I really wanted to call this the Millennium Turkey-O (or its Official Park Name, "The Highland Forest Map & Compass Turkey Hunt") with millennium thrown in there somewhere but, well, we're not there yet.

As always, our co-sponsors, Onondaga Parks, provided us with a venue for team/family competition and some really neat certificates. The PR was excellent, with a large listing in the Syracuse Newspapers.

The Short Course for Novices ran about 2 km, (9 controls, 75 m climb) running almost due north past Skyline, down the hill, back up the old Delphi Stagecoach Road, cutting west on the Highland Trail and ending up at the Community House. I included some interpretive signage at the controls to make it more interesting for orienteers who weren't in a real big hurry. I did get a compliment or two about the signs; people didn't know that the park had small hamlets of pioneer farmers (who left due to the poor soil) on Arab Hill and Kenyons Hollow, or a Stagecoach Road. Novice Winners of the P&C Gift Certificate (I'm still leery of giving out frozen Turkeys) were Scott & Laura Powell from Calcium, NY, 34 minutes.

The Medium Course was mostly recycled points from the previous weekend's Scout-O (also known as the Wet Kid-O), approximately 4.5 km, and 10 controls. From the Community House the course ran trails SW towards Sawmill and out toward the horse barn, back thru the Black Forest, up the east side of the road in back of Pines Camp and in. P&C Certificate winners were Jed Kusterer and Joanne Labare from ROC at 73:38. Ben Leonard lead the pack with a time of 33:54.

The Long Course was, well, long. After doing some short legs and a couple of point controls SW of the start in the Sawmill area runners went down into the Black Hole of the gorge (Ithaca O'ers were right at home) that parallels the powerline that roughly divides the park in half. Some runners chose to go up and over the walls, some ran further south and west up trails thru the old Shale quarry, then west over the main road and north toward Arab Hill. Route choice at that point was good practice for ski-o as to how many turns you made on the jeep trails before you were really finished. Group winners were Kevin & Sherry Sharpe w/ Kory Raymond in 147:09.

Scotty Pleban on the Long Course smoked on in at 61:20. He still had some energy left so I sent him out to canvass which permanent course markers were still standing (most of them are). That's a project for next spring, seeing as we have a club course plotter now. Sign up now!

Thanks for all who came and all that helped. I had little more to do than write this up and do the Wal-Mart Greeter Thing. Next year's Turkey-O will be back to Sunday, November 18, 2001 unless I hear a whole lot of reasons otherwise.

Have a great Millenium All!

Shawn Forney

Staff
Meet Director:	Shawn Forney
Park Liaison:	Lucy Hawkes, Dave Mele
Course Design:	CNYO Scout O Committee
Vetting:	Mark Dominie, Bob Ireland, Larry Parmelee
Registration/Start/Finish:	Barb Dominie, Barb Sleight
Refreshments:	Barb Sleight

2000 Highland Forest Annual Map & Compass Turkey Hunt
RESULTS