Orienteering in Townsend

One of my top 5 favorite outdoor things to do is Orienteering.  For those of you unfamiliar with this sport, I like to explain it as playing "Where's Waldo" in the woods.  Using only a map and compass, the objective is to find controls (flags) hidden in the woods , doing it in the shortest amount of time.  Since the pandemic began, the New England Orienteering Club has be running events as BYOM (bring your own map).  This is a cool format where you use a QR Code reader on your phone to "punch" the time when you actually find each control.  

I actually teach orienteering skills and while I cannot share the map with you here, you can find examples and more thorough explanation on NEOC's website.

Today I decided to also track my steps to find each of the 9 controls the orange course set up in Townsend State Forest.  That map is shown above.

The course was listed as 2.6km, but in actuality I wound up hiking 3.99 miles, almost double the point-to-point-to-point distance.  But the real story was the water and the bushwhacking.  It rained last night and it's spring, so there was water everywhere.  The "vernal pools" that are often dry by July were overflowing.  Moreover, the most direct route from control to control pretty much took me through mature heavy duty rhododendron bushes. 

I need to keep moving east, but as you can see, there's a stream in the way.  Without trekking poles, it takes extra good balance to step from rock to rock without getting my feet wet.

This is one of the few trails on this property.  As you can see there are water hazards everywhere.

Some of the controls were hard to get to like this one tethered to a tree hanging over the water.

This control wasn't easy to find either.  Attached to a tree which had fallen down.

I finished the course successfully, meaning I found all the controls in order..  The last time I checked, I was still in second place on this course, but you can see the results yourself.  Click on my name and you can even see my split times.  Enjoy!