Choose Your Adventure #5 – The Bog Slog!
CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE
Sunday, December 29 at Lord Hill Regional Park – South Entrance in Snohomish, WA
The Bog Slog, now in its 40th year, is the extra tough and extra muddy halftime race to the Winter League, and a fantastic opportunity for students who have graduated from WIOL to return for a holiday reunion with friends!
The Bog Slog now concludes the Choose Your Adventure Series, which means that we are still offering offering two mass-start, point-to-point courses for the advanced runners, as well as a Choose Your Adventure style race for beginners, intermediates, and trail runners!
This year, as in recent years, we will have a separate mass start for each course. See the schedule for course start times.
- If you’re a runner, this means an opportunity to stay with similarly-paced runners on the same course until elevation gain and navigational challenges split the pack.
- If you’re a hiker, this means that you don’t wait long for a start, and the herd of running orienteers departs rather quickly, leaving you with a nice hike-with-a-purpose through Lord Hill Park.
As always, The Bog Slog advanced courses are longer and more challenging than our usual Winter League courses. Some participants drop down a level for ease, while others treat this as the ultimate challenge, often sharing the navigation fun and bragging rights for completion.
COURSES
Course designer(s): Ethan O'Connor
The Bog Slog (Long Advanced) and Bog Jog (Short Advanced) courses are point-to-point, meaning that you need to visit the checkpoints in a specific sequence. Fastest time wins. Most checkpoints will require off-trail navigation.
The Choose Your Adventure course (intended for beginners, intermediates, and trail runners) is freestyle, meaning that you can visit as many checkpoints as you can, in any order that you like, until the course closes. Most checkpoints are on or very near trails.
2019 RACE DISTANCES:
The Bog Slog (Long Advanced) – 8.8 km, 19 checkpoints, 600 m climb, 1:10000 scale map
The Bog Jog (Short Advanced) – 5.4 km, 16 checkpoints, 300 m climb, 1:10000 scale map
Choose Your Adventure – 24 checkpoints, 3.5 hour time limit, 1:10000 scale map. The course is a mix of some easy-to-find checkpoints, some intermediate checkpoints, and a few advanced checkpoints.
How are point-to-point courses measured?
Courses are measured as the crow flies, in a direct line from checkpoint to checkpoint. Unless you have wings, you will travel farther than this distance! Courses are measured in kilometers, so a good rule of thumb is to simply round up to miles to estimate how far you will go. So in a 5 kilometer race, you’ll likely travel up to 5 miles.
How does the scoring work for Choose Your Adventure course?
All 24 checkpoints are worth the same amount: 1 point per checkpoint. The maximum score is 24 points. The first person or team returning with 24 points wins!
There’s a time limit of 3.5 hours, and for every minute late, there’s a 1 point penalty.
COURSE NOTES
Lord Hill Park is a large wooded park with a great variety of vegetation and an extensive trail system. Trails vary from wide gravel roads to narrow trails. Vegetation varies off trail from run-able to fight. Full body cover is recommended.
Hazards include slippery trails, steep elevation change and varying levels of vegetation on the off trail routes. Be wary of icy patches in cold weather.
SCHEDULE
8:00am – Registration opens
9:00am – Registration closes
9:20am – The Bog Slog (Long Advanced) mass start (~600 meters from check-in)
9:25am – The Bog Jog (Short Advanced) mass start & Map Handout for Choose Your Adventure (~600 meters from check-in)
9:30am – Choose Your Adventure mass start (~600 meters from check-in)
1:00pm – Choose Your Adventure time limit ends
1:30pm – ALL COURSES CLOSE Return to the finish by course closure, even if it means cutting your course short.
We shifted starts an hour earlier this year! Daylight is limited this time of season, and it takes a while to put out the checkpoints at Lord Hill Park. We moved the event from Saturday (previous years) to Sunday (this year) to allow for the course setters to finish setting in the daylight on Saturday. And we moved the schedule one hour earlier this year to allow for our volunteers to retrieve the checkpoints in the daylight on Sunday afternoon. Thanks for understanding!
PRICES
PRE-REGISTRATION PRICES
$17 base price
– subtract $5 for CascadeOC members
– subtract $5 for using your own e-punch
DAY-OF-EVENT REGISTRATION
$20 base price
– subtract $5 for CascadeOC members
– subtract $5 for using your own e-punch
What’s an e-punch?
An e-punch records your race. At each control, you’ll dip the e-punch into an electronic box, which will beep and flash as confirmation. After you finish, you’ll download the e-punch at the download tent and get a receipt that show which controls you visited and how long you took between each; these are your “splits.”
Part of the fun of orienteering is comparing your splits with people who completed the same course, and discussing the routes you took!
SIGN UP
Online pre-registration closes:
Day-of-event registration is available by cash or check, made payable to Cascade Orienteering Club
LOCATION
CARPOOL
Looking for a carpool? Join the Yahoo listserv and share your request to find a ride.
THE MAP
Covering 1,463 acres of forest, ponds, and open meadows, Lord Hill offers some of the best navigation west of the Cascade Mountains. It features rolling hills, a wide-ranging trail network, and enough navigable land to have back-to-back events on a 1:10,000-scale map with little to no overlap.
Though Lord Hill has north and south entrances, the club routinely uses the southern entrance for its ample parking and closer access to “the bowl,” an open, grassy area ideal for the arena-style finishes used in larger events.
Since 2014, Lord Hill has been the preferred location for the annual Bog Slog during the winter, and is often used for another event during the year as well.
Read more on the map pageSAFETY & ETIQUETTE
Return to the Finish
All participants MUST return to the finish and download their e-punch or turn in their punch card.
Even if you have not finished your course, you must still return to the the finish and confirm with event staff that you have returned safely.
Out of Bounds
Some areas may be marked out of bounds. It is imperative to respect these boundaries to maintain our relationships with land managers. Participants MUST NOT go out of bounds. Any participant caught going out of bounds will be disqualified.
Course Closure
All participants MUST return to the finish by course closure time. If a participant does not return by course closure, event volunteers will begin coordinating a search party.
If you need a long time on the course, start as early in the start window as possible, wear a watch, and be prepared to cut your course short to make it back by the course closure time.
Whistle
All participants MUST carry a whistle on the course. Complimentary whistles are available at the start tent (please only take one).
If you are injured on the course and need assistance, blow three long blasts to call for help.
If you hear a call for help, abandon your course to find the person in distress.
Voices
Part of the fun and fairness of orienteering is navigating your own course, so please be polite when you find a checkpoint and don’t holler that you’ve found it.
