Red Top Mountain State Park is mostly mature hardwood forest with open woods for fast running. As of December 20th, there are areas with deep fallen leaves that may make steep slopes slippery. There are some areas with thicker vegetation including grape vines, green briars, and blackberries that will slow you down. We tried to avoid these areas, but some upper-level courses may go into these thick areas due to limited terrain in the park.

The park is on Lake Allatoona, and the lake is at the lowest that I can remember. We have mapped the exposed lake bed as “sandy ground”, and have bent the legs as though the lake is at full level. The exposed lake bed may be a good route choice, but may also be very muddy and slick. Use extreme caution if you choose to cross the exposed lake bed.

There are no deep stream crossings in the park, and you should be able to be cross streams without getting wet. Streams marked as intermittent may be completely dry if we have not had recent rain.

We use a brown X for rootstocks and any rootstock feature we use for a control will be at least one meter high.

A blue color is used for north lines since there are very few water features and there is a lot of black on the map.

In some cases, small areas of green indicate the dense canopies of fallen trees lying on the ground.

Firelines, which may in some instances may closely resemble indistinct trails, are indicated on the map by the dry ditch/trough symbol.

Dimensional precision in the control descriptions is to the nearest 1/4 meter.

North Line spacing on the competition maps is 500m. A version of the Practice map with 250m North Line spacing was posted earlier, but the current version of the Practice map now also has 500m North Line spacing

The park is divided by a county road with a posted speed limit of 35 mph. DRIVERS OFTEN EXCEED THIS LIMIT. The county road is mapped as out of bounds (purple forbidden route X's) and travel along the road is not permitted except when walking to the start. When walking to the start, stay as far from the road as practical, obey signage and crossing guards, and cross only at marked crossing points.

All courses will cross small roads on Saturday, but these roads have a 20 mph speed limit. Even so, please use extreme caution when crossing.

On Sunday, Red and Blue course runners will need to cross the county road twice, and we have a blue flagged, timed (up to 2 minutes) crossing leg to accommodate any small traffic delay. The time taken on the crossing leg, up to 2 minutes per crossing, will be deducted from your total time.

In this regard, the following sign will appear at the Start on Sunday:

Red and Blue Course runners: Your course will cross a county road and includes 2 timed crossings. Follow the blue flagging between the controls. You must punch both controls both ways, as instructed in your control descriptions. You will have up to 120 seconds deducted from your time for each crossing. Therefore results will not be final until calculations are complete.

On Sunday, Green course runners will be in an area where there are high cliffs. Courses are designed to avoid the cliffs, which are mapped as uncrossable. If you find yourself on top of a high cliff, please step back carefully. You are in an area where you are not meant to be.

On Sunday, Red and Blue course runners may see Park Boundary signs on the courses. Not to worry, these signs delineate State Park land from Corp of Engineers land, and are not a problem.

White and Yellow courses will have some blue flagged legs both days. Please refer to your control descriptions for details.

The Blue map on Saturday will not have a legend. The legend may be previewed here: Legend