McDowell Nature Preserve (Results)

Wow!

Our 21/22 orienteering season got off with a bang at the October 2nd McDowell Park meet. The weather was great and well over 100 people competed.

This was our second season not having a designated Meet Director for McDowell so the event was done by “committee”. Walter Siegenthaler designed the course and verified all the control locations.
Dan & Jeannette Davis hung all the Red, Green, & Orange controls with Walter & James Sisk coming early on Saturday morning to put out the White & Yellow controls. James Sisk taught Beginner classes and Jeannette Davis handled check-ins, starts, & finishes. At the end of the day, we had super control pick-up volunteers with Walter, James, David Alexander, Keith Andrew, and Dave making short work of it.

JROTC deserves a special shout-out as this was their first time handling their own check-in, starts, finishes, & time keeping. John Davis from Crest High School volunteered to get the ball rolling with other instructors and students stepping in when needed. JROTC got the job done!

McDowell is a tough area with its many gulley’s, dry ditches, and reentrants. Mapping has been difficult there and even though the current map is quite good – it’s not perfect. This, combined with still heavy green growth contributed to fairly slow times along with DNF’s & OT’s. There was some discussion on the placement of Control 116 and it was finally decided that it was somewhat misplaced (is that like being “almost pregnant”?). This doesn’t happen often but it can occur even though control locations are typically vetted twice.

The next meet is November 6 at Kings Mountain State Park, Lake York side. David Alexander is Meet Director and he is looking to take us into some areas of the park that we haven’t used for several years. The club site will be in the horse barn area of Camp York which can be tricky to find
so pay attention to our directional signs.

Also be aware that the park charges an entrance fee so be on the lookout for the ticket kiosks. Register soon as we are expecting another large turn out.

Here are the results of the meet: