Orienteerers got back onto the trails and into the woods for the final day of the Yukon Championships on Wednesday starting near the Magnusson Ski Trails Parking and taking the runners on a Hidden Lakes map.

Starting from the Grey Mountain road and looping down into complex and hilly terrain the orienteerers chose from six different courses of varying length and technical difficulty.

The longer courses took runners southeast into steeper terrain with fewer trails, putting the focus on route choice and physical strength.

The expert course was 7.8 kilometres and had 13 controls for the orienteerers to navigate toward.

Brent Langbakk was the winner of the expert course spending one hour, 11 minutes and 20 seconds on the course.

Forest Pearson, 73 minutes, 55 seconds, came second and won only a handful of short legs, but at times led the race and fell behind Langbakk by 2:35.

David Bakker, the third place expert finisher, came in six minutes behind Langbakk.

The race writeup said that the end times would indicate that running and navigation speed may have been the deciding factor in Wednesday’s placements.

On the long advanced course, each runner left upwards of nine minutes on the course due to errors. The report said many orienteerers struggled early in the course particularly on leg two where competitors had to locate a small cup depression on a vague spur.

Bob Sagar, 79 minutes, seven seconds, came first, but lost over eight minutes on that leg. The battle for second was between Karen McKenna and Julianna Scramstad.

McKenna surpassed Scramstad on the last long leg of the course, where Scramstad lost 6.5 minutes.

The short advanced course was decided by one split. Second place finisher Philipa McNeil won every split but one which allowed Lara Melnik to eke out a narrow victory in 27 minutes, 54 seconds.

Wendy Nixon, 33 minutes, four seconds, was the third-place finisher in the short advanced category. The course was 1.9 kilometres and had seven controls.

The intermediate was won by Pauline Gallinat in 31 minutes and 37 seconds. Stian Langbakk, 20 minutes, 35 seconds, was the quickest on the novice course and Virginia Sarrazin, 65 minutes, 54 seconds, won the runner’s course.

The Yukon Championships were three weeks long and started with the middle distance and was followed by the sprint races which mirrored the Yukon Orienteering Association’s sprint series in terms of race design.

The sprint portion of the Championships took place behind Elijah Smith School on June 12. There were 70 orienteerers out for the race and they were challenged with many route choices. As well, the tricky element of the courses was the need to shift techniques between urban and forest terrain while maintaining a high speed.

The expert female race was very tightly fought with just 15 seconds separating Emilie Stewart-Jones and Jennifer Mackeigan. Pia Blake rounded out the top 3 just over a minute back. The men’s race was even tighter with Colin Abbott just edging visiting mapper David Bakker by 10 seconds. Leif Blake came in third just 30 seconds behind that.

In the Female Advanced category, Judith van Gulick came within 30 seconds of hitting the winning time of 15 minutes that the course setter was aiming for. Former national team member, Philippa McNeil, was second. Rima Khouri placed third in just over 19 minutes. On the men’s side, Jeremy Johnson ran a good race to gain first overall in the category with a time of 15 minutes, 25 seconds. Craig Brooks was second in the male category.

The Female Intermediate category was won by Gallinat in a very fast time of 16:12. Wendy Nixon was second in 17:59. Junior, Adney Karais was third. The Male Intermediate category also featured junior runners. Langbakk was first in 16:29. Kieran Horton and Johannes Benkert rounded out the top three.