But the advent of shoestring and afterwork rogaines which are held near and even in urban areas has shown up the deficiencies of the topo map in these areas. The 1:50,000 topo maps cannot handle lots of tracks close together, or keep up with the constant change that happens close to metro areas. Work by orienteers in Wellington and Christchurch is leading towards maps aimed at the traveller on foot or MTB at a scale of around 1:25,000.
In the Wellington area mapper Michael Wood has taken the lead by absorbing Orienteering Hutt Valley's discrete foot-orienteering and MTBO maps into a continuous map at a scale of 1:20,000. It now covers the entire greater Wellington area. The "bits in between" these existing maps are being improved from the topo base as rogaines and MTBO are held in new places; and the afterwork rogaines are increasingly making use of them. The Makara Peak rogaine on 22 Jun shows that this is very much a "work in progress" - the MTB Park is very well mapped, the tracks and lanes up towards Wrights Hill have some defects, and recent changes in Karori Park after storm damage have yet to be caught up with. But compare the rogaine map with the topo - which has only a single track from South Karori up to Wrights Hill!
In Christchurch orienteer and NZ rogaine champion Chris Forne has started a similar process on the Port Hills, where afterwork rogaines have generally been held. But a new development is the involvement by Outdoor Recreation degree students at Christchurch Polytech under lecturer Jean Cory-Wright. A ten-times World Orienteering Championship representative for Britain and active orienteer and rogainer today, Cory-Wright is planning that her students will create a 1:25 000 map of the Port Hills, and is hoping to set an example for the standard of land maps that NZ should have given the current emphasis on multisport and adventure racing. She is using Forne as a mapping adviser.
They will be using the map to teach navigation skills as she finds that the current topo map is so innaccurate that it confuses intermediates and beginners. Cory-Wright believes there is a case for all NZ urban fringe and high recreation areas to have such maps. She points to the UK Ordnance survey 1:25,000 maps as an example of what good mapping is!
The Chch Polytech students will run a 12 and 6-hour rogaine, the "Spring Mystery Madness" using their mapping on 15 Oct.
This page was written by and installed on 23 Jun 05.