2023 Python Adventure Race

The Lost Python of CVNP
The Lost Python of CVNP

Date & Time

Saturday, September 30th, 2023 – Choose the 10 or 3 hour versions:
  • Mass start for 10 Hour at 10 am.
  • Starts for 3 Hour from 11am to noon.
  • Cuyahoga Valley National Park
  • HQ – Camp Manatoc
  • Online Registration is Open Now!  See below.
  • Regular Registration closes at 11:59 PM on Sunday, Sept. 17
  • Late registration for the 10 hour, with a 50% fee increase, begins Sept. 18th and ends on the 24th.
  • Walk ups only for 3 hour after Regular Registration. Pay on day of Race ($20 per group up to 6). Reserve your map by emailing bob@neooc.com
  • 68 controls!
  • LiveLox will be active for this event, we encourage you to use it!  See details below.
  • The best food in Rogaining!
  • Tent camping is free and permitted at Camp Manatoc on BOTH Friday and Saturday nights. Contact Sanae Rogers (sanae@neooc.com) for details about tent camping.

Click Here to email a question to the Registrar

Registration and Cost

10 hour event:

  • $40  $60 – individual  (late registration fee now in effect)
  • $80 $120 – 2 member team  (late registration fee now in effect)
  • $120 $180 – 3 or more member team (up to 6 people per team)  (late registration fee now in effect)
  • One Map Set included per person
  • One Buff included per person (plus other perks to be announced shortly)
  • For teams: Register the entire team on ONE registration form, State your team name, members, and ages in the designated fields.
  • For the 10 hour – If you are taking kids younger than 17, you can register as a solo (but will just get one map set).  Otherwise, those 17 and up all pay the above fee and get their own map set.
  • Borrowed finger stick included in above fees (note that we only have a limited number of 128-punch sticks, see Rules & Equipment section below).
  • A Wavier form must be signed and agree to by each participant.
  • We promise the best food in Rogaining!
  • NO Walk-ups accepted for 10 hour course

3 hour event:

  • One to six people – $10 plus small offset for PayPal charges
  • Walk ups only for 3 hour after Regular Registration. Pay on day of Race ($20 per group up to 6). Reserve your map by emailing bob@neooc.com
  • One map per group
  • Borrowed finger stick included in above fees.
  • A Wavier form must be signed and agree to by each participant.
  • Extensive snacks and drinks at the finish!
Preregistration is Closed! – 3 hour Walk ups still OK!

See who is registered so far

GENERAL INFORMATION

The tale of the Peninsula Python has been told since the summer of 1944, when some residents reported finding strange tracks on their property. Others said they saw the creature, a huge snake estimated to be about 15 to 18 feet long, that was rumored to have escaped from a traveling circus.  Hoax or not, your wanderings will remind all of the winding shape of a serpent.

Picture yourself orienteering in the beautiful Cuyahoga Valley National Park just as the leaves are changing in early fall.  Call it a ROGAINE, an Adventure Race, a Monster Score Event or an Extreme Navigation Challenge.  It all adds up to a long score-style orienteering event in one of the most visited National Parks in America.  Sixty-eight flags will be spread across twenty km2.  Point values vary, so strategy is important to achieve a high score. We have added a few “close in” controls within the camp areas (both Camp Butler and Manatoc) primarily to provide a beginner level challenge for the 3 hour people.   Note that ALL controls set, are part of the 10 hour course including the “close in” controls, Sixty-eight total controls.

Location

Headquarters will be at Camp Manatoc, Southeast of Peninsula, Ohio.   From the Truxell Road camp entrance (also called Kendall Park Rd to the east), follow the signs to the registration and start area.

Terrain  Click for terrain map

Post glacial down-cutting has produced a venue with lots of variety. With its nearby outlet to Lake Erie, the meandering Cuyahoga River has settled into a kilometer wide flood plain marked by a patchwork of scrub and corn fields. Cuyahoga means “crooked river” in the native Mohawk language. The valley walls are steep enough in some areas to provide good downhill skiing. The valley walls are dissected by a multitude of long branching re-entrants with many brooks draining into the Cuyahoga. In one eastern area, a layer of resistant 310 million year old Sharon Conglomerate has produced a mesa-like island surrounded by impressive cliffs. Most of the forested area is quite runnable. Briars are mostly found in areas of abandoned farmland. Poison ivy is present, but not usually a problem in most areas. Same for briars. We’ve had plenty of rain, so vegetation is a little thicker than normal.  Ticks have been common this year, but may be less in the fall. 

Map

1:12,500 printed on three overlapping waterproof sheets.  The map is a composite of five existing maps (Boston Run, Ritchie Ledges, Kendall Lake, Camp Manatoc/Butler and Oak Hill) plus the land connecting them.  The connecting land will be mapped more generally as would normally be seen on a ROGAINE map.  The Kendall and Ritchie Ledges maps were used during the 2004 North American Orienteering Championships.  One controversial control (placed by the author) even deserved its own webpage!

Corn Maze

Yes! There will be three controls placed in a corn maze using a separate map.  Participants must show their bib number at the maze entrance and exit at the maze exit.   This should take only about ten minutes unless you are hopelessly confused, reduced to tears and have to ask advice of small children to find your way out.  

LiveLox

Livelox has been set up for this event, with multiple-route replay available to all.  There are two classes – 10-hour and 3-hour – both of which will be active for replays immediately following the 10-hour finish at 8:00pm. 
As an added safety measure, competitors in the 3-hour race are encouraged to record their routes directly to the Livelox app on their phones, even if using a GPS watch.  Your position in the park will be visible to the event administrators in real time, which will be very helpful in an emergency.  The ability of 10-hour competitors’ phones to maintain a charge through the entire race while recording is questionable.

2022 Python Team

  • Event Director – Howard Montgomery (howard@neooc.com)
  • Project Manager – Sanae Rogers (sanae@neooc.com)
  • Registrar – Fred Mailey (fred@neooc.com)
  • Chief Course Design & Control Setting – Bob Boltz
  • Section Course Design and setting – Justine and Mike Avery, Sanae Rogers, Kathy Gyorfi, KJ Reufner, Sandra Albro
  • Volunteer Coordinator – Howard, Jay Smink
  • Tent camping (Friday and Saturday night) – Sanae Rogers (sanae@neooc.com)
  • Camp Manatoc/Butler Liaison – Howard Montgomery
  • Python Wrangler – OPEN!

Course Notes

Water in gallon jugs will be available at several locations on the course. There will be plenty of water. Food is available at the NW and SW corners of the venue. Notably, Szalay’s Farm Market has fresh buttered sweet corn, custard with your choice of berries and fresh fruit. Peninsula has the National Park Store for snacks and two restaurants.

Root stocks are marked with a green X.  My new mapping standard is to indicate only those that are taller than I can reach. Some of the older maps have them mapped to a lesser standard, or they have rotted away over time. Two of the older maps as well as the new land in between were geo-referenced. The old maps are less reliable in this regard and were a royal pain to incorporate into the composite map. The corn maze map is not to international orienteering standards but is fully compliant with galactic corn maze standards. It is mostly accurate and is suitable for framing.

Our controls are numbered from 110 to 180.  To reduce clutter on the map, the leading “1” is dropped for all controls.  So, control 114 is shown as 14 on the map and is worth 10 points.  Control 167 is shown as 67 on the map and is worth 60 points.  

There are three Mystery Controls!  When you find the Mother Control you won’t find an e-punch on the flag.  Instead you will look at the map hanging with the control.  The laminated map will show you the true location for the control which will be a short distance away.  For your trouble, you will be rewarded with more points than you were expecting!

RULES & EQUIPMENT

Portable GPS systems are allowed as long as the intention is to simply record the route taken for later analysis, discussion and sharing.  Whistles are mandatory.  No help from others or caching of supplies is allowed during the race away from the base camp. If in a team, team members must stay within sight and speaking distance throughout the event, except for coed teams when going potty.  Solo competitors are allowed.  All teams should have a working cell phone with them, however, cell reception is spotty especially in deep re-entrants, caverns and Faraday cages.

  • Required equipment:  ID, whistle, compass, event bib displayed front or back, cell phone turned off unless using it to call (no GPS maps), flashlight or headlamp for 10 hour folks (last two  hours will get dark in the woods.) Sunset is at 7:13 PM.  All controls will have reflective markings.
  • Finger Sticks:  There are 68 controls.  If possible, bring your own stick capable of holding the number of control punches that you estimate you can get in 10 hours.   We will have only 29 high capacity finger sticks (128 punch) available to borrow.  The rest of the club’s sticks only hold 50 punches.
  • Again, if you consider yourself an elite team that could find more than 45 controls, please first try to provide your own finger stick capable of holding 128 punches (they can be bought at SportIdent.us).  Then if you cannot, the club will have 29 of the high capacity sticks for borrowing during the registration process (first come, first serve).
  • Recommended equipment:  Water bottle or pack, layered clothing, bug spray, snacks, money for farm market/custard, long pants.

NOTICE

  • No alcohol at Camps Manatoc or Butler.
  • No dogs allowed at Camps Manatoc or Butler.
  • Dogs must be on leash in the National Park
  • A Wavier form must be signed and agree to by each participant.

SCORING & AWARDS

The point value of all control points visited is totaled. The lateness penalty will be 10 points for every minute late. Tie scores will be decided by the order of finishing times.  If in a team, all members of the team must be present at the finish.

There are three age categories:  Elite (age 17 and over), Masters (age 40 and over), and Veterans (age 55 and over).  Within each of these categories are  gender categories:  Men, Women, and Mixed.  You will be placed in the most competitive category that fits all team members.  For example, a team of three women age 40, 44, and 57 would be in the Masters, Women category.  Team members under age 17 are not considered in determining age category unless all are under age 17; then the team is Elite.

EVENT SCHEDULE

Saturday September 30th, 2023 (RACE DAY)

  • 7 AM – Onsite Check in begins
  • Be prepared with your your own finger sticks for number verification, if not borrowing one)
  • 9 AM – Instruction and maps handed out for 10 hour
  • 10 AM – 10 hour Mass Start
  • 11 AM to Noon – 3 hour starts
  • 2 PM  to 3 PM – 3 hour Finishes and Snacks
  • 8 PM – 10 hour Finish and Supper

Sundown is around 7:13PM.  Depending on cloud cover, forest cover and quality of twilight, a headlamp would be a good idea for 10 hour folks.  All Control flags will include reflective markings.

AREA ATTRACTIONS

HOTELS and CAMPING

There are several other hotels / motels near the event site. Click on this link for Google Map, with hotels.  There are cheaper places, but read the reviews!!

Tent camping is free and permitted at Camp Manatoc on BOTH Friday and Saturday nights. Contact Sanae Rogers (sanae@neooc.com) for details about tent camping.

Buffs & Bling!

If you would like to support the Python in 2022, please donate here and receive great NEOOC Python buffs as premiums! (Note that all 10 hour folks get their own as part of the registration fee!)

See the Bling section below for a picture of the buffs and more detail.

Or if you would like more information about the NEOOC Python buffs, email Sanae!

Bling 

All 10 hour participants will receive a fantastic hoo-rag to commemorate the hours of pain and suffering they endured during this event.  In case you are unaware of this amazing multi-function head ware, this is a stretchy tube hat that can be worn 15 different ways!  16 if you count blindfold.  As a bonus, it looks great on your dachshund. Three hour folks will have the opportunity to purchase one at a good price.  All 3 & 10 hour folks will receive this Python decal!

Additional notes for the 2023 Python

  • The maps for multiple areas of the Cuyahoga Valley are being re-mapped with the latest, updated LIDAR data from the state of Ohio and new field checking by our volunteers. This will ensure more accurate control placement as we mark and vet the control locations starting this spring.
  • NEOOC has recently purchased additional SportIdent control boxes, so we now have all of the 68 controls in our own inventory.  Control re-numbering has begun to ensure straight forward scoring for all Orienteers and officials during the Python.