Larch Hills Salmon Arm

Organizers: Alexander Corbett (Event Director), Alexander Corbett (Course Planner)

Map: Larch Hills

Post Event

Intermediate

Only one track was uploaded for the intermediate course, so that route has been sent to the participant directly.

Advanced

• Results
• 3D-ReRun

Location, Parking, and Map

Larch Hills is the premier Cross Country ski destination in the Shuswap, but its dense trail network and interesting contours also provide excellent (if rather green like the rest of Salmon Arm) orienteering terrain. When picking your routechoices, we suggest sticking the trails as much as possible, as off-trail travel is almost entirely walking and picking your way through thick undergrowth and deadfall. Light green on the map is generally passable at a reasonable walking pace on the map, but dark green is very, very slow to get through. Vegetation has been mapped at a highly generalized level.

Parking is at the main parking chalet parking lot for Larch Hills, and the start is immediately adjacent to the parking.

The map has slowly evolved over the last 5 years from a contours and trails only map to slowly add in water features, better trail mapping, and finally this year a section of vegetation mapping was added. This training takes place entirely within this full fledged orienteering map.

Courses

• Intermediate: 3.8 km - a course on the easier side of the intermediate spectrum. There are so many trails up at Larch Hills that almost all controls are just off the edge of a trail, and with very little off trail navigation.
• Advanced: 5.7 km - Longer and more challenging navigation.

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.
• Walk/run with extreme caution to avoid any injuries.
• Carrying bear spray is according to your comfort level but is a good idea.
• It is tick season! Check yourself when you're done and when you get home.

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 the event director 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.

Location