Catching Features

It's a secret checkpoint.  Yay!  From a week ago.  Boo.

This Saturday is National Orienteering Day, so let's talk about an orienteering strategy that you probably use already even though you don't know it.

A catching feature is something obvious that is past the point where you want to go.  If you see your catching feature, you know you've gone too far.  Consider the picture above (click on the link for more detail), from last Thursday's Green Lake Adventure Run.  You want to find the checkpoint at the traffic circle, which is clearly a block or so up from Green Lake Way.  But how do you know when to turn?  If you examine the map closely (and assuming you are coming from the east), you can see there is a building (depicted as a black rectangle) to the south of Green Lake Way a block past the street you want to turn up.  And it's the first building on the south side of the street for a number of blocks, so it's easy to spot.  This is your catching feature.  If you see the building, you know that's a street too far.

You've certainly used catching features in real life yourself.  For example, if I'm explaining to you how to get to Camp Seymour (on the Key Peninsula west of Gig Harbor), I will say something like this.  From Purdy, travel about 5 miles west on Highway 302, then turn left on 134th Ave KP N.  If you see the Shell station, you've gone too far.  The Shell station is your catching feature.  

Catching features should be hard to miss, and ideally easy to recover from.  That is, if you see the Shell station, you can just pull into the station and go back to the last intersection.  If you see the building at Green Lake, just turn around and go back to the previous street.  A billboard on an Interstate highway when the next exit is 10 miles down the road?  Probably not such a good catching feature.

Catching features are obviously useful as a sort of 'sanity check' to keep you on course.  They have other uses as well.

• If you have a catching feature, you can usually go faster to the next checkpoint, since you don't have to pay as much attention to where you are as you go along.  Catching features are thus particularly useful in long legs of an orienteering course, since you can concentrate on running the long distance as fast as you can, secure in the knowledge that you can slow down once you see the fence, or trail, or big lake, or whatever.
• If you're unsure about how long it will take to get to the next checkpoint, a catching feature is very helpful.  In a checkpoint race with a map, you can usually get a feel for how long it will take to get to the next checkpoint after you've done a few checkpoints and are used to the map scale.  But for the first few checkpoints when you're not quite sure how far it is to the checkpoint, a catching feature can help you know when to stop.
  
  Similarly, if a particular checkpoint is easier or harder to reach than others, a catching feature helps make up for the fact that you may not be able to easily judge how far you've gone.  So if all the checkpoints have been on flat ground, but this one is uphill, a catching feature gives you something to look for as you labor up the hill. Or when riding a bike, if all the checkpoints have been downtown so far (where the going is slow due to stoplights and traffic), and the next one is a couple of miles away down a bike trail, you'll probably want to create a catching feature so you don't blow right by it.

The Cascade Orienteering Club has a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' meet at Woodland Park this Saturday morning, September 15.  You'll get a map with a bunch of checkpoints, and you get to choose the order to visit them.  If you find them all, you head back and get a second map.  It starts at 11:15 and ends at 12:30.  If you show up early, there will be people on hand to teach you about orienteering, including, say, catching features.

So many chances to get lost in Seattle this Saturday

Upcoming

(italics = new since last time)

• Choose Your Own Adventure #4 - September 15, Woodland Park.  It's National Orienteering Day, so get out there.  If you've never orienteered before, this is the event for you.  It's Woodland Park, so there are woods (duh), but you can't really get lost in them (just follow the traffic noise to Aurora or the sporty yelling to the ballfields).  Also, off-leash dogs, lawn bowling, and maybe a few bunnies.  Mass start at 11:15am.
• Oyster Urban Adventure Race - September 15.  They also put on an outdoor adventure race in Bend, Oregon.
• Redonkulous Scavenger Hunt - September 15, Seattle Center.  Sounds like an honest-to-goodness scavenger hunt.  First prize is a longboard (that's a type of skateboard, grandpa), but you don't actually have to know how to skateboard to compete.
• Keen Urban Playground Scavenger Hunt - September 15, Olympia.  This, on the other hand, sounds like one of those Amazing Race kind of things, rather than a scavenger hunt.  Papa needs a new pair of sandals!
• Urban Goose Chase - September 15.  Apparently September 15 is national scavenger hunt/urban adventure race day and nobody told me.
• Scavenger Dash - September 15.  See above.  Unless I'm missing something, this is 4 of these on the same day.
• San Juan Island Quest - September 22.  12 or 24 hour adventure race.  Mountain biking, foot and (quelle surprise!) kayaking will be involved.
• Choose Your Own Adventure Alleycat - September 22.  Bike racing as a fundraiser for more bike racing!  I can get behind that.
• Fremont Oktoberfest Street Scramble - September 23.  Course design by yours truly. It's awesome.
• Three15er Rogaine - September 29-30, Naches. 4 hours, 9 hours, or 24 hours in the forests of the Cascades.  Note that the 24-hour race is the actual, honest to goodness North American Rogaining Championships.  Probably won't show up on Wide World of Sports, though.
• First Thursday Adventure Run - October 4, Green Lake.  Last time, I actually won something!  But the $1 beers would probably keep me coming anyway.
• Sunset Hill Hood Hunt - October 13.  Just call it Ballard if you like.  Start at 10:15, end at 11:30, find checkpoints in a 1 square mile area.  Free, but no prizes and you have to print your own map(s).

Also:  It's another armchair treasure hunt book!  The first in a projected series.  We shall see.  I don't know if any of these (beyond the first ones, such as Masquerade and Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse) have made their money back, so the likelihood we'll see a second is doubtful.  Still, the $250,000 grand prize is probably real.

Geocache puzzle(s) of the week:  Totally Tubular, Totally Tubular II, Totally Tubular III.  Deservedly the most favorite series of caches in Seattle.  They aren't hard to find; the puzzle is what to do with them once you find them.  Hint:  don't stick your fingers or a stick or any other object inside.

Photo Credits

Map:  Cascade Orienteering Club.

Puzzle hunt logo:  Kristi Sundquist