Results for 2026 Festival Mountain-O

Festival Photos Abum

Despite gray skies, close to fifty competitors navigated their way around the beautiful flower-studded tundra in Hidden Lakes and Powerline Pass valleys Sunday to complete the Short (6.9k), Long (17+k) and Modified Long Mountain Orienteering courses set by Ian Moore and Jen Jolliff. Ian’s new map offered significantly improved contours, vegetation mapping and cliff symbology as well as hundreds of individually GPS’d boulders, and competitors had the opportunity to take advantage of all of it! They wove through the lower elevation labyrinth of Hemlocks and meadows, checked off Troll-sized boulder control points and chose between traversing talus slopes and climbing over mountain ridges or descending into the easy-running meadows and trails below.

The Long Course victor was Springer Moore who found all 20 control points in two valleys and returned to the start in 3:14:26. Constantly distracted by his packrat instinct to pick up and carry cool stuff he finds, Allan Spangler 3:34:30) still managed to come in second, though he trailed Moore by more than 20 minutes. Cory Smith came in third less than five minutes after Allan in 3:39:14. Special kudos to junior orienteer Rowan Shearer (4:45:52) who came in fourth. Other juniors who completed this truly tough course included Eli Suver and Sam Stratton who went as a team. No women completed the Long Course.

The Shorter Long (Medium) Course was a cut-off mid way of the Long Course and a very popular choice as it turned out. Julia Ditto rocked the field overall in 2:00:33. Tamra Kornfield was second overall for the medium in 2:17:14. Sarah Merriner rounded out women’s top three solo places with 4:30:18. On the Men’s side, Aaron Gast got the top finish in 2:41:49 followed by junior orienteer Kevin Downs (3:00:56). Interestingly, Kevin might have been first if he hadn’t decided to rerun several controls he’d already punched with his mom after getting to the cut-off point. Team Elizabeth (actually a solo male) came in third for Medium in 3:07:31.

The Short Course was won by Alan Vebef (1:44:44) from Czech Republic, a junior orienteer who happened to be walking by the start about an hour after the last runners went out on the course. When offered the spur-of-the-moment opportunity to compete, he jumped on it. We gave him a compass and e-punch stick and he raced off to a narrow victory over our local runner, Oscar Araujo (1:47:18). Third for men went to Wyatt Reily (2:06:06) who had to be quick so his family could make their 4:00 plane back to Philidelphia! Sophia Aguilar (1:59:32) represented our local women honorably, beating out both Oriana (2:05:59) and Angelica Reily (2:06:05) to keep the first place medal at home.

Special Thanks to Michelle Semerad for directing folks from the Glean Alps parking lot to the start and to Springer Moore for hauling stuff in and out to the remote start.

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