Date: Sunday 16^th May

Start Times: Registration will be from 5.45 pm with riders or groups starting at 1 minute intervals. Course closure is 7.30 pm. Basic instruction will be available for those new to orienteering.

 You will be looking for small reflective controls marked with a single-letter code. A pencil may be needed to record the codes.

The course will generally follow the MTB single track (without Coringa loop) with a few small deviations. Map is similar to that used for the MTBO short course on 10^th March. Fastest riders can expect to complete the course in less than 40 minutes.

What to bring: Mountainbike, helmet with a good night light. $2 for a map. A map board or some means of carrying your map is very useful. A small backup torch is worth having if your main light fails and a compass will help you keep track of where you are on the map.

Directions: Registration, start and finish will be at the main Forest Park picnic area off McLeans Island Road opposite Orana Park.  We may have to park outside the gate.

Special Note: PLEASE advise Graeme Read (gr.read@gmail.com) by 11^th May if you are planning to take part so we can prepare the correct number of maps. Graeme is also available for any queries, ph 3522582.

We realised that participants cars were not going to make it to the car parking area (almost 2 km further on) so we stopped to discuss our options.  No matter what scenario we thought of, there was going to be issues logistically especially as it wasn’t safe to take the trailer to the course so getting all our gear there was going to be difficult and we still wouldn’t have had the toilets.  If we started further back where we could park we could have got people to do their laps and ride back down and not worry about getting lap times.  Before deciding what to do we thought we should have a look at the course so we piled into our car (yay for 4WD) and drove/slid up to the course.  We walked around part of the course and found it to be dangerously slippery in places and with multiple bike passes it would only get worse.  We thought that if we ran the race there was likely to be many injuries and first aid crew would be really stretched which could put people at risk.  We needed to make a decision quickly and let people know as there were people coming from Nelson, Blenheim, the West Coast and Timaru.  One of the few people we didn’t get hold of turned up at the course and as he was an experienced rider with a 4WD car we said he could ride around the course if he took it easy.  We talked to him afterwards and he said that he felt we had made the right decision.

We went down to the landowner’s house and he was wonderful. He let us use his phone to call all the pre-entered riders and then put us up for the night, which we particularly appreciated since there was a frost and ice on all our gear this morning.   He also told us that they had had over 42mm of rain on Thursday and Friday. So it is no wonder the access road was so soft.

 We apologise to all those concerned and we’ll be sending out an email to organise refunds to those who pre-paid.

We will discuss what to do with the prizes with the various sponsors.   Hopefully we can retain most of them for a future event. 

If we get a dry spell and you would like to ride up there in your own time, get in touch with us and we will give you the farmers phone number.  It would be a shame to see all that mowing and scrubcutting not get utilised.