Light Green

[Sheila S.]

Does anyone agree with me that Light Green is a silly name for the course between Orange and Green. It is neither the same technical difficulty nor the same length as green and so I always find myself having difficulty explaining it to newcomers.
I guess people did not want to use the same colours as have been used in the past for different lengths or difficulties (eg red or purple) so what about changing the name to Lime. It seems to me that Lime fits well as being a colour that is between Orange and Green and has not been used before.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

I agree that "Light Green" is a confusing name. If it does change then I would advocate a "solid" colour for consistency. Purple is not used nowadays and was seldom used in the past so my vote goes for Purple.

[graeme]

"Light" usually suggests something which isn't "full strength", so it seems quite a good name. (Like all these short distance E-lite races we're seeing now ) We thought of various naming schemes in the restructuring, but not this idea of diseases...

W: Anaemic
Y: Jaundiced
LG: Lyme
Br: Trots
..must admit it has potential

Of course, LG is redundant in most areas anyway, and serves only to confuse planners who think its should be easier than green.

Roll on the next "Black Death" course ?

[andypat]

Kind of agree with Graeme's logic about lite, although I would argue that experienced Orienteers are very rarely the right people to ask about what newbie's find difficult about orienteering. Otherwise why would we ever print maps without a legend on them telling people what all the little squiggles and funny colours mean!

[geomorph]

Well, it was odd man out when it was the only two word name. Now its part of a whole set of two word names, but the others all refer to distance at a single technical level.
Don't like the mix.

As stated before we could easily have gone for a colour spectrum progression using only single word colours, but running pink and cerise was not considered macho enough.

[AndyC]

Of course, LG is redundant in most areas anyway, and serves only to confuse planners who think its should be easier than green.

Being pedantic as Light Green is TD4 and Green is TD5 isn't it Green (or more correctly Short Green) that is redundant in less technical areas?

[King Penguin]

Of course, LG is redundant in most areas anyway, and serves only to confuse planners who think its should be easier than green.

Being pedantic as Light Green is TD4 and Green is TD5 isn't it Green (or more correctly Short Green) that is redundant in less technical areas?

.and Blue and Brown and Black - but calling them "longer Light Green", "even longer Light Green", "extremely long Light Green" would just be silly.

[SJC]

In the latest guidelines Red has disappeared to be replaced by Long Orange.

If Red was now used to replace Light Green it would make a more sensible progression.

[AndyC]

I do like the method used by HOC on their mid week summer events "Greenish" summed up a lot of courses that weren't really "Green" but were harder than Light Green/Orange

[awk]

Personally, I'd prefer us to go over to a colour system that is recognisable in other outdoor sports too: Black, Red, Blue, Green, with maybe White to give the fifth and lowest TD.

[AndyC]

The problem with awk's suggestion is that there wouldn't be enough progression steps for newcomers and those of us who can't (or won't) handle distance but want technical courses.
BTB I realised that it is possible (because of the requirement for catching features etc.) to produce a course using TD4 controls that wouldn't be acceptable as Light Green even if it had the right distance. Presumably that would have to be described as "Short Green" even though it had no TD5 controls?

[SeanC]

These colour problems are because orienteering colours mix technical difficulty with length.

Awk, assume you mean different colours for different technical difficulties, something like:

White = TD1
Green = TD2
Blue = TD3
Red=TD4
Black=TD5

And if you wanted to describe the length, prefix with Long, Short, Medium etc. A shorthand way of displaying the rarely seen BOF "Matrix".

This would fit better with the new/proposed "navigation challenge" (can't remember the exact name).

We'd have all the problems with areas that have a bit of TD4 terrain, and a bit of TD5 of course, and even more fun if we were to standardise what "medium" and "short" means (don't we just love standards )

[geomorph]

and just to be absolutely silly for TD5 you could have, mapping to today's level 2 colours
short black = short green
short medium black = green
medium black = short blue
long medium black = blue
short long black = short brown
medium long black = brown
long black = black

I'd rather run a cerise.

[SeanC]

ha ha, yes you're right. Lets replace Light Green with Red.

[Scott]

and just to be absolutely silly for TD5 you could have, mapping to today's level 2...

You jest, but that system wouldn't really be any sillier than British adjectival climbing grades...