Cunningham Falls

This event will take place on the same LiDAR-derived map of a portion of Cunningham Falls State Park used in last April-s event, with some additional fieldwork adding more rootstocks, boulders, and a few knolls and small depressions plus an expansion southwards and across route 15 to take in the site of the Catoctin Furnace. The bulk of the map covers a large part of the east-facing side of Bob's Hill, adjacent to the park's Manor Area parking on the west side of Route 15 and the Catoctin Furnace, on the east side. The map scale will be 1:10,000 for orange and advanced courses; 1:7,500 or 1:5,000 for white and yellow courses. The contour interval is 5 meters. The map is a slightly improved basemap - trails and a certain number of point features, mostly boulders and rootstocks, encountered during scouting and course setting were surveyed by GPS and added to the LiDAR-derived features - so it's fortunate that the LiDAR data is of high quality. In addition to producing reliable contours, it shows the plentiful charcoal platforms - which used to supply the Catoctin Furnace - ditches, slopes steep enough to possibly justify mapping as cliffs, and areas with significant mountain laurel quite well. The mountain laurel in the area the courses visit is generally runnable at reduced speed and with lessened visibility; the surrounding white woods generally offer quite good visibility, even in summer, and are runnable though there is more deadfall and small rock underfoot than on most QOC maps, so don't expect to move as quickly through them as you often can in local white woods.

The terrain, consisting as it does mostly of a single large hillside with relatively few of the kinds of handrails such as trails and watercourses we often rely on in typical QOC terrain, can be expected to challenge intermediate and advanced course participants distance estimation and compass skills. Though a sufficiently skilled orienteer could manage without a compass - despite the paucity of other handrails, there will never be any difficulty distinguishing which directions are up and down on the map or in the terrain. Orange participants in particular are likely to find this terrain a big adjustment - orange participants, who probably lack the precision navigation skills to island-hop from charcoal platform to charcoal platform, should be confident in their ability to navigate largely by large contour features and compass, with some help from vegetation and the major ditches and gullies that mark some parts of the hillside.

The most widely distributed kind of point feature in the terrain, if not necessarily the most common given there are some pockets of intense rock detail, are charcoal burning platforms. Because they show up so beautifully in the LiDAR data and were therefore the great majority of features on the base map, almost all the controls will be hung on them. Charcoal platforms will be familiar to many QOC members from visits to French Creek State Park and other areas in Pennsylvania where they're plentiful. For anyone lacking such experience, the brown triangles on the map mark the locations of eerily flat, more or less perfectly circular patches of ground on the order of 10 to 20m in diameter scattered throughout the park. Since the mapped terrain is mostly one big, usually moderately to very steep hillside, these flat circular areas stand out like sore thumbs when viewed from above. From below, they tend to be somewhat less obvious, although the built-up edge of the circle on the downslope side generally protrudes above the natural curve of the hillside in a way that an alert orienteer can distinguish from below. If you are new to charcoal platforms, there will be a few of them visible on the walk to the start for you to examine before running your course. The photograph above also gives a reasonable idea of their typical appearance if you mentally subtract the grass from the image.

The intermediate and advanced courses have a common start from which the courses immediately diverge - all courses have different first controls. This start is located ~1300 meters from registration and with ~175 meters climb en route. Intermediate and advanced course participants, please plan the timing of your arrival in the park and departure for the start accordingly. White and yellow courses will start within 50m of the registration pavilion. All courses finish in the same location, across from the park visitor center less than 150m from the registration pavilion. As always, please report immediately from the finish to the registration pavilion to download so we'll know you're out of the woods.

Should you become lost and unable to relocate while doing your course, please return to the event center at the Manor Area by, depending what course you're doing and how far along you are in it, (a) heading south until you reach the trail you hiked on to get to the start, then taking that trail downhill to the event center OR (b) heading downhill (more or less east) until you reach a divided highway (MD route 15) then turning right (more or less south by southwest) and walking alongside it until you reach the Manor Area entrance OR (c) heading downhill until you reach a large creel (Little Hunting Creek) and following it downstream until you reach the Manor Area OR (d) retracing the Catoctin Furnace Interpretive trail back towards the Manor Area.