... ran out of inspiration.

The ski orienteering season opener at Lapland Lake came off splendidly. None of the severe weather that had been predicted actually materialized. Temperatures were on the mild side all day with a damp drizzle on occasions during the afternoon. We had 15 competitors completing the qualifier and one group.

When originally conceived Anne Hirvonen [of Lapland Lake] and I had envisioned a ski festival type of day with the cross country ski qualifiers in the morning, youth races at noon and the ski orienteering in the afternoon. As it turned out we did have at least a couple of ski-O people do the XC races in the morning and several XC skiers tried ski-O.

The electronic "punching" seemed to work well and we are looking forward to using the system at the Empire State Games finals. From a course setters perspective it allowed use of some novel challenges that would not have been possible without a map swap.

We had the following courses (with seasonal colors):

When I pick up controls for ski-O I find it interesting to see what route choices participants used other than my (shortest skiable distances). They sure found some better route choices than I had anticipated. In fact Scott Pleban and Margus Hallik found a stream crossing that cut at least a half kilometer of the ski distance.

I had hoped more people would have taken advantage of an early season qualifier, but with the weather forecasts I can understand the decision to wait for better conditions. But conditions were great: excellent trail grooming by Olavi Hirvonen and 18 inches to two feet of snow in the woods.

I would like to thank Ann Christoffel and Steve Gurzler for their help with registration, and to Gabor Bobok for running the electronics. I could not have done it without them.

- Eric J. Hamilton


White (4) 3.5 km 8 C
     1(39)2(51)3(126)4(101)5(78)6(121)7(40)8(128)F
1  Katie Christoffel 33:341:204:0512:1915:0719:0222:0027:4632:1033:34
  EMPO  1:202:458:142:483:552:585:464:241:24
2  Stephanie Crocker 42:174:3811:3823:3624:5928:3131:3438:4441:2142:17
     4:387:0011:581:233:323:037:102:370:56
3  Betsy Hawes 56:571:528:1220:1224:1630:4236:1348:2854:2856:57
  HVO  1:526:2012:004:046:265:3112:156:002:29
4  Larry Crocker 90:153:247:2717:4921:2426:2131:5777:0284:3490:15
     3:244:0310:223:354:575:3645:057:325:41
Green (5) 6.6 km 10 C
     1(96)2(125)3(110)4(35)5(95)6(33)7(126)8(101)9(123)10(128)F
1  Allison Crocker 38:022:316:1611:2915:0119:2223:2430:5732:3334:5337:1738:02
     2:313:455:133:324:214:027:331:362:202:240:45
2  Kati Kangro-Hallik 56:592:5710:0823:0627:3232:4840:5549:4251:2353:3756:0056:59
     2:577:1112:584:265:168:078:471:412:142:230:59
3  Terry Myers 77:248:0014:2124:5331:2740:01 65:3868:0272:5976:0077:24
  NEOC  8:006:2110:326:348:34 25:372:244:573:011:24
4  Ellie George 78:275:0014:3930:0236:5444:0754:1467:4070:2573:0077:0178:27
     5:009:3915:236:527:1310:0713:262:452:354:011:26
5  Janet Findley 106:4734:5347:3856:1462:4772:0884:3792:5595:5499:45105:41106:47
     34:5312:458:366:339:2112:298:182:593:515:561:06
Red (6) 8.85 km 13 C
     1(99)2(54)3(125)4(63)5(78)6(123)7(110)8(35)9(95)10(33)11(126)12(101)13(128)F
1  Margus Hallik 35:391:022:114:137:5412:4215:1719:1022:0424:5628:5632:0533:1735:0235:39
     1:021:092:023:414:482:353:532:542:524:003:091:121:450:37
2  Scott Pleban 38:221:122:314:498:5113:5116:2920:4623:4727:0931:1934:3035:48 38:22
     1:121:192:184:025:002:384:173:013:224:103:111:18 2:34
3  Aims Coney 66:371:284:077:1814:0921:1625:4131:5439:3245:0051:0959:5961:4365:4166:37
     1:282:393:116:517:074:256:137:385:286:098:501:443:580:56
4  Alex Jospe 68:463:277:079:5021:3728:1632:0336:3941:2847:4854:5963:2564:5567:5468:46
     3:273:402:4311:476:393:474:364:496:207:118:261:302:590:52
5  David Hunter 76:338:0510:3914:0220:3228:1032:3238:2349:2154:1863:1967:4172:1475:3976:33
     8:052:343:236:307:384:225:5110:584:579:014:224:333:250:54
6  Dmitri Soloviev 98:2011:5714:2217:4934:1644:0351:2760:0165:5974:5985:2891:3294:1097:1398:20
  EMPO  11:572:253:2716:279:477:248:345:589:0010:296:042:383:031:07

last updated: --Sun Dec 30 2007 04:09:47 PM EST--