Hoyle's Mill

Welcome back to Hoyles Mill Conservation Park and the Germantown Soccerplex. For the advanced courses, the Hoyles Mill forest is amongst QOC’s most technically difficult areas to navigate. Beginner and Intermediate participants will compete mostly in the much easier to navigate and very open Soccerplex. Intermediate participants will get into some fields that aren’t regularly mowed; they will also use some forested land. A Beige course offering uses some of the technically difficult forest and some easier to navigate forest near the Soccerplex.
All participants finish in the Soccerplex. Except for Beige, advanced courses require taking a short bus ride to a remote start, so plan some time for this. As a reminder, never cross the soccer fields, nor other ball fields; and never run close to the marked boundaries where the grass is mowed very low. The edges of the fields are used to throw-in or kick-in balls and are considered an area of play. We don’t want to disrupt competitions and other guest’s enjoyment of the park.
The remote start not only allows the Brown and Green courses to get to terrain that is too far to access from the soccer complex, it also allows all participants starting remotely, to use terrain never before used for a QOC event. Again, all courses finish near the Event Center in the Soccerplex (behind the fieldhouse).
Beginner, Intermediate, and Beige Courses have been set in sprint orienteering course style, but have longer legs and overall distances. Participants will use a 1:4,000 (IOF ISSOM 2019 specification) map with 2m contours. The map has been updated since when the US OrienteeringTeam Trial was run here in 2021. Land in the Soccerplex has been contoured—sports fields may have adjacent up/down embankments on multiple sides. Lack of line-of-sight within the Soccerplex, due to the sculpted land or vegetation features, makes for enjoyable orienteering. The mowing of fields can vary, hence some areas mapped rough open, may appear open. Most of the large man-made silt catch depressions have been mowed recently; during the event they are expected to be easy to cross if conditions are dry (as they have been). The lake inside the central loop road has been silting-in. The central lake edges and east end is often dry enough to traverse—the map has been updated for this. There are some uncrossable fences and buildings to run around in the Soccerplex; these offer route choices. Forested parts of the 1:4,000 map were largely blown-up from the original 1:10,000 map (map objects are appropriately sized ISSprOM symbols). The scale allows for more detailed mapping of urban features but more detail was not added in the forested areas (not practical to map/maintain). There is often more on the ground than the map will show in the forest. In the Soccerplex, there are road and parking lot crossings that require the usual amount of caution/awareness.
Blue, Red, Green and Brown participants take a bus approximately 3 miles away by roads. They start on a 1:10,000 map in the Special Camp part of Little Seneca Regional Park; off of Clopper Rd. This is near the Lodge at Little Seneca Creek that is sometimes used for weddings, so please do not linger near the buildings. All 4 courses will encounter similar terrain getting back to the Soccerplex. It ranges from being vastly open and hilly; to green or open and flat. There is often verge at the edges of forests. Not rushing and having a good cautious full-leg route plan is strongly recommended—relocation can be very difficult. For these reasons, some participants may want to run down from their usual course level. Small boulders and cliffs are common control features, and they are usually scattered on the map. However, navigating a course well here is rewarding. It’s evidence of your navigation prowess! Skill at holding a bearing for long distances, skill at reading very subtle changes in contours, skill at matching boulders seen with those that are mapped, and skill at recognizing/moving around mapped and unmapped vegetation are keys to successful navigation. The vegetation often prevents one from just going straight, but it can be side-stepped or circumnavigated. There some fence or vegetation lines to plan for. Some vegetation is thorny so wearing good protective gaitors is necessary. Green vegetation has been spreading some apparent small vegetation gaps could have closed-in. Boulders are typically ½ to 1m tall. Mapped rootstocks are few—those mapped are generally 5ft tall or were so, when mapped. The park had been very dry in November—streams and linear marshes may even now appear as shallow dry ditches but they are still helpful for navigation. Even when flowing normally, the main creek—Little Seneca Creek, can be crossed in many places; there are route options for affected courses to use a bridge. Barberry bushes have been observed to have spread from when mapped in 2021. Some map updates have been made but there may be some areas that are out of date for vegetation.