Swanson Road

Swanson Road provides a mix of mid-Atlantic spur and reentrant terrain, combined with Patuxent River low lands and marshes. Unlike Patuxent River Park, there are many steep areas at Swanson Road. Calculated climbs for each course may be low, depending upon the route choice. Since this year's event will probably occur before the first frost, visibility should be expected to be lower than the map might indicate; and every shade of green on the map will likely be a bit greener ... and white, open forest areas are likely to have some understory. Rootstocks are not shown and none are used for controls. Environmental sample wells are four inch white plastic pipes scattered throughout the park and are shown on the map as blue Xs. Other man-made special features include trail markers, decorative farm equipment, and the occasional old vehicle or other debris, all shown with black Xs.

Overall the terrain in the park supports courses tending toward the high end of Orange for maximum difficulty, but the lower visibility will make solid map contact necessary. This is probably not a venue to run up a course difficulty level – but I've tried to offer leg options for skill development, especially for Yellow and Orange. I've also developed two training courses, with some additional challenges for the advanced runners. These training courses use controls for the advanced courses and will be set with epunches and control bags. They should probably be run in place of a regular course.

Start and Finish will be co-located for all courses.

Beginner Course Notes:
White (1 : 5,000): Intended to provide an interesting tour of the Park's north end.
Yellow (1 : 5,000): Most controls can be reached by staying on or near the designated paths, but for some legs, a willingness to go cross country may yield faster times. Attention to detail will also be important, though, since some White controls will probably be encountered along the way.

Intermediate Course Notes:
Orange (1 : 7,500) : Longer legs tend to end with controls near water features, trails, or distinctive terrain. Most legs provide distinctive collecting features to ensure map contact is maintained or to serve as handrails.

Advanced Course Notes:
Brown (1 : 7,500) remains in the northern part of the park.
Green and Red (1 : 10,000) take runners to the southern part of the park.

Training Courses: My hope with these is to provide a pair of fun practice challenges in anticipation of the National Meet hosted by QOC in November.
Long Training Course (1 : 10,000) will be on par with the Red Course for length. It includes 7 Window O controls (the map will be blank between controls with a small area visible around each control, requiring good compass technique, distance estimation, and perhaps some extrapolation from what is visible within the windows) and 7 Random order controls with some controls in the southern part of the park.
Short Training Course (1 : 7,500) will start identically to the Brown Course and should be on par with Brown for length. It includes 7 Random order controls and two Window O controls.