For and area with a cobbled-together map, Beaver Brook has seen lots of events. This event marked the debut of the new professionally produced map of Beaver Brook. The club owes a big thanks to the Beaver Brook Association for their continuing support of orienteering events on their land and use of their facilities. Beaver Brook also held its Fall Festival on the same day and several White, Yellow, and Orange participants stopped at Maple Hill Barn to see what was going on and have cider and snacks. This contributed to some of the long times on these courses.

Because I was asked this question many times on Sunday, I’m going to take a few sentences to describe how A-meet level orienteering maps are produced. The process starts with finding stereo aerial photographs of the area that needs to be mapped. A plane flying relatively low takes these pictures, two at a time, with cameras mounted a short distance apart under the plane. These cameras produce "stereo" photographs, each of the same area, but with a slightly different perspective. It’s like the old stereo photographs, which when looked at through a viewer which gives each eye a view of a different picture, produces a image in the brain which looks three dimensional. The stereo aerial photographs were sent to Sterling Photo in the UK, where they look at them under a sophisticated version of the old stereo viewer. From this view, the operator traces out the contours, and adds any other features visible from the air, like ponds, buildings, and large trails. The base map is then given to the mapper, who walks all over the map, correcting the contours, and adding boulders, small trails, small water features, vegetation changes, and the like. This work is called field checking. The mapper then notes these changes. In the past these were drawn out, color by color and printed. Today, the map is usually "drawn" on a computer, and then the maps can be printed on a computer printer.

Having set lots of courses on the old, less detailed version of Beaver Brook, it was a real treat to get a new map showing all the intricate detail, particularly on the north (west) side of Beaver Brook. Advanced courses were set to make maximum use of this area. While we had permission to use the Brown Lane Barn facility, it was such a beautiful sunny day we set up outside. It was a great day for orienteering, and between the technical difficulty of the terrain and the course length situation described below, everyone had lots of time to enjoy it. Genny Noyce, a Hollis Girl Scout, who is working with us to promote orienteering at Beaver Brook for her Girl Scout Gold Award, spent all day helping out. Also helping with registration and starts were Johnny and Kristine Bundschuh (also string-o setup) and Jeannie and Bob Walsh. Charlotte and Bill Gray arrived late and helped pick up most of the controls. This event was held as part of National Orienteering Day, and we received some nice compasses from Brunton, which were given randomly to the beginners listed with a "( C )" in the results.

Since the new version was provided in computer form, and since I had to print new maps on the computer anyway, I decided to provide preprinted maps. This was relatively easy with the mapping software, and the software would also be used to print the clues and measure the course length. Printing the clues worked fine. However, while the map was printed at 1:10,000 it had a base scale from the mapper of 1:15,000. The measured course distances were determined as if the base map was 1:10,000 so the distances were actually 1 and ½ times what was shown on the course notes. In effect, instead of Red, Green and Brown, we offered Blue, Red and Green. Actual distances are shown below.