Mountain Bike Orienteering Two

Empire Orienteering Club tried another Mountain Bike Orienteering event on September 13 at the Saratoga Biathlon facility in Day. We had ideal early fall weather in the low 70's and sunny, which gave way to partly cloudy in the afternoon. Jim Schreiner had all major trails mowed and Steve Sweet Sr. helped me with the start/finish early in the event. The Schreiners also invited us to use their sandy beach and one of the warmer sections of the Great Sacandaga Lake.

Unfortunately, I had scheduled the event on the same weekend as the Mohawk Hudson Cycling Club's century ride so we didn't have any cyclists trying orienteering and limited publicity within cycling circles. One can see from the results that follow that the turnout was rather meager. I would recommend that we do it again, but have it a part of a regular foot O meet to make it worth while on the part of the meet director, landowner, and volunteers.

I received criticism because I did not locate one of the controls on a small island or boulder in the lake!

A lot of similarities are drawn between mountain bike and ski orienteering, and MTB-O makes excellent training for Ski-O. The features used for controls are similar to Ski-O, and the type of terrain and course lengths that make good Ski-O courses also makes good MTB-O!

-Eric Hamilton