Discussion: Many, many thanks to the Tahoe21 Steering Committee!!

Hard to imagine a more astonishing series of obstacles encountered in an attempt to put on a big orienteering event than occurred for Tahoe21, and yet, we HAD the event: the 3-Day US Nationals, a relay and the North American Rogaine Championships. We all owe a huge thank you to the Tahoe21 Steering Committee (aka the California O-Fest Steering Committee), without whom this event could not have taken place. The seven members of the Steering Committee have been meeting weekly for over three years (three years!), during which time they had to navigate the pandemic-caused postpone of the O-Fest from 2020 to 2021 and then a second postponement to 2023, at which point they took on the task of Tahoe21. Through permitting issues, last-second changes from venue-owners, and air polluted by smoke, they persevered, and ultimately gave us the gift of high quality orienteering in a varied variety of venues. Sure, there were things that didn't go as planned, many lessons to be learned, much to think through for next time - but the events took place and gave us a huge dose of orienteering. We are extremely grateful.

Many, many thanks to the Members of the Steering Committee, each of whom gave an incredible amount of their time to create something for the enjoyment of the rest of us:

 Gavin Wyatt-Mair 
Sarah Williams
Erin Schirm           
Marie-Josee Parayre           
Steph Maclean        
Tapio Karras           
Jay Hann

(Being a denizen of the end of the alphabet myself, I have listed them in reverse alphabetical order.)

Of course, an enormous number of other people made highly significant contributions to the event, and our heartfelt thanks go out to each of you as well. We hope to thank each of you individually in the coming days.

Dennis Wildfogel
BAOC National Event Coordinator

I had a great time at the Tahoe meet. THANK YOU to all the organizers and volunteers.

Thanks for a fun event despite the many logistical challenges!

I second that - good decisions made throughout.

I was impressed by all the work they obviously put in, with the schedule change and then everything thrown at them during the weekend. Great work, and I certainly had fun! Thanks to everyone involved.

You did a great job under unbelievable circumstances. Hopefully this was "worst case scenario" practice for a much less stressful NAOC 2023! Thanks for everything...I had a wonderful time.

What a set of challenges you faced! Congratulations and thank you for your hard work.

I will be crucified for this and this is a totally inappropriate place to post, yes. Heroic feats have been accomplished by a supremely qualified group of folks. But, these obstacles. Other than Covid, which most did not foresee and that hit many/most places on the planet. Aren't these other obstacles, namely permitting issues and wildfires, at this point entirely predictable in California? Doesn't it look like nature/G*d are telling you something?

Is it a good idea to persist with Tahoe 2023 when both you and the prospective participants know well what is likely to happen? Are there other venues and a different time of the year that are much likelier to uncover fewer obstacles? I hope this is given thought instead of outright dismissal. I know folks are irrationally enamored with certain venues, I am too. Please consider the wisdom of inviting 1000+ people to a party that has a significant chance to turn into an evacuation.

An entirely different turn of subject which I posted on another thread a few days ago (and has also been mentioned in some AP logs), but perhaps one of the organizers can answer:
Does anybody have an explanation of that big grayed out area on the long map? Not a standard symbol for out-of-bounds or not field checked?
My thoughts: If you want it to be out of bounds and nobody to go there, it should be clearly marked with official magenta out-of-bounds symbols (I see at least one GPS track that went through a big chunk of the grey area). If it is just not fieldchecked, recently logged, etc, then why not at least show the underlying base-map for reference and relocation?
This isn't really a criticism - just a very curious question as to why the mapper/setter/event consultant decided to show it in this ambiguous way.

The grayed-out area: it's simply not part of the map. The standards don't say anything about what color(s) you're supposed to use in the periphery of the map. White might be more expected, but it could be any color. It's a somewhat unusual map boundary shape, perhaps, but I've seen plenty of weird ones. Maps don't need to be convex.

Obstacles: one that was (a far as I can tell) self-inflicted was the Relay format. The delays were caused at least in large part by the fact that the Relay was as complicated as possible, despite urging from many to make it simple. It's not clear to me that the format had any advantages over a much simpler one. People enjoyed this, but I think they would have enjoyed it at least as much if it had been much less convoluted.

Fire: by 2023, there will probably be nothing left to burn in California, so things should be fine.

While maps don't need to be convex (and indeed frequently are not), they _are_ usually topologically equivalent to a disk (which this was not).

While it is on the edge of maps that most of us old farts used, it is right in the middle (completely surrounded) by the M-21 1:15,000 map.

Update, Tapio answered in the other thread:
--The grayed-out area is part of the map planned for 2023.--

Presumably, that means it should have been clearly marked as out-of-bounds?

Re: 2023...
Nothing left to burn => no canopy => miserable ground vegetation

@Guy...in CA where there's little water?

Aha, I have not seen the M21 map, didn't realize there was a hole in it. For Red it was just a deep intrusion.

I still wouldn't necessarily have any issue with it. Although... one long leg on my course came very close to nicking a corner of the missing terrain, with no solid bounding feature (I didn't have much trust in finding the indistinct trail). That seemed questionable.

I've seen blanked out areas on maps like that before, but it's usually to save the new map for a competition the following day, not embargoed for two years down the line.

In my experience, the areas are normally white. This one was gray. I thought it was a lake at first, but after that no problem. Not really an issue because of the course setting.

Gray is where the snakes are. ;-) (Hope you are continuing to improve.)

As someone who was a bit sensitive to the smoke, I likely wouldn't return to a summer '23 Cal O Fest. I did very much enjoy the sprint on Friday though. After that, the smoke was too much for me.

Any chance we can return this thread to its original topic?

There are other threads available (on-going or new!) for complaining about organizers who hosted an event…or to complain about those who cancelled an event.

Either way…it seems that no matter what you do or how hard you work to create a great experience in challenging circumstances there will be many people willing to complain about it even on threads where the subject of the thread is narrowly defined and unambiguous.

In case it was unclear, this thread is about saying Thank You.

Not complaining about organizers who hosted an event; I wasn't even at the event. Rather suggesting thorough future planning with an eye on proper risk management. It pains me to see physical safety mis-assessed in either direction.

You wrote: “and this is a totally inappropriate place to post, yes”
So, why not post in an appropriate place?

It pains *me* to think of the organizers opening this thread with anticipation of perhaps a small bit of appreciation from the community, and to instead find more criticism from people who weren’t there.

I’m not saying don’t talk about risk assessment for future events. I’m asking you not to do it in this thread, a thread you know is not the appropriate place for that conversation.

My comments were submitted through one appropriate channel; they were ignored. As a result we have an IOF Regional Championship scheduled for 2023 in an area that isn't any different from other areas in the Sierra that are being incinerated as I type. This is foremost a safety concern and yes, I needed to go thumbnail-on-chalkboard out of band. Sorry to anyone whose feelings I hurt. I'd rather have hurt feelings than dead people.

Knowing California fires trends of recent years, nothing of importance should be scheduled later then the end of June. Resuming around Ocober-November. Just simple logic based on observations.

Hi Zan. I'm just validating that your comments did actually post, and that they aren't invisible, contrary to what you're reading.

Thanks for your input @Tundra/Desert, the Steering Committee has read all of your suggestions and feedback on all of the threads. We fully intend to take fire/smoke danger into consideration as we ramp up planning for CalOFest2023 again. Note the event dates are not yet confirmed.

Thank you! I appreciate the Steering Committee's competent and thorough work, and hope many more runners get to safely enjoy its fruits in 2023 or perhaps even 2022.

Thank you so much for the event! I can say for sure that us juniors loved having the opportunity to compete against each other again in some fun terrain.

I was wondering, is there any chance of results from the sprint and middle getting posted on AP?

Bridget, I suspect you mean splits getting uploaded to AP, which would be nice... But for those looking, the results themselves are posted here: http://baoc.org/wiki/Results/2021/Tahoe_2021#Resul...

My understanding is that the Results Team is still working on things (e.g., eligibility for US Champs) and that among them is having available results by course - which will then allow posting of splits to AP as well as making RouteGadget available for all courses. It is definitely not acceptable for it to take this long for complete results to be posted. I can assure you that the Steering Committee for the 2023 event will work seriously to improve this situation for next time.

Given the adversities faced by the organizing committee and the results team, I personally am feeling very patient and understanding with the time it is taking, and impressed that they are working so hard to actually get it correct (eg 7 second correction to the sprint times of certain people)... I imagine that many in that situation would just throw in the towel and say that it is just too complicated to ever figure it out. Bravo to the results team for their continued perseverance.

I'm with Mike on this. While it may be longer than usual, given the circumstances, I'm okay with being patient.

Thanks, Mike and Peggy. I'll convey your sentiments to those working on the results.

The problem with getting the splits by course is with the software. MeOS was used for the Sprint, Middle, and Long. OS2010 from SportSoftware was used for the relay. These programs only know how to generate the splits by class, as far as I know. I think the way to get the splits by class is to merge all the classes in the database with the same course into a single course. It's tedious. I don't know where Jay is in the process.