Winter fell with beauty on February 12th at York Regional Forest North Tract, commonly known as Vivian.
About 30 hardy souls arrived and competed amid lots of freshly fallen (and falling!) snow. The course
was deliberately set to match the conditions and with the first people across the finish line in about 50
minutes, we think that objective was achieved.
Snowshoes could have been used, but no one predicted the level of snow here. Initially, I believed the
conditions to be very similar to that at the STARS WAR winter adventure race a couple weeks’ back at
Mansfield, where many teams carried but did not wear their snowshoes. At North Tract on the 12th , it
could’ve been a legitimate equipment strategy to use snowshoes, but few did.
Ihor Palaghnyuk set an admirable course, with a combination of difficult “dog bone” CP pairs at the
start, followed by a super fast trail segment into the finish. As the meet director, I’d like to call out the
performance of the Walker family, very keen and eager! Also for a relative newbie to orienteering (but
not adventure racing), Andre Gordon who ran swiftly and with excellent spirit! Finally, a thanks to the
many Cadets who came out and had a positive attitude in challenging snow conditions. Anthony Kashin
and others did very well.
Again thanks to Raymond Chung for running the Sport Ident timing system and to Oliver Tabay for
superb beginners’ instruction to start the race.
Cheers again,
Eugene Mlynczyk
Meet Director