QUICK INFO

  • Dates: Course Open Oct 17th - Dec 31st, 2020

  • Location: Trione-Annadel State Park, Sonoma County, California

  • Event Director: Bill Cusworth (contact)

  • Course Directors: Bill Cusworth

  • Courses: 2 & 4h Maprunner GPS Map Trek

INTRODUCTION

  • We are hosting a free NAV-X Map Trekking training course in the beautiful Trione-Annadel State Park, located in eastern Santa Rosa.

  • 37 checkpoints are marked on a brand new Lidar-based map of the park - you have 2 or 4 hours to try and get to as many as you can. Checkpoints are marked in the field with two foot-long orange or pink streamers.

  • We will be using a new Smartphone app named “MapRunF” to record your visit to each checkpoint. The app will record a “punch” automatically using your GPS position.

  • Since this is the first event using MapRunF, we have decided not to charge any entry fees.

  • If you would like to make a donation on PayPal, you can send money to “info@navXchallenge.org”.

  • Results from each competitor are tabulated into a results list.

  • There is also an app named MapRunG that can be used with Garmin watches.

  • All the instructions including directions to the Start are below. Be safe and have fun!

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTES

  • YOU ARE DOING THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK - WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INJURIES OR DEATH. HAZARDS INCLUDE STEEP HILLS AND CLIFFS, LOOSE ROCKS, OCCASIONAL DENSE AND SHARP BRUSH, AND POISON OAK.

  • WATER - There are no open water spigots at the venue due to the pandemic. The creeks are all bone dry but there is a small lake in the middle of the map. I recommend bringing all the water you need with you.

  • TEMPS - Should be very pleasant unless you come during a heat wave. Check the local weather forecast before you go and make sure you have enough water with you.

  • Mountain Biking is very popular in Annadel so watch out for bikes moving at high speed. The riders are mostly very considerate.

EVENT INFORMATION

  • MAPRUNF - Please see this page for instructions on how to use the MapRunF smartphone app. The start/finish area for this event does have a free (but weak) Xfinity wifi signal. However, I wouldn’t count on it. It’s important that you load the course while you still have Internet service. Search for “2020 Nav-X GPS Map Trek Annadel SP” and pick the right course (2hr or 4hr).

  • DIRECTIONS TO START: The start/finish area is located here. From highway 101 in Santa Rosa, take exit 488B to merge onto CA-12 E toward Sonoma. After 1.7mi, continue straight onto Hoen Frontage Rd which becomes Hoen Ave. and continue another 1.5 mi until Summerfield Rd. Turn right onto Summerfield, proceed 0.3 mi and then turn left onto Parktrail Dr. The start is 0.4 mi from Summerfield, on the left (north) side of the street.

  • PARKING - The start is in a residential neighborhood and as such, there are no amenities and bathrooms. Parking is free but please respect the residents by parking on the left (north) side of Parktrail Dr. where you won’t be directly in front of anyone’s house. I usually find it easiest to do a U-turn at the first stop sign so I can park facing the correct direction.

  • BATHROOMS - There are 2 rustic outhouses on the course and some standard bathrooms in the adjoining Spring Lake Regional Park, but nothing near the start/finish area which is in a residential neighborhood.

  • GEAR RECOMMENDATION - We recommend participants bring the following:

    • Smartphone - goes without saying since we are using an app for timing.

    • Compass

    • Long pants or at least gaiters for the tall grass and brushy vegetation.

    • Snacks & Water, especially if you are on the 4-hr course

  • TRASH - There is no garbage removal service at this venue, so you must carry out what you bring in. Practice LNT (Leave No Trace).

  • PETS - Pets are not allowed in the park.

  • BE DISCREET - We don’t have a permit to use the park so try not too noticeable when entering or exiting off-trail areas. Please also heed the out of bounds area from the Sept 2020 Glass Fire.

MAP & COURSE NOTES

  • TERRAIN - Annadel is a very interesting venue and generally considered one of the best in the Bay Area. While it is steep in places, it’s less steep overall than most Bay Area venues but does contain quite a bit more rocks than other local venues. Annadel has a variety of terrain. It’s predominantly oak forest with tall grass but also contains open meadows, conifer forests, stands of redwoods and manzanita patches. What makes Annadel unique is that the area once contained many cobblestone quarries so there are left over features from the quarry activity such as pits, depressions, knolls, cliffs, and rock fields. In 2017, the eastern ⅔ of the park, which covers the eastern section of the course map, was burned in the Nuns fire. Since then, the burned areas have been overgrown with dense grass, berry vines, and poison oak. All the creeks in the park are dry and Lake Ilsanjo is much lower than mapped. It was partially drained for maintenance work on the dam. In Sept 2020, the Glass fire burned the northern part of the park and this area is still closed to the public.

  • COURSE - The course was designed by Heidi Cusworth and the checkpoints were visited by Bill Cusworth. There are 37 checkpoints varying in point value from 30 to 120 points. The approximate straight-line distance to get all controls is ~21 km with a decent amount of climb. 11 checkpoints were removed as a result of the Sept 2020 Glass Fire but the course was originally quite long and so it is still plenty long enough for 4 hours. There is one checkpoint that is worth 120 points. It is at the top of a bald hill (referred to by the mountain bikers as “Da Boob”), a little ways below the highest peak in the park, Bennett Mtn. This viewpoint has a magnificent panorama view of Santa Rosa, Spring Lake, Bennett Valley, Taylor Mtn, Hood Mtn and the surrounding area. It is our favorite viewpoint in Sonoma County and we wanted to encourage you to go there with the high value. Because there are no trees and it is on a trail, we chose not to put any flagging there.  

  • SCORING: Just like our other events, each checkpoint has a point value reflecting the difficulty (higher point value for tougher checkpoints).  The point value is the “10 part” of the checkpoint code.  Examples:  33 = 30 points, 70 = 70 points, 115 = 110 points, etc. The late penalty is 30 pts/minute. The maximum points possible is 2340.

  • MARKERS - Each checkpoint is marked with flagging (except for #120, see above). Most have 2 pieces of orange flagging but a few have pink flagging. There is no writing on the flagging. The MapRunF app will beep automatically when you get close to the checkpoint based on your GPS reading.

  • MAP PRINTING - Because we are using the MapRunF app for scoring and we are not charging money for this event, we have decided not to print maps. We are providing two pdf versions of the map for you to print before doing the course. The first pdf is a 1:25000 version of the course that will print on 8.5 x 11 that you can use for route planning. Since you won’t be able to read much of the detail at that scale, we have also provided a second pdf at 1:10000 that will print onto 6 sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper with 42mm overlap between sheets. Both pdf maps have a 5 meter contour interval and the textual control descriptions overlaid but there is no map legend. Please let us know if there are other scales and page sizes that you would like to have and we’ll do our best to accommodate you. The MapRunF app also contains a low resolution version of the orienteering map with the checkpoints shown, but no control descriptions.

  • MAP - The map is brand new and was made using LiDAR data from 2013. From this data, very accurate 5 meter contours were derived. Automated vegetation data was also obtained from Lidar (more on this below). Roads and trails were imported from Open Street Map, Strava heatmap, and augmented with personal GPS tracks. Aerial imagery was used to trace fences, water features, roads, and trails. The existing old BAOC map was then georeferenced to this map using a long and complicated process (called Rubbersheeting) using 650+ locations that could be matched on both the old map and the new map. The point and line features from the old map were then imported into the new map. This process is not perfect and some features could be offset from their true location by about 5-10 meters, although the average error is probably 2-3 meters. Because the map data is from 2 different sources and mostly not field checked, they may not match up locally. What this means is that a feature, such as a boulder, could show up on the west side of a trail instead of the east, on the side of a reentrant rather than the bottom, 10 meters from a clearing instead of 5 meters, etc. I actually didn’t notice too many of these kinds of errors and the errors found were corrected.

  • MAP VEGETATION: The automated vegetation from the Lidar data is very good at showing dense forest due to low tree branches. Almost all of the dark green on the map is thick manzanita and it mapped very accurately to the point where you can pick out individual manzanita trees. Undergrowth does not show up as well and does reduce runnability of the white forests a bit. In particular, the parts of the area that were burned in the 2017 Nuns fire have grown up significantly since the Lidar data was collected in 2013. This applies to the eastern half of the course and the SW ridge line, but the worst area is definitely the SE quadrant of the course, which is partly why these checkpoints are worth high points, the other reason being that they are farthest from the start at the western edge of the map. In these areas, there are some berry vines mixed with significant ankle to knee-high poison oak patches. You can mostly step around the poison oak but I attempted to show the areas that were particularly bad with the vertical green line “undergrowth” symbol overlaid on top of the auto vegetation. This undergrowth mapping is very approximate but should give you a good idea about what parts of the map to stay out of.

  • OTHER MAP NOTES: Since the trails in the forests are mapped with GPS data, they are smoothed out and don’t show all the small twists and turns. I tried hard to make sure the intersections looked right. Mountain bikers are creating new trails all the time, so you may find some trails not on the map. The mapping of rock detail came from the old map which was first made in 1989. As such, the mapping of these features is a little outdated and not completely consistent with current symbols.

I hope you will enjoy this area. This beautiful park is in our back yard so to speak and Bill runs here 3-4 days a week, often with the local running club, Empire Runners, which also stages club races in the park.

Bill & Heidi Cusworth - Course Setters