Skip to main content

Terrain Analysis: Complex Relief and Night Orienteering at Antalya O-Fest

Terrain Analysis: Complex Relief and Night Orienteering at Antalya O-Fest 2025.

Event: Antalya O-Fest, Night-O, Lara (10/29/2025). Turkey.
Organising clubs
Eon Tours 

Extremely complex terrain with no clearly defined relief-based navigational lines.
As a result, navigation relied heavily on numerous bearing sections.

However, the terrain was filled with many similar-looking features — depressions and hill tops — making it very easy to confuse one with another.


Night conditions added an extra level of challenge. The already difficult navigation was further complicated by a tricky course layout and the presence of many visible headlamps from other runners moving chaotically in all directions.

To better highlight the complex terrain structure, I marked one of the index (thicker) contours in blue on the map. This makes the subtle relief forms more visible and helps better understand the challenge.

Altogether, this made the competition a very technically demanding event.
Even without being on the terrain, just by analyzing the map, I can assume there were a huge number of both major and minor mistakes. You can see this clearly by looking at the GPS tracks in LiveLox.

Route planning — especially choosing the right places to verify your current location — becomes absolutely crucial in such terrain. 

The book Planning Reliable Routes will definitely help you better adapt your routes to different types of terrain by understanding the underlying navigational model of the landscape.


source: LiveLox

Aleksndr Alekseyonok, October 23, 2025.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New o-book is coming this fall!

  New O-Book Coming This Fall! Confident Orienteering: A Systematic Approach to Minimising Errors Book 1: Fundamentals was released in October 2023 and has already been translated into seven languages , alongside the original English edition. With 8 chapters and 140 pages, it introduced the core concepts of the author's navigation system — and I’m still amazed at how warmly it was received by orienteers around the world. 🌍 As we continued working on the next part of this practical guide, it became clear that the project had grown into something much bigger — not least because of the sheer number of examples and illustrations included throughout (around 250 in total!). To make the material easier to absorb, we’re now leaning towards splitting it into two volumes , each with its own clear focus. This isn’t a final decision yet, and even the titles below are working titles — but right now, this structure feels like the most reader-friendly option: 📖 Book 2 (working title...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book 2 Nears the Finish Line

  Book 2 Nears the Finish Line Editors Ross Barnett and Clive Allen are now in the final stage of polishing Confident Orienteering Book 2: Planning Reliable Routes . Ross has already done two full read-throughs, which put me on an emotional high – and it’s still going! Clive has started the final proofread before layout. My wife, Svetlana (the book designer), and I are wrapping up the explanatory graphics for the illustrations. The test readers have also finished reading all the chapters. I’ll share their feedback once we start the layout phase. If all goes well, in about two weeks we’ll begin laying out Book 2. The goal is to release it in late September or early October. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly in these last weeks. Work on Book 3 (Routes executing) is also moving fast. Only two chapters are left – and then the whole Practical Guide  'Confident Orienteering: A Systematic Approach to Minimising Errors' will be complete.  Editing is already underway on...
Post a Comment
Read more

How the Book Examples Are Created

 How the Book Examples Are Created for "Confident Orienteering. Book 2: Route Planning and Execution" from sketch to finished map Eight people are working to make the examples in the book exceptional. Author: Aleksandr Alekseyonok Editors of the original text: Dmitry Davidovich and Sergey Pisarchik Editor of the cartographic material: Aleksei Alekseyonok Graphic editor: Svetlana Alekseyonok Translator: Andrei Yakovlev English translation editors: Clive Allen and Ross Barnett The picture illustrates the process of transforming an idea into a finalized image for the book. However, image number 4 is still not the final version. You’ll see the completed version in Book 2 , which will feature around 300 such examples. Stay tuned—just a few more months of hard work, and    Confident Orienteering   Book 2 will be ready for readers! My huge thanks to the whole team for your expertise and your work and for being with me on this journey! If you haven't read Confident O...
Post a Comment
Read more