Goldfield Classics/Motala

Sun, May 24, 2025

We opened a new orienteering location at the Goldfield Recreation Site. The large parking area is located along the shore of the Salt River, just east of Coon Bluff. In late May, the parking fills up by 10:00 AM. Fortunately, to avoid the heat, we opened courses at 5:30 AM and closed at 10:00. We avoided most of the busy traffic on Memorial Day weekend. The Goldfield site is almost completely flat, but with many shallow re-entrants criss-crossing the area, there are enough navigation challenges to make things interesting. To add a bit of frustration to participants, bag #2 on course 3 disappeared (was stolen). Some of the participants wasted valuable time searching for a bag that was no longer there. It's hard to predict when one of the cool kids will walk away with one of our bags.

Nine participants joined us on our new map. Andy Wentzel came off injured reserve and led the pack, finishing all three courses in 2:12. Erik Ringnes followed close behind and visited all the control locations on the three courses. Dan Yamashiro missed one control on the third course but otherwise had a good showing. Dan was the only one with a rattlesnake sighting. Kyle Seifullin and the Randle family (Ground Squirrels) also had some good navigation success on the courses. Robert and Raffi Shahbazian arrived too late to get in all three courses, but had an excellent finish on the longest course.

A special thanks to Victoria De Poy for helping with setting the courses and Karen Jelenick for retrieving all the controls after the events. Organizing orienteering events is a quite time consuming. We really appreciate your help.