Lake Needwood

Lake Needwood is an interesting place for orienteering, with lots of trails, some intricate areas of vegetation, the lake, developed areas for picnicking, zip lining, and hiking, and some lovely open woods. Major bordering areas are a county golf course, a landfill, and housing.

The park is split into two unequal halves by the lake and Rock Creek. All courses from Orange up cross the creek, and while it’s not deep or wide, you’ll likely get wet. There are a few spots where there are some convenient rocks to get you across without getting wet, but they’re not marked on the map and they’re probably not worth going out of your way for. The water can be swift and knock you off balance if you aren’t careful.

The woods, like so many in our area, are slowly being taken over by invasive plants—in particular, Japanese stiltgrass. While this plant has no thorns and is benign to us orienteers, in places it can grow a few feet tall, and wherever it grows it’s hard to see what’s under it. The courses avoid the worst areas of vegetation-gone-crazy, but you’ll still have some patches to go through. Stiltgrass likes lower and wetter areas and open areas (along trails and fields). There is a powerline cut on the western side of the map; all the courses will go along and will cross parts of it. The vegetation here can be high but, again, is mostly non-flesh-ripping. The Yellow course has a streamered route to get through and across the powerline where there is no trail. This route is mandatory. It goes next to the golf course for part of the route; please stay off the greens. All courses must stay off the golf course grass, please.

Yellow and White have another streamered route that goes across a small stream. It is a mandatory route. There is no trail in this area.

Mapped features can be quite small. Do not navigate by rootstocks; some newer ones are not on the map, and some that are mapped are fairly small. When they’re on the map, they are there, as are other mapped point features.

This park is popular and gets a lot of visitors, especially in the picnic areas and on the paved bike trail but also on the main trail on the west side of the lake. Please watch out for them, and take care if you are running on or across a road (this mostly applies to Red and Blue). Blue has to cross a main road twice; please check for speeding cars before crossing.