Mapping Notes
Sandy Lake (Championship Middle and Long)
Sandy Lake Park is an area with quite varied terrain which makes it very interesting for orienteering. This urban park with houses on one side, a major highway on another, and a power substation and infrastructure on another, nonetheless has quite a wilderness feel to it. That said, the park is heavily used and there is an extensive network of trails. Most of these are quite small and many that come and go. These trails have been mapped from a navigation perspective and may feel like they are ‘under-mapped’ if you are not prepared for it. This means a few things:
- When a trail requires some focus to find and follow it is mapped as a small trail.
- When a trail requires some focus to follow and can easily be crossed without noticing it is mapped as indistinct.
- When a trail is difficult to follow even by strong orienteers it is not mapped.
- Trails are not necessarily mapped continuously with the same symbols. If a trail fades away, that section of the trail won’t be represented on the map.
The vegetation at Sandy Lake is one of the defining elements of the park – it is incredibly varied and quite ‘messy’. Parts of the forest are really beautiful and runnable and there are significant parts that are challenging to traverse. Most of the terrain is somewhere in between with fairly runnable forest with a mix of patches of thicker forest and undergrowth. The other part of messy is that some parts of the terrain have vegetation that has characteristics of both light or medium green and also distinct undergrowth mixed with decidedly thick patches.
The approach to mapping vegetation has been to try to capture that sense of messiness while maintaining a readable map. There are some patches of vegetation that are smaller than the minimum standard in the IOF specification. Green slash can be any combination of evergreen saplings, low bushes such as blueberry, deadfall, and ferns.
There are many cliffs and rock features throughout the map. Many of them are moss covered which can make them harder to recognize. Only the more prominent rocks and cliffs are mapped.
Special Symbols List
| Symbol | Map | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black X | Wide array of structures including: MTB features, rusted vehicles, hiway signs |  | |
| Black O | Lean-tos, backyard tampolines | ||
| Green X | Large (min 1.8m) root stocks |
Dalhousie University (Championship Sprint)
The Dalhousie main campus is a beautiful university campus with mix of modern and lovely old stone buildings that makes an excellent sprint orienteering venue. The map includes a couple of streets with vehicle traffic and there are a number of parking lots but is mostly pedestrian only.
There are a few multi-level areas to be aware of that are mapped with striped multi-level mapping symbols. A couple of these are parking garages and others are passageways near building entrances.
A quick refresher on how multi-level mapping works:
A striped area shows that you can run underneath with the stripe colour representing the upper level. The striped area is bordered by:
- black triangles facing outward: cross under the to access the lower level
- square black dots: cross over to access the upper level
- impassable wall: impassable at either level
In the example below:
- The upper level has a roof over everything except the top right corner as indicated by the canopy grey striping.
- The lower level can be accessed from the two spots with triangles on the east side but not from the north due to the wall, or the west and south due the black dots.
- The upper level can be accessed from the west side due to the black dots but not the north due to the wall nor the east due to the wall and black triangles. On the south side the black dots coincide with the edge of a building so that edge is not crossable either.
There are also a few loading docks on the map. Some of these are under terrain that you can run through. In these cases the upper level is mapped and the loading dock area is ignored. Where you cannot get above the loading dock, they are mapped with canopy and some detail.
| Other Items | |
|---|---|
| Multi-story fire-escape type stairs are mapped as olive green – all other stairs are mapped as stairs |  |
| Large areas of bike stands are mapped as scattered man-made objects (a relatively new symbolof grey dots over pavement or open land) |  |
| Benches and picnic tables are not mapped |
Special Symbols List
| Symbol | Map | Description | Photo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black X | large sign, ping-pong table |  | |
| Black O | flag poles |  | |
| Pillar (black square) | power box |  |
