This beautiful winter with great possibilities to ski have delayed our work in the forest. As late as the 25th of April, there were still patches of snow left on the northern hillsides.As a consequencewe haven’t progressed with our work as planned, but inspired by the fun and conclusive courses at 10mila, we now take on the courses of 25manna.
Even though these two competition areas are situated quite close to each other, they differ from each other significantly, for example we do not have the open hills from the 10mila-area. Our competition area lies in a built up area. That can explain why some of the tracks are made by motor cross bikes. It happens that these appear after the map is produced, but right now the map is accurate since the map maker has been out in the forest just recently adjusting the map 🙂
Because the area is close to housing a lot of people visit the forest and a part of the forest has had a fire. It was several years ago and today the new dense birch vegetation is about 2 meters high. The flames have burned the hill tops leaving bare rock, which has opened up stretches through the forest. This is well presented on the map and also invites to parallel mistakes.
The longer courses will have a mixture of easily run parts with good sight, old spruce forest and areas with less good runnability, as the old fire area. The easiest course (white difficulty) will take place in forest with support in the form of ditches, fields and yellow “corridors” in wooded areas. We recommend that the youth practice following other handrails than the black symbols on the map to prepare for 25manna. We hope to increase the excitement for the teams by letting almost every leg to pass the event venue, so friends will be given the opportunity to cheer on and coach their runners.
In the autumn of 2012 some parts of the fire area was felled, and this has led to some of the courses having had to be given new stretches. We hope that time will mend the felled area and we will try to avoid the parts that are most difficult to run in. We have now switched to turbo gear and are adjusting the courses after the latest test run. Some runners had a lot of fun (orienteering went well) and some came back being hapless (probably going right into our traps). Maybe we have found the right level of difficulty?
Anders, Birgitta and Kristofer, who just came back from a forest filled with spring flowers.
