Point Pinole Regional Shoreline
Date: (Sun.) Feb. 9, 2025
Location: Richmond, CA
Event Director: - 510.407.1876
Course Setter: Steve Gregg
Type: C; How will Steve challenge us this year? Everyone is welcome, including non-members and beginners, with free, brief, beginner instruction available
Related Event Information
Optional Online Registration (https://eventreg.orienteeringusa.org/eventregister/register/start/ptpinole2025) Event Announcement
Course Setter's Notes
by Steve Gregg
This year's Point Pinole event returns to its usual mid-winter date. Unless we encounter heavy rain on the day of the event, this should lead to a better orienteering experience than was the case last year. The grass is still nice and short in the open meadows, with the running conditions there about as good as it gets. Yes, there is still a lot of poison oak in the wooded areas of the park, but it has not leafed out yet, and currently takes the form of bare brown sticks. You will almost certainly come into contact with it on both of the Orange courses, and you should take the usual precautions, but at least you won't be seeing any of the large, scary, green, poison-oak bushes this year!
The courses offered are similar to last year. The Sprint Orange course features many short legs — as technical as the map allows — while keeping you out of the really bad poison-oak areas. The Long Orange course is more of a "runner's course", featuring longer legs, with more time spent in the open areas, and on trails.
There are a lot of newly fallen eucalyptus trees in the park. I have mapped all of the ones that I deemed important for navigation, and used a couple of them for control locations. However, you will possibly encounter some large fallen trees that are still unmapped. Additionally, some of the previously-mapped trees are no longer quite as distinct on the ground as they once were. Rootstocks are mapped with a brown ×, and in the cases where the trunk of the tree is also mapped, a brown line will extend out from the brown ×.
You will probably encounter some orange, temporary fencing on the Orange courses. I did not map these fences, as they will not require you to deviate from the optimal straight-line routes between the controls. Just be aware that they exist.
All the maps will be printed on 8½"x11" paper, at 1:7500 scale. The contour interval is 2.5 meters.
There will be no water placed on any of the courses, so please carry with you any water that you might need.
Here are the course stats:
Course Distance Climb Controls White 2.4 km 50 m 10 Yellow 2.8 km 50 m 12 Sprint Orange 3.4 km 65 m 14 Long Orange 5.3 km 65 m 13 Combo Orange 8.7 km 130 m 27
Note for the Combo Orange Course
You will start with the Sprint Orange map. After punching the GO control on that course, you will head directly to the Start (not to the Finish shown on the map), pick up a Long Orange map, and then proceed to control #1 on the Long Orange course. You will not punch a control at the Start area for this second course — all you need to do there is pick up your second map.
The Sprint Orange and Long Orange courses share several controls, but for the most part you will be approaching them from different directions on each course, so there will be some fresh navigational challenges.