Raquel and Tiago arrived in Halden in the beginning of June to start working on our new big mapping project: Steneröd, Venåsmarka and part of Höiåsmarka. It is an area frequently used by many people, located between the north-eastern edge of the town, the road to Rakkestad and our club house on the top of Höiås. They also make a new sprint map of Steneröd.
The previous map was both inaccurate and out-of-date in terms of vegetation, trails etc. The new map is made completely from scratch with a new base material, using laser data. This mapping project is a cooperation between Halden SK and Gimle IF and is financed by two foundations, Sparebankstiftelsen and Berg Sparebank. Tiago and Raquel will be working with the project approximately until the end of October.
I have a hope that the map will not only be used by established orienteers from the two clubs but also that we will manage to offer the map to a wider public via a project of fixed controls.
We have already had a few trainings to test-run the map and also to be able to give feedback on the work of the cartographers. Here is a part of the map with 3 courses:
Höiås south (still with plastic tapes in the terrain)
Venås (no control markings)
Steneröd (still with plastic tapes in the terrain).
If you want to get these maps&courses, contact me (Denne e-postadressen er beskyttet mot programmer som samler e-postadresser. Du må aktivere javaskript for å kunne se den.)
Bellow you can learn a bit about Tiago and Raquel and their way of working. Compared to many other orienteering cartographers they are rather young and they also have recent experience from being elite runners, participating in several WOCs, representing Portugal.
Tiago ran seven WOCs and one JWOC like athlete. His best achievement was in Vuokatti in 2013 where he ran the both forest finals. Raquel ran five WOCs and one JWOC. Her best achievement was in Lausane in 2012 where she ran the sprint final.
"We started in cartography of orienteering maps in 2000, doing some updates and drawing parks or urban areas. During the last eight years we are full time map makers. Our work has been done mostly in Portugal, but we also did maps in Spain, Sweden and France.
Since 2009, we work with a tablet computer (Yuma, Trimble) and GPS.
The time that we spend per day working in the terrain depends on many things, but normally it is between 6 and 9 hours.
To make maps in Halden is easier than in the best terrains in Portugal, because the base map is pretty good here (LAS) and we do not have to spend so much time drawing areas like greens and yellows.
In our work we always need to be aware to everything, because we find so many different kinds of persons and animals. It has already happened people in the forest received us with a cup of tea and cookies, but also with guns.
We have got information about the mapping project of Halden SK from some athletes/friends who sent to us the link to the advertisement, saying that could be a nice project for us.
To make maps is important to have experience from being an athlete and to know the rules. It is important to be patient and practice a lot, but a good advice could be to try to talk with athletes as often as possible to receive feedback.
Our hobbies are to cultivate in our backyard, read, watch movies and also cooking."
Some previous maps of Raquel and Tiago:
MCO 2014 Portugal
AOM 2013 Spain
POM 2014 Portugal
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