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Best Orienteering Map in North America?
Clark Maxfield, Editor
What is the best orienteering map in the U.S? The national magazine
Orienteering/North America is taking a survey, and you're invited
to participate!
In defining the word "Best" you can be very subjective:
the best terrain; the most open forests; the most fun running; the
best times you ever ran; the best job of mapping, or fond memories
of an event there.... You decide for yourself what the title "Best
map" should mean.
My own nominations from nearby maps in the Midwest and Heartland
Regions would include: Cap Sauer's Holding (CAOC map), Telemark
(Minnesota OC), Cuivre River (St Louis OC), Yankee Springs (Southern
Michigan), Kellings Lake s (Wisconsin's Badger OC), Blue and Gray
Park (Kansas City OC), The Map Formerly Known as Blue Mountain (Rocky
Mountain OC), Hawn State Park (St Louis OC), Camp Ripley (Minnesota
OC).
Cap Sauer's Holding is my number one choice because it is nearby,
unblemished by man-made buildings, roads or parking lots, and contains
a variety of terrain and vegetation: ridge-and-valley, glacial deposits
(remember the long, snake-like esker [ridge-line] that winds through
the center of the map?), marshes, lakes, and stretches of open white
oak forests. And for good measure, some very thick green briars
that punish the careless orienteer who doesn't plan his route very
carefully through the three degrees of green. The advanced courses
on our March 23 meet will plunge into Cap Sauers for those interested
in seeing one of the country's best orienteering maps.
As a matter of fact, most of the maps on our list feature glacial
terrain. Telemark is the second map on our list because it is covered
in a disorganized jumble of small depressions, knolls, spurs and
reentrants—terrain created as a mile-thick glacier sat on
the landscape for 50,000 years. All significant detail was scraped
away by the glacier, and redeposited in small heaps and grooves
known as "glacial terrain."
Orienteering on the Telemark map or any other glacial terrain can
be the worst experience of your life, if you allow yourself to lose
contact with the map even for one minute. Because there are few
large recognizable features, you can wander for hours without relocating
successfully. The best strategy on glacial terrain is to admit early
that you are lost and return on a reciprocal bearing, back the way
you came, until you reconnect to the map. By plunging ahead hoping
to see the control, you'll only make you situation more dire, and
harder to fix. The Telemark map will be presented in a 2-day A-meet
in October 2004.
But you don't have to drive all the way north to Telemark, Wisconsin
to find glacial terrain. Closer maps which also offer that challenging
orienteering experience also include Yankee Springs Recreation Area,
Middleton, Michigan; Kellings Lakes, Dundee, Wisconsin; and Camp
Ripley, Brainerd, Minnesota.
If you want to participate in O/NA's survey, you have until April
10 to mail your nominations to jjcote@juno.com,
or to:
Orienteering/North America
DMB Publishing, LLC
488 Thayer Pond Road
Wilton, CT 06897
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