1. Orienteering The Thinking Sport
A life-long sport in which participants find their way over unfamiliar terrain using only a detailed topographic map and a compass.
The object is to find marked control points in the forest; and in competition, to do it as quickly as possible.
Orienteering originated in Scandinavia about 100 years ago as a military exercise. Today, there are participants all over the world, although the heaviest concentration is still in Europe.

2. Features
Combines mental skills (navigation and route selection) with physical skills (moving over natural wooded terrain)
Orienteer chooses the activity level
Run, jog, walk, stroll, meander
Easy, moderate, and difficult courses
Take your performance seriously or not
Compete against your own age group or not
Orienteering is open to everyone capable of walking in the woods. It is up to each person whether to take the sport seriously and compete or to take a recreational approach.

3. Overview for Today Orienteering Maps
What skills you need and who does Orienteering
What a course is and what the orienteer does at an event
Orienteering when there is no event

4. Edge of Indiana: USGS
To appreciate what an orienteering map is like, lets first look at a standard topographical map, like those available from the US Geological Service. Note the lack of detail. We see roads, buildings, utility lines, smoothed contours, major streams, with a simple color scheme (green=forest, white=open, pink=city).

5. Orienteering Map of the Area
Here is an orienteering map of part of the same area. It uses a different color scheme and adds a lot of detail. White and green are forest; vegetation thickness is shown with shades of green; trails are shown, not just roads; small details (boulders, pits, gas wells, small streams, more detailed contours, etc.) are shown.

6. Map Features Scale - usually 1:15000 or 1:10000 with North
lines pointing to Magnetic North
6 Colors; each has meaning:
Black Roads, trails, boulders, cliffs
Blue Ponds, lakes, streams, marshes
Brown Contour lines - connecting points of
equal elevation; usual interval is 5 meters.
Yellow Open, cleared areas
White Runnable forest
Green Vegetation, darker means thicker
There is an international orienteering mapping standard which dictates how various features are to be shown on the maps.

7. Your School Topo Map

8. As an Orienteering Map

9. The Compass Used to keep you and your map oriented
Used in taking a bearing
Used when you become disoriented (lost)
This is a standard base-plate compass. Important elements are the see-through housing, the fluid filling the housing, the north alignment lines, the scale.

10. Skills Used
Terrain association (the first step) - ability to translate what the orienteer sees in the forest into its depiction on the map and vice versa.
Taking a bearing – finding a direct route to a control off in the forest.
Counting paces – to measure distance
Making route choices – deciding how to get from here to there
Adjusting for errors
When in competition – doing it all on the run
Orienteering usually begins by learning to orient the map – making map north and magnetic north agree so that the terrain is depicted on the map in the same direction as it is in real life.
Taking a bearing is the next step, along with learning how to follow it.
The other skills are added as one becomes more proficient.

11. So, Who Does This? Orienteers Boy scouts, girl scouts, cub scouts
4-H clubs
ROTC and JROTC
Civil Air Patrol
Search and Rescue units
Adventure racers
Cross-country runners, Hikers, Hunters
Almost anyone who enjoys the outdoors and wants a little structure or challenge in their activities
Among these groups are competitive orienteers, recreational orienteers and people who are interested in the navigational skills involved for purposes related to their jobs.

12. A Course
Typical “cross-country” course: sequence of marked locations in the forest, each is called a control point
Control points are marked in the forest by orange and white control flags and on the map by purple circles
The circles are connected by lines to show sequence but not route
The orienteer must choose his/her own route
The orienteer also gets descriptions of the control feature
Flags are not hidden. A control point must be on a mapped feature. An orienteering event will have multiple courses; participants choose which course to do (with advice).

13. Beginner Course
Here is a typical beginner course. Control points (the places to go to) are circled and numbered; the clues describe what feature is in the circle and specify a label that appears on the control. Note the handrails (features you can use to guide you toward a control).

14. Yellow – Advanced Beginner
About 1 km longer than the White course with some control points placed away from trails by m.

15. Orange - Intermediate
Transition level: Control points may be far from trails and fields but there must be a catching feature to prevent wandering off if the control point is missed. The control descriptions are also changing.

16. Control Description Change
Control descriptions are shown in symbolic form and in English. At the expert level, only symbolic descriptions are given.

17. Red – Advanced Long
This course is over 7 km long. Note how the use of trails is not practical from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 to 10 or from 12 to 13 to 14 to 15. The control features are also small – a knoll, a boulder, a depression.

18. What an Orienteer Does
Interval starts on course of your choosing; spaced at least two minutes apart
Go to each control in sequence
At the control, make a record of having been there
After the last control, go to the finish and get the record verified and time recorded
Brag or complain about how things went; compare with others on the same course

19. Control Point
Each control point has an orange and white marker with a label and a recording device, usually a punch – used to prove participants have visited the control. On the right, an electronic recording device is being used instead of a punch.

20. Proving you have been there
Manual punches create different patterns on the control card that each participant carries. For electronic recording, a “finger stick or e-punch” is used to record the visit; essentially it is like a flash memory.

21. Permanent Course Controls
4-inch white/orange squares with letter and/or number
Placed on a post
Orienteer records square letter on paper; and checks letter sequence for correctness
Posts for permanent markers may be wood or metal. The squares are attached in such a way to make it difficult to remove them.

23. Western Pennsylvania Orienteering Club
Public O-meets, Fall & Spring
Free instruction for all beginners
And it’s near you – throughout Western PA
orienteeringusa.org for other clubs in USA
In addition to the O-meets that WPOC offers, we also provide workshops and presentations on orienteering, generally free for any organization that requests them.

24. Western PA O Maps
The red and white squares show complete orienteering maps; the green and white squares show maps that are in development. Having an orienteering map of an area does not necessarily mean that a whole park is mapped; see the list at the end of the presentation.