2024-25 Winter League Championships – Point Defiance Park

COURSE NOTES

From Ing and Chris

General Information:

• From the upper end of Owens Beach parking lot, access to the “Start” is a 450 m walk along Five Mile Rd.  Plan on a 10-minute walk to Start from the parking lot.  There is no parking at “Start”. From the bottom of Owens Beach parking lot (where there also are restrooms), you can follow the old access road (now a pedestrian path) from the beach up to the Start.
• There will be a coat drop for this event.  However, the coat pickup will be at the mandatory crossing (south end of the parking lot) and not at Download.  Look for the “Coat Pickup” sign.
• The gorge east of the Rhododendron Garden has been marked out of bounds, as well as a roadway underpass near the Japanese Garden.  These areas have been marked out of bounds for your safety and to avoid the park’s vegetation restoration work.  Do not enter these areas.
• The Point Defiance map has a special symbol for distinct trees that have fallen.  This symbol is used in two cases; either for logs suspended above a reentrant or for old growth logs with a diameter of at least 1.5 m that cross or divert a trail.  The symbol for these fallen logs is a brown line roughly 10 mm in length showing the logs’ alignment in the field.
• Point Defiance Park is strewn with hundreds of fallen trees.  As a result, the near infinite number of rootstock symbols makes the map practically illegible.  To increase map legibility, all rootstocks have been removed from the map.  Even with the removal of rootstocks from the map, there is an overabundance of point features along the park trails.  Often, tight groupings of point features have been mapped as one single feature.  When multiple features occur within a control circle, column “C” on the description sheet will tell you on which of the features that the control is located.
• With so many trailside point features, be on the watch for parallel errors due to mistaken attack points.
• Vegetation can change rapidly from open forest to dense vegetation and back again.  These changes can occur in smaller areas than a 1:10,000 map will be able to reflect.  Vegetative areas have been updated to best reflect the overall runnability of an area.
• There are countless deer and social trails running throughout the park.  As mentioned above, it is impossible to include and map the spider web of trails that run through portions of the open forest.  In these areas, we recommend using a compass to ensure you are moving in the correct direction.
• To protect the park’s vegetation, all controls have been set on the park’s main trails, on smaller side trails or on the bare forest floor.  Whenever possible, please use the trails or vegetation free areas to access the controls.  Avoid trampling vegetation whenever possible.

The Courses:

• The base map scale for the Point Defiance map is 1:10,000.  However, the event map scale is 1:7,500 for the Beginner/Elementary and Middle School courses and 1:10,000 for all other courses.

• All courses except Short Advanced and Long Advanced / Collegiate Varsity have a mandatory crossing point on the west side of Five Mile Drive.  Controls have been set to either side of the crossing to channel runners to the designated crossing point.  To ensure runner safety, please use the staffed crossing point and heed the crossing guards.
• In addition to the mandatory crossing mentioned above, classes JV, Varsity, Collegiate, Short and Long Advanced may cross the Five Mile Drive to the south and east.  Due to the myriad number of available route choices, there are no designated crossing points outside of the mandatory crossing point mentioned above.  Please take care when crossing all park roadways.
• The mandatory crossing point at the south end of the Owens Beach parking lot is the perfect location to cheer on your team or get a great action photo.  However, please ensure you do not block any of the trails leading to and away from the crossing point.
• Route choices through the zoo’s animal enclosures are generally discouraged (lions were fed on Thursday so…).
• Due to the large map scale and resulting general vegetation and trail mapping, consider trading additional distance to achieve a solid attack point versus a more direct approach along less defined trails.  Know before you go!!
• Remember, you always have a handrail if you use a compass, and a backstop if you pace count!

• Have fun and enjoy the beauty of this unique metropolitan park!