How it all began

The creators of Night & Day, Eric Bone and I, have been devotees of the sport of orienteering for many years -- Eric since 1989, I since 1999. We're also fans of urban exploring. Eric has lived in Seattle his entire life. I was born in San Francisco and live there now, but I lived in Seattle for 15 years during the 80's and 90's.

In October 2002 we did a 15 mile run on the San Francisco Bay Area that included stops at a very old redwood called the Methusela Tree and at some cool sandstone formations. Perhaps inspired by the touristic nature of this run, we got talking about how cool it would be to put on an "urban rogaine" in Seattle.

What's an urban rogaine? Sixteen hour Night & Day is precisely what an urban rogaine is. Most rogaines are held in undeveloped terrain and are a full 24 hours long. We decided to limit Night & Day to 16 hours because pavement is more punishing to the feet than earth. A rogaine is a kind of orienteering race. But most people have never heard of rogaines or of orienteering, so we decided not to call it either one.

We put on the first Night & Day in Seattle on July 19-20, 2003, drawing just over 100 participants. It was based at our friend John Lee's house, in Seattle's Central District. It was very successful, so we decided to repeat it in 2004.

We wanted to give people a chance to train for the 2004 Seattle Night & Day, so we planned three micro Night & Day style events called Street Scramble^®. We soon discovered that Street Scramble was going to become even more popular than Night & Day.

Call us crazy, but we decided to create a business so that we could produce these and other fun events full-time. In 2007 we are putting on two Night & Day Challenges (Seattle and San Francisco) and at least eleven Street Scramble events, in addition to our new Northwest Trail Runs, our third annual BEAST adventure race series (also in the Seattle area), and myriad navigation classes, camps, and private events.

– Terry

Contact Us

The organizers of Night & Day Challenge and Street Scramble^® welcome your phone calls and email.

• Technical Director
  Eric Bone, eric at mergeo dot com, 206-291-8250
  Eric is one of the top ranked U.S. athletes in the sport of orienteering and is also an accomplished adventure racer.

• Events Coordinator
  Andrea Gardner, andrea at mergeo dot com, 206-992-8663