Canoe Creek Salmon Arm

Organizers: Keeya Corbett (Event Director), Alan Corbett (Event Director), Keeya Corbett (Course Planner), Alan Corbett (Course Planner), David Bakker (Controller)

Map: Canoe Creek

Update (Oct 4th): Event extended to be open until Thursday at noon. The North Face (the next training) will start on Saturday morning.

More trainings like in the spring, except only three of them in the fall (more if you step forward and help out!), and each for only one week. Save space in your schedule!

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Location, Parking, and Map

From Salmon Arm, take Auto Rd. out from 5 corners into the industrial park, and turn right on 50th St. SE into the industrial park. Continue past straight through the four way stop (you will past a gas station). The road will turn into gravel, and it's name changes to Shaw Road. After around 500m, the road branches in a Y junction, with Lashburn road to the left, and Shaw road to the right. Continue on Shaw road to the right. You will pass the Canoe Creek golf course entrance on your left, and continue on the gravel Shaw road to the right, as it narrows to around 1.5 lanes wide. Continue along this road for around 1.2km to the start/finish which has space for several vehicles to park on the side of the road safely.

This terrain has some technical contours, but also has easier to follow features like roads and cutblock boundaries, making it a great map for beginners and experts alike. The map is bordered almost entirely by major features so it is very difficult to get lost off the map, including a major powerline on one side of the map, a large clearcut on another side, and logging roads on the remaining two sides. This map is a great place to learn more forest orienteering skills, without much of the danger of getting totally lost in the wilderness.

There are lots of fallen logs on some parts of the map, and the forest is open in places and thick in places, so be prepared. Do not wear shorts to this event, you want full leg cover to prevent major scratches - there is some thicker ground level vegetation on parts of the map. Fallen logs are wet and slippery right now, so be careful when crossing them.

Courses

Two courses are offered this week. Course distances will be posted on Monday evening.

• Intermediate: An intermediate level course that has most legs just off of trails. Unfortunately, this area is not a beginner friendly area, so we are unable to offer a beginner course here. Next week we will have one!
• Advanced: A longer more challenging course.

Overview

Due to the exceptional global circumstances at the moment, we will not be having our usual events. Instead, we are setting up trainings that can be completed in your own time, any time, over the coming weeks. For all the trainings we will be hanging some flags in the woods for a few weeks, and individually emailing out maps. You print out the pdf to get your own map (or if you are very careful, keep it on your cellphone) to use.

We are choosing training location very carefully to be locations that tend to have low public use to maximize social distancing, but are relatively close to the city to minimize travel. We will be on forested maps exclusively, and not using any of the park maps in the city that are already over-crowded. We have some new maps in the works, but will also be returning to some previously used ones.

Precautions

• Read through the Orienteering Canada Self-Guided Orienteering Guidelines.
  
• Please stay home if you have any symptoms of COVID-19 or illness.
• Please stay home if you have been in close contact with a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
• Only participate in orienteering activities with individuals from your COVID-19 bubble.
• Stay at least 2 metres away from all other park/wilderness users and do not congregate at the trailheads or control sites.
• Do not touch the control(checkpoint) flags – just get within 5 metres or so.
• Carrying bear spray is according to your comfort level but is a good idea.

Cost

These trainings are being offered as a free mental health service to all Sage Orienteering Club members. Now is a great time to go for a run by yourself or in a very small group in the beautiful Okanagan nature.

How it Works

1. Register your Sage Orienteering Club membership online. Membership Registration (including payment) and waiver (youth waiver, adult waiver) both need to be filled in online this year.
2. Send an email to David Bakker to register for the course of your choice and let us know how many of you are going. We will email you a map individually - so make sure your email address with your WhyJustRun account is accurate.
3. Run the course whenever you want during the times when the event is open. If you are interested in comparing results & routes with others, record a GPS track on your smartwatch or phone.
4. (Optional) Upload a .gpx file (you can export this from Strava, Garmin Connect, Attackpoint, and many others) to our website (link will be posted once registration is open) which will calculate your split times. We will also then overlay all the GPS tracks onto the map together so you can compare routechoices with others. We might not be able to gather socially, but we can still talk about or routechoices digitally.

How You Can Help

These events are running entirely on volunteer manpower. We would love some help if you would be willing to pick up controls at a specified times at the end of each event, and handing them on to the next volunteer who will put them out.

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Location