2026 Silver Falls Results and Summary 

The Silver Falls event turned out well despite the threat of rain. Although we had significant rainfall before and after the event, the event itself was largely rain free, although the forest vegetation was pretty wet and there were a few slugs to flick off the control flags afterwards.

As anticipated, doing this event in April proved to be better than doing it in the summer because the vegetation was lower and there were no horses for the orienteers to accidentally spook. The result was that our competitors could run as fast as possible and be totally focused on their courses.

Twenty-three orienteers (for 19 starts) participated in the event.  Of the courses offered, the blue, green, orange, and white courses were the most popular. On the blue course, Ali Crocker finished 17 minutes ahead of a strong field of runners. On the green course, Andy Heydon also finished well ahead of his competition. On the orange course, Mike Poulsen, on a recovery from a sports injury, also finished 15 minutes ahead of his competition. On the white course, however, Martin Allen finished just 10 seconds ahead of newcomer, Erika Fuhrman—both had impressive times.

Many thanks to all who helped to make this event a success:

•   The Boyles family brought their huge canopy to protect the start volunteers, maps, and other start equipment from threatening rain. We have now added canopy to our event preparation checklist. They also helped with setting up the start station and clearing up the event center after the event.

•   The Boyles also provided four very handy walkie talkies that the control pickup people used to communicate with one another while also looking for one late orienteer. When found, that status was relayed to the other cleanup people so that they could focus totally on their cleanup functions. Peter Graube has recently donated radios for our use and we now know that we need to immediately bring them into service.

•   Laura Weller helped with setting up the event center.

•   Danielle Boyles and Laura Weller set up and managed our starts before doing their courses. 

•   Steven Boyles helped with the electronic punch download station to free up Kathleen Kerns so that she could do other event functions.

•   Mike Poulsen provided beginner’s instruction for at least one first-time orienteer, he helped to clean up the starts station, he picked up a significant number of controls, and he watched over the event center while the organizers were picking up controls.

•   Ali Crocker stepped up to manage the control pickup operation and picked up our distant controls, pin flags, a water station, and the streamers that directed finishers to the event center.

•   Mike Holliday could not attend but went to Silver Falls the week before and vetted the advanced courses before heading out to Bend to work on Deschutes Daze projects for CROC.

•   Tony Pinkham created the map and designed and set up the courses.

•   Kathleen Kerns directed the event, managed registrations and results, and set up and worked e-punch until Steven could take over.  

•   Tony and Kathleen both set and picked up controls, set up the event center, and broke down and cleared out the event center.

•   Jason Wagoner, the Park Ranger Supervisor, made sure that we had a great facility to use as our event center, he made sure that gates were unlocked wherever we needed access, and he provided guidance to help us avoid areas that needed environmental and archeological protection.

•   Dimitri Papas, the manager of Guest Services, made sure that we knew about a wedding party that would be using the venue concurrently with MTHD, plus he had all sorts of recommendations for future events in the area.

EVENT RESULTS

Course Splits (Attackpoint)