President’s introduction

Kia ora all

It’s great to see the Auckland orienteering season now under way and with COVID restrictions easing events will be more social and easier for organisers to put on.

Recent work done by the club has focussed on planning for and providing events including the very well received double AOS weekend and the upcoming rogaine series. Big thanks to our course setters and controllers for those events, Renee Beveridge, Tegan Knightbridge, Rob Garden and Marquita Gelderman. Marquita also made the new Mairetahi Forest map used on that Saturday, this is a great new asset to the club and we look forward to using it more over the years ahead.

Stay well everyone
Gene

https://youtu.be/WzDwVCEzd6Y
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1 Calendar
2 Katoa Po report
3 Lake Kereta weekend report
4  Upcoming NWOC event
5 Coaching

1 Events Calendar

April
Sun 03 AOC AOS 4 Grass Track Road, Muriwai.
Sun 10 NWOC AOS 5 Riverhead Forest (Robinson Road). Pre-enter by Thursday 7 April
Easter 15- 18 NZ Orienteering Champs – Nelson region. Entries closed. See website for all details.
Friday – Sprint Nelson College/ Sat – Middle at Canaan Downs South/ Sun Long at Canaan Downs North / Monday – Relay at Moturoa East

Sun 24 CMOC AOS 6 Waiuku South
Fri 29 - Sun 01 May AOC North Island Secondary School Champs POSTPONED

May
Tue 10 AOC Autumn night event
Tue 17 AOC Autumn night event
Sun 22 AOC AOS 7 event Riverhead (Barlow Road)
Sun 29 NWOC Rogaine # 1 Lake Kereta

AOS = Auckland Orienteering Series – events generally have 9 courses of varying lengths and difficulty

A number of park orienteering events are still available as orienteering training courses with MapRun6. Maps (pdf versions for you to print out a copy) are uploaded to the AOC website and in MapRun. Details on MapRun are given here.
PDF versions of the maps can be found on the Auckland Club website.

2 Katoa Po 2022
Quinn, Tahi and I drove down to Taupo to race for North West in the famous Katoa Po night relay, with Cameron De'Lisle, Johan Kvasnica, Cameron Tier and Gene Beveridge.

This year Katoa Po was held on the Kaiapo Faultline map - a hillside incised with deep eroded gullies marked with huge gnarly old pine trees. The camping area and event centre was tucked into the landscape with shelter from wind and a good view of headlamps scattered across the hillside. Quinn commented that the atmosphere felt different to the 2021 event near Reporoa, which was based in a wide exposed paddock. There we felt smaller and more spread out. Here, the event felt more lively due to the compact location of the event centre. Tahi said it had the atmosphere of a BBQ, like catching up with friends only with a slightly competitive edge.

Quinn led the NW team out on Leg 1 - a wonderful sight for parents BTW, to see the little ones charging off into the dusk, maps and headlamps waving - its a great adventure for them. Younger kids are shadowed by an adult - the Flynn family (former NW members now with OBOP) had three young ones out there, the eldest 7 or 8yrs and the youngest only 3 or 4yrs old. Quinn ran without an adult, and finished up his course in under 15 minutes, in second place and hot on the heels of the AOC runner in first.

Tahi was up next on Leg 2. This was his first attempt at night orienteering and he came back raving about how fun it was. He overtook the AOC runner on the first control and maintained a solid lead. He made sure to use handrails and strong attack points, so finished with no big errors in about 25 minutes, tagging Cameron De'Lisle for Leg 3.

Cameron had an injury so had permission from the organisers to walk Leg 3. Each leg gets longer and harder than the last, and age restrictions apply, so normally Cam would be on Leg 6 or 7. At walking speed he went around clean but was overtaken by AOC and Taranaki.

I was up next on Leg 4 (incurring a penalty because I'm supposed to run Leg 5 or over) about 5min behind AOC in 1st and right behind the Taranaki runner in 2nd. He was young and fast and I was surprised by how accurate he was. I was happy to keep him 30-50m in front of me but this became progressively harder as I struggled to match his speed. A couple of small errors on his part allowed me to stay in touch but at about halfway it was my turn to make an error, and he escaped, crushing me on a tough uphill leg. After that it was a case of finishing clean so as not to lose more time for the team. I managed this, finishing about 1.5minutes behind him. Somewhere out there we had both overtaken AOC, so as I tagged Johan onto Leg 5 we were sitting in second place.

Legs 5-7 are long and difficult. Johan is relatively new to red level orienteering and this was the one of the hardest navigation challenges he has faced. He got around his course finishing in 3rd, handing over to Cameron Tier.

Unfortunately the boys and I weren't there to witness Johan, Cam Tier or Gene finish. We were in the car at 11pm heading straight back to Auckland so that I could run the Maraetai 1/2 Marathon with workmates at 730am. We arrived in Maraetai about 2am, slept by the side of the road and scraped ourselves together to meet my colleagues in the morning. Its a beautiful 1/2 marathon course, but I think we would all have preferred to stay in Taupo and do the Katoa Po morning rogaine!!

I'm told that Cameron had a clean run on Leg 6, enough to give Gene a decent shot at fighting for second place. Gene then had a strong run to overtake AOC. Unfortunately Taranaki also finished strongly with Karl Dravitski and Lizzie Ingham on Legs 6 and 7 - just too far in front to be caught.

With AOC and Taranaki both incurring mispunch penalties, my time penalty was cancelled out and the placings were unaffected. So, the final standings were:

1st: Taranaki
2nd: North West
3rd: Auckland

Honestly, I can't recommend this event highly enough. It is such a great occasion, a great adventure and a true orienteering institution. Taupo OC does a great job hosting and deserve our support. Put Katoa Po on your list for next year!

Nick Harris.

Photo - Cameron de LÍsle

3. Lake Kereta Weekend 19/20 March

The Lake Kereta double-header weekend events were planned many moons ago – little did we know that the weekend would be at the peak of the Covid Omicron outbreak! We anticipated these events would be an excellent follow up to the Auckland Schools Sprint Series (sadly cancelled) and a lead up to the National Orienteering Champs in Nelson in May. Despite the logistical challenges of gathering restrictions, vaccine passes and Covid itself, we were happy that around 200 participants each day were able to enjoy wonderful terrain and challenging orienteering courses.

Mairetahi Forest is the newly re-mapped reincarnation of our old map on Wilson Road, not used for orienteering since last century! The property was formerly part-owned by club member Rob Garden and was primarily planted in plantation forest. The current owner has a very holistic approach to this beautiful piece of land, retaining the pine and other former plantation forest, conserving the native bush and planting a new area of kauri trees, while at the same time espousing a ‘’live and let live’’ approach to pest control. Some of you may have experienced a version of musical trees .... Wild deer are typically a threat to young trees but instead of culling deer or poisoning other predators, the owner and forest manager are trialling bells as a deterrent. Because deer are so skittish, adding wind chimes and bells can be enough to scare them away. Anything unfamiliar will throw them off and make them too nervous to come any closer.

Marquita (also the mapper) and Rob set very interesting courses which embraced both open pines and steep, dense, dark forest, a control tucked into a pit amidst native bush and supplejack, loops around the very scenic lakes and much more.

Photos - Annemarie Hogenbirk

After the event on Saturday a number of orienteers set up camp at Lake Kereta on the beautiful farm owned by the Leightons. The approach to the camping area is spectacular with views out over Woodhill Forest and the Pacific and white deer sporting spectacular antlers wandering about freely.

The volunteer crew had an early start, setting up the event centre in Woodhill Forest – being such a well-organised group, we were ready rather too early! Tegan Knightbridge and Renee Beveridge were the planner and controller on the Kereta map which had only previously been used for the middle race at the 2021 national champs. They treated red-level orienteers to a sprint course within a standard-distance race, with the second sprint-half of the course printed at a larger scale on the flip side of the map. Orienteers on the red courses received both an overall result plus a separate sprint course time. After some bad navigational errors in the first part of my course, I was hardly in sprinting mode by the time I turned over my map and discovered another dozen or more controls to go! The world-class, complex Woodhill terrain, plus some rather vague tracks required very accurate navigation. The 2 km walk into the event centre from Leightons farm provided a great warm-up and a number of orienteers impressed by riding bikes in to the event.

A huge thanks to our innovative planners and controllers and to all the volunteers – both on the ground and on social media - who made these two days a real success from both an orienteering and organisational point of view.

Marquita Gelderman has also written a report about this weekend for CompassPoint - which can be found here.

Snippet from Mairetahi Red course 2

Photos - Annemarie Hogenbirk

4 Next NWOC event - Riverhead 10 April

On Sunday 10 April we will return to our Robinson Road map in Riverhead Forest, a short drive from Coatesville, for Auckland Orienteering Series event # 4.  Please pre-enter via EnterO.

This map was the venue for the Riverhead Orienteering Weekend in May 2022 and Paul Ireland and Geoff Mead promise to deliver technical courses for experienced orienteers, while Paul has cut and created several tracks through the bush, to make for interesting courses for white and yellow level orienteers. Make sure to stop and appreciate the birdsong - we spotted tuis and tomtits today in addition to the friendly fantails which kept us company as we put out control flags.

We would love all club members to help out on the day - on the start, control collecting or wherever you feel comfortable helping. We also need someone to be a security person at the forest gate (only orienteers' cars are permitted to enter the forest) for around 6 hours, and we will pay the minimum hourly rate. This could be a young adult or a non-orienteer and we can arrange to relieve that person for an hour or two should they wish to compete on a course. Contact northwestorienteering@gmail.com if you can help.

5 Coaching

Check out Leg-by-Leg, where Gene interviews an orienteer and analyses their course and actual route choices. Club members who are travelling to Nelson for the New Zealand Champs over Easter should check out episode #15 which focuses on the unique landscapes of Canaan Downs, the setting for the Middle and Long distance races.

Rogaine planning: In late May we will host the first of the NWOC rogaine series - fun 90 minute mass-start orienteering events where participants aim to visit as many of the 30 minute checkpoints without incurring penalties for exceeding the time limit. Whether you compete solo, as a family group or make up a team with friends, rogaines are social and make a great introduction to navigation and adventure racing training. In NavChat #3 from December 2020 Gene and Tom discuss strategies for rogaines. Newcomers should also see the NWOC website for more rogaine hints.

6 New members

A warm welcome to Rinki and Michael Murphy, who joined us for the training day at Slater Road/ Woodhill on 6 March and to Isaac Stewart, Priscilla Murphy, Catherine, Darin and Matthew Hutcheson.