South Park
Orienteering Meet
3 October 2026


On a gorgeous, sunny day with cool temperatures and clear skies some 63 intrepid orienteers set out across 41 starts to explore the southeastern quadrant of Allegheny County's South Park. Wet grass from the previous day's light rain, and many, many falling black walnuts were the principal transient environmental challenges. The park provided a wide variety of mostly-human-altered terrain, trails, roads, creeks culverted and not, and man-made objects of many sizes and kinds, accumulated over the park's near hundred years of existence. Multiple birthday parties, a cricket match, a large scout camp-out, myriad family picnics, countless dog walkers, and a large wedding at the Maple Springs Gazebo added a festive air to the day. The nearby Oliver Miller Homestead and Stone Manse Cascades, as well as various stone structures dating back as far as the 1920s and the work of initial park director and landscape architect Paul Riis contributed a historical element as well.

First-time course director Jason Campbell designed 5 cross-country courses: Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced Short and Long. Comments on all the courses were mostly good, though the advanced courses proved slightly more difficult than expected and their winning times correspondingly longer. This seemed to be mostly due to several controls that ought to have been hung higher and/or more prominently, especially #73, which served as control 1 on Red and control 3 on Brown, and #81, which served as control 2 on brown and control 11 on orange. Jason says that after he repeatedly watched several runners frustratingly long and winding search paths around these controls on Livelox these elevation and visibility lessons are now seared into his brain for future control setting occasions. An unexpected and large Scout encampment around the Camp Rolling Hills cabin also blocked a grassy area that was otherwise believed to be the optimal route between Red 4 and 5 and Brown 6 and 7. However, top-advanced-long-finisher Dave Battista found a route wide left of the encampment that allowed him to run his detour on a paved minor road and ended up being considerably quicker than the expected route through the grassy open probably would have been even had it been empty of tents!

Control 75 (5 on Red, 7 on Brown) was just inside an evergreen boundary. Although it could easily be accessed from within the copse, some runners attempted to lean their bodies far into a dead tree and reach through sharp branches to punch. This reach was nearly impossible and led to scratches and choice words. Next time the proposal is to hang the control further out so it can be punched from outside, OR further in, so there is no confusion, OR at least deploy a trail cam. An unrelated straw poll of participants on Orange and higher courses found that the abandoned, vegetation-overwhelmed structure at control 61 is definitely still widely seen as a building because the roof has not quite yet collapsed. This lay opinion turns out to be 100% consistent with IOF mapping standards, as well as with the way it is currently mapped by WPOC. There was, however, a distinct split in opinion about whether the ~100-year-old, probably-CCC-erected, rough stone henge, aka control 63, is in fact a "man made object" (as presently mapped) or deserves some natural symbol such as "boulder cluster". Regardless of symbol, everyone on Intermediate and both Advanced courses seemed to enjoy visiting the henge and the scenic area around it. Further north, above Maple Springs Drive, everyone on all 5 courses also seemed to enjoy visiting the Stone Manse Cascades at control 55. One map was lost by an Advanced Short runner between controls 10 and 12, but he successfully finished the course by impromptu Memory-O after briefly consulting another Brown participant's map. The missing map was subsequently found during control pick-up.

Thanks to Alexis Rzewski for vetting. Thanks to Christee Homan, Zachary Gass, and Laurie Opila for handling registration/check-in. Thanks to Will Levine and Jim Wolfe for helping with start/finish. Thanks to Joe Logan for conducting instruction. And thanks to Dave Battista, Joe Logan, Christee Homan, and Wiltrud Fassbinder for doing control pickup.

You can view the splits at Splits

You can analyze your route and that of others at Livelox

The next WPOC event will be at Boyce Park on 18 October.   Return to the Welcome Page

South Park 261003
results created by Ór


Beginner Novice Intermediate Adv Short Adv Long

Beginner   1.8k    60m

Name Notes Club Time
1 Joe Cornell 32:54
2 Laurie Opila WPOC 41:40
3 Jason Miller 61:51


Novice   2.8k    120m

Name Notes Club Time
1 Tory Dellafiora 53:07
2 Ashley Neely WPOC 71:35
3 Joe Cornell 73:20
4 Melissa Rychener 76:51
5 Andrew Tesch WPOC 78:50
6 Christee Homan WPOC 103:49
7 John Rice 128:14
Ella Thompson Skipped #1; finished at 79:31 DNF
Dave Bauer Found 5; finished at 112:13 DNF


Intermediate  4.7k   165m

Name Notes Club Time
1 Will Levine WPOC 81:11
2 Tory Dellafiora 92:31
3 Tatjana Mead WPOC 112:57
4 Jonathan Stiffy WPOC 124:03
5 Daniel bogesdorfer 126:34
6 Ashley Neely WPOC 138:56
7 Jim Cebula WPOC 173:29
8 Bert Condie WPOC 174:44
Russ Maiers Found 6; finished at 170:10 WPOC DNF
Clif Pastel Missed punch at #16 WPOC 205:36
Brant Barletta Troop 1305 1 Skipped #5 to #10; finished at 103:02 DNF
Brant Barletta Troop 1305 2 Skipped #5 to #10; finished at 101:47 DNF
Bill Fiedler Troop 9109 All controls out of order; finished at 127:09 DNF


Adv Short  4.2k   175m

Name Notes Club Time
1 Joe Logan WPOC 69:24
2 Nathaniel Hazelton WPOC 105:26
3 Sherry Shank WPOC 116:46
4 Dave Gailey WPOC 127:59
5 Milo Campbell WPOC 153:42
6 Sanae Rogers NEOOC 233:29
Bruce Patterson Lost map missed #12; finished at 155:24 WPOC DNF


Adv Long  6.6k   260m

Name Notes Club Time
1 Dave Battista WPOC 105:28
2 John Pane WPOC 128:11
3 Luke Donnelly WPOC 155:47
4 Wiltrud Fassbinder WPOC 163:23
5 Kimberly Stewart WPOC 177:44
Zachary Gass Found 13; finished at 175:07 DNF
Jerry Agin Found 13; finished at 199:21 WPOC DNF
jason miller Skipped #10 to #12; finished at 99:07 DNF
Lauren Bilsky Found 3; finished at 98:24 DNF