First YOT Practice

Red Group/Adults

Orange Group Blank

We had a nice Yukon Orienteering Team training last night at Takhini Hot Springs. It was great to see so many of you out again. I know I enjoyed being able to run in the forest again. I wanted to follow up with you about the training. I have a little bit of analysis below.

Part 1 – Shortcuts/Aiming Off

This is a basic skill that can really simplify a control. The key is to find the right amount to aim off. You don’t want to be so close that you risk going on the wrong side of the control. Nor do you want to aim off so far that you are wasting time. I have drawn what I see as a reasonable route on the Orange group map below. The first exercise was the same for both groups.

Part 2 – Attack Points

We want to make finding the control as easy as possible. We want to find something (attack point) close to the control that is obvious and easy to find. That way we can run quickly and safely there without making a mistake. Then we can proceed more carefully from the attack point to the control.

Orange Group

Your attack points were mostly trail bends, trail junctions and trail intersections. I have marked the more obvious attack points on the map for you to see. Did you choose the same ones?

Orange Group marked

Red Group/Adults

On an advanced course you will have less obvious features to use as attack points. That is why I marked x’s on the trails. I wanted to force you to use other features as your attack points. From what I heard in our debriefing, my big piece of advice is to look up more. A couple of the controls had very large or obvious features near them that were very visible from a really long way off. For example, the big cliffs behind the 11th control. If these features were spotted immediately, it eliminated the need to navigate and made what may initially have looked like a difficult control, very easy. I have marked on the map what I would have used as attack points with an ‘x’ and used a line to show handrails and extending the control. That is not to say that these are the only features one can use but they do provide some ideas. In fact, controls 14 and control 18 have different choice options which provide nice handrails and safe attack points.

Red Group marked