Over the past 10 months I was very fortunate to receive the opportunity to go to the University of California, Berkeley to complete my Masters of Engineering and while the study experience sounded amazing there was one big question on my mind: What about going orienteering??? I knew the orienteering scene was a bit smaller in the US due to all of it’s orienteers being so spread out and that fact that the local club in the bay area only had two events scheduled from me arriving to the end of 2022. So I decided to take a pitstop in Europe on my way to California and get in as much orienteering as possible to tide me over (JWOC, training for WOC2023, Oringen, and World Cup) but everyone’s done those before lots so they aren’t very exciting to talk about. Then it was off to Berkeley to start orientation for my degree and surprisingly, we had an amazing race style event in teams on the very first day where I was very quick to get my hands on the campus map.

I signed up for the Bay Area Orienteering Club almost immediately and saw they had an event the weekend after I arrived, so I emailed the event organiser to see if there was anyone I could get a ride there with and if there was any helping out I could do to sweeten the ride deal. I think I got about 3 or 4 offers of a ride within a few days and headed off on the Sunday (1 hour 15 min drive for a sprint event). Everyone who I was introduced to was very friendly and welcoming, and this was probably expected as I’m not sure there are many orienteers who aren’t happy to see a new enthusiastic face. This was the first of 4 BAOC events I went to in 2022, and while the courses weren’t super high level difficulty it was great exploring some new maps and different types of terrain. One event was even right next to the Meta/Facebook headquarters which felt like a very California thing to have. I continued to get rides from club members which I was incredibly grateful for, and lots of tips on how to identify, avoid, and treat poison oak. Onga-onga and cutty grass may be nasty but nothing is worse than a plant that has a 2 day delay in causing a reaction, can send you to the hospital if you get too much, and leaves its oil residue on your clothes to get you later!

These are the routegadget links to the BAOC events I ran: Vasona Lake, Bayfront Park, Briones: Tilden, Shell Ridge (DNF from blisters), Calero (MP from control 6 in wrong place).

The USA National Orienteering Championships is held differently to the NZ ones as well, where it is often just allocated to any club who is willing to attach it to an existing event weekend. This means it changes date often, and goes back to the same clubs frequently who have annual events they hold. Luckily for me, it meant the 2022 champs were being held by the LA club in November, so I drove down from the bay area with Oriana and AJ Riley, and Julia Doubson who all studied/lived in Stanford. Despite being automatic bitter rivals with them because I was from Berkeley, we became great friends and it was great to have the inane orienteering hyper specific conversations I was missing. The events felt reasonably low-key for a club nationals but as I came to learn, the USA clubs don’t seem to put super high expectations on their big events. While different from how NZ orienteering operates, it just made for different vibes but still some awesome orienteering. The LA nationals had some awesome maps, including a movie set from Star Trek and other Hollywood movies (again felt very fitting for California orienteering), and I even managed to pick up some podium finishes in W21E. Here is the link to the Livelox from all three races.

In January the Anza Borrego Weekend was highly recommended to me, and AJ, Oriana and Julia were driving down so I joined them once again for some tasty desert orienteering. It started with a Goat race, where everyone mass starts but you can select one control from the entire course to skip, bringing a bit of tactics into the race. This Goat also had a box of 4 controls that could be done in any order, again splitting up the race. I found this format reasonably fun although it was a long race in some very sandy hills. The afternoon had a three loop sprint race where you collected a new map after each loop in any order you wanted. The next day had a classic format race for National Ranking Points (their system much like the old StatNav rankings so everyone in all classes gets a ranking) and then possibly the hardest orienteering I’ve ever done in my life, the Maze-O. This was a one hour score in an incredibly complex area of cliffs, canyons, erosion features and rocks. We went as a group and at one point I was overconfident enough to head off on my own to find a control. This was a bad idea as I got very confused and ended up on a ridgeline an entire canyon system away from the control, waving at the others who had found it successfully. Nothing like getting so lost you can’t even redraw your route to keep yourself humble. One cool feature was that because there was absolutely no forest cover on these maps, only lone bushes and Joshua trees, the base colour was white instead of yellow to save printing ink. When I previewed the maps on World of O I was expecting a complete forest map to begin with!

As I was looking for excuses to visit other parts of the US, I saw the USA National Ski Orienteering Champs was happening in upstate New York in February, I thought ‘I’ve done ski orienteering before, that should be fun’. I thought I would be great chance to visit my friends in Boston (including Penelope Salmon who is at Harvard) so I booked and entered in the W21E grade. I got myself up to Lake Tahoe a few times to learn how to skate ski and was feeling pretty confident as it got closer. I, like many others, have gone down to Wanaka to do the ski orienteering that ROC puts on each year but as I learnt very quickly that was small potatoes compared to this event. Starting off, the temperatures were predicted to be negative FAHRENHEIT (-20 C) so I frantically asked around my hall for extra winter gear, and crocheted an extra pair of mittens on the flight over just in case. Due to a cancelled flight I had to miss the sprint but I rocked up all ready to go for the middle distance, a 3 loop mass start on a hillside map. I made several mistakes that day, the first was not changing to a shorter course, and the second was not learning how to undo my skis before I started. After the first loop I returned to the map exchange to get my 2^nd map, only to see that everyone else on my course was already on the third map. I eventually skied into the finish in a breezy 2 hours 12 minutes, over an hour behind the winner and 45 minutes behind the person one place in front of me. The long was the next day, and I think I was the only person to go out with a full water bladder and gels which was a very smart decision. Also a smart decision was putting me first in the start list, which turned out to be very good as I skied in while they were busy packing up the event centre (I was the 2nd to last person out of everyone to finish). I don’t think I’ve ever maxed out the allowed time on course before but the 20km of skiing took me 3 hours 30 mins, this time just over 2 hours behind the course winner. Although it’s possibly the least successful orienteering trip I’ve ever done it was still incredibly fun and I’m really glad to have had the chance to try it. Results and maps here

The biggest event I took part in during my studies was the 2023 USA Nationals in Kentucky during Spring Break. Not only because this was going to be a much larger field than the 2022 Nationals, but also because it was my WOC nominated trials (it’s cheaper to fly to Kentucky vs NZ). Despite everyone looking very confused when I said I was going to Kentucky for my spring break, it was a great competition weekend on some new terrain and had some fierce competition. It was extremely hilly terrain but quite open deciduous trees which made the navigation not too difficult. The courses pushed me physically, especially with a large climb towards the end of our course and an uphill finish sprint at a 25% gradient (whyyy??). I enjoyed the atmosphere of a national event but thought that it didn’t have the same event centre gathering where everyone comes from the parking and settles into spots so you are getting ready and hanging out afterwards together. Having this competition a few weeks before the NZ (not) Nationals at Easter helped a bit with the fomo, but I still missed the New Zealand orienteering event vibes and was looking forward to coming back to them. 2023 OUSA Nationals Routegadgets: Sprint, Long & Middle.

Lastly, a month before I was due to fly home I flew 6 hours across the country again for the West Point Weekend, which were also the designated WOC team trials for USA. Again this event was highly recommended due to the intricate rock covered maps and big crowds it drew because it was on the East Coast. I travelled and stayed with most of the USA elite crowd which was heaps of fun, along with Penelope who made the trip down for her JWOC nominated selection races. The first races were on the West Point Military Academy grounds which felt extremely American and even more so when I could hear gunfire sounding off as I ran my course! Of course this was just blanks firing as a group was doing an exercise in a separate part of the large forest but still a very unique experience. The afternoon sprint took us through the barracks which was exciting navigation, and then the long on the following day was in a different forest with lots of large hills and rock covered slopes. I found the challenging navigation through the rocks and cliffs really fun but the course was quite exhausting. Again this competition had quite low-key vibes but being able to hang out and talk about orienteering nearly non-stop with all the US orienteers my age was super fun. West Point Results and Routegadget.

For anyone thinking of heading to the USA and wanting to keep orienteering while you are there, there might not be the same frequency of events or the same competition organisation style but the orienteering communities are much the same. They are all so friendly and enthusiastic for people to come along and they still share the same passion for putting on orienteering events!
By Brian Steven