The Western Pennsylvania Orienteering Club (WPOC) welcomes you to the first sanctioned A-meet to be held in western PA in thirty years.  This is also the first A-meet to be hosted by WPOC (with a lot of help from DVOA).  The locations are Deer Lakes Park, one of the Allegheny County Parks, and Keystone State Park, part of the PA state park system.

 Update Notes

One of the Deer Lakes                                                 Keystone Competition Center

These parks are similar in size, Deer Lakes at 1180 acres and Keystone at 1200 acres. Both contain lakes; Deer Lakes Park has three small lakes (each less than 5 acres); Keystone has a large central lake, 78 acres.  Both have very nice public amenities:  Deer Lakes has a playground with a kids spray park, a disc golf course, a ball field, and an astronomical observatory;   Keystone has a beach with showers and changing room, canoes and kayaks for rent, a playground, an environmental center, a ball field, and all levels of camping facilities (tent, trailer, yurt, cabin).  Both parks permit biking, although it is much more limited in Keystone.  We are sure that after your run, you will want to take advantage of some of these facilities.  Check out the  Deer Lakes link  or  Keystone link for more information about the two parks.

Both parks have the usual collection of wildlife for western PA, including a variety of ticks.  This includes deer ticks, although Lyme Disease is not common in this part of the state.  Bears and poisonous snakes are also possible; but neither has been sighted during field checking.

Despite the park similarities in terms of size and facilities,  the terrains of the two parks differ considerably.  See the map notes for more detail.

Event Center

Deer Lakes Park and Keystone State Park are about 33 miles apart.  We have chosen the little town of Delmont as Event Center; it lies between the two parks on two major roads (Routes 22 and 66).  Delmont has several hotels, a variety of restaurants and some shopping areas; it is also a convenient place from which to explore Westmoreland or surrounding counties.  Packet pickup on Friday will be the Holiday Inn Express in Delmont.  See the  Keystone Capers Area Map to get a feel for the roads in the area.

Important Competition Information

Both Deer Lakes Park and Keystone State Park are embargoed for orienteering competition and training until after June 26, 2011.  All parts of the parks are included in this embargo, with two exceptions:

• The model map area, a small part of Keystone S.P., may be used on Friday and Saturday, June 24-25.
• For those who camp at Keystone S.P.during Keystone Capers; the campgrounds, the lake and recreation areas next to the lake in Keystone S.P. may be utilized to take advantage of facilities available to campers.

Keystone State Park has had one local orienteering meet (2009) and several  beginner orienteering workshops.  The local meet utilized a previous version of the map that showed only about 1/2 of the park.  The workshops utilized 1:5000 scale maps of small parts of the park (based on the old version of the map).  The older version of the map lacked many details of the map that will be used in competition.

Neither Deer Lakes Park nor Keystone State Park has been the site of an A-meet before.