2025 Stub Stewart Goat Stampede Results and Summary

Stub Stewart Goat Stampede Summary

We started an hour late for our first Goat Stampede competition, but everyone was finally able to start at 10:00. This event had three courses: a 3.5-km Scape Goat for easier orienteering, a 9.0-km Hillbilly Goat for intermediate orienteering, and a 13.6-km Mountain Goat for advanced orienteering. The Scape Goat course was navigationally easy, all on trails though there were off-trail short cuts available for truly hardy goat-like runners. The Hillbilly Goat started with the Scape Goat loop and then had its own intermediate loop with controls placed off trail. The Mountain Goat started with the Scape Goat and Hillbilly Goat loops and then had longer off-trail challenges. The off-trail challenges were indeed rough as they often involved travel through waist high ferns or areas with significant deadfall from earlier forest thinning operations. To make things more challenging, we had occasional rain showers for our intrepid goaters to endure.

For the easier Scape Goat, the Parsons/Zurcher family finished 58 minutes ahead of the Boyles family (88 minutes), and the Allen family (97 minutes). Many of these families had young children, which made all these times very impressive, especially with the occasional rain showers. Most of the children were ready for more afterwards and did the Kidd-O course.

For the intermediate Hillbilly Goat, Christoph Zurcher finished first in 133 minutes, well ahead of Erik and Sadie Scharffenberg (175 minutes), and Del Scharffenberg (293 minutes). The others on this course mostly did not finish thanks either to the rain, rough conditions, or late start that would mean returning home later than planned.

For the advanced Mountain Goat, Alison Crocker was the only finisher, and she finished that course in a fast 127 minutes. John Crocker had hoped to finish that course, but the late start meant that finishing that course conflicted with another event that he needed to attend so he had to quit early.

Next year, we will be sure to devote an extra day for setting controls to avoid any late starts.

The following people made this event happen:

•        Kathleen Kerns     Registration, website, results, and course vetting

•        Nora Tom              Refreshments

•        Tony Pinkham       Mapping, course setting, and vetting

•        Aaron Raines        (State Park ranger) Permissions for using this wonderful park