Pawtuckaway camping weekend

The other weekend, if you happened to be at Pawtuckaway state park, you might have noticed a whole lot of orienteers congregating in the main pavilion and then dashing off into the forest.  Among these orienteers were a couple Team members - Alex Jospe, Kseniya Popova, Isabel Bryant, Ethan Childs, Brendan Shields, and Ian Smith, to name a few.  The Pawtuckaway Camping weekend is an annual event hosted by Up North Orienteers (UNO), and it's a really wonderful weekend.  On the surface, it's a low key event where you can hang out with your friends, go for a walk in the woods, paddle your canoe, and go swimming.  But enter the forest, and there's some cut-throat orienteering, both during the day and again during the "Wicked Hahd Night-o"!  

Day 1 course.

The daytime scene is pretty chill.  Copy your own courses onto the beautifully-printed offset maps, and then head out to confront the house-sized boulders and man-eating swamps.  The forest is a wonderful mix of open hardwoods and old-growth pine, leading to some pretty quick per-km times if you know where you're going.  

Here's a map of the longest course on day 2. And here's a map of the WHNO.  

Sunset was beautiful, and was followed with a delicious potluck dinner, and then both a Vampire-o (for the young'ns), and the wicked hard night-o.

Results for the weekend.