Orienteering is a competitive form of land navigation. It is for all ages and degrees of fitness and skill. It provides the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt. The object of orienteering is to locate control points by using a map and compass to navigate through the woods. The courses may be as long as 10 km.
Terms, concepts, and
gearAn orienteering map is a kind of topographic map made specially for orienteering. “Topographic” means that it shows the shape of the land–hills, valleys, and so forth. An orienteering map also shows many other features relevant to an orienteer–streams, trails, fences, fields, thick brush, and so on.
Although many types of orienteering maps exist, most orienteering maps are made to a common set of standards used around the world. Standard orienteering maps are printed in five colors, with each color used for a different class of features:
Black
Manmade features, such as roads, trails, buildings and fences, plus rock
features, such as cliffs and boulders.
Brown
Topographic features, such as hills, valleys, ridges, earth banks and ditches.
Blue
Water features, such as lakes, ponds, swamps and streams.
White
Normal forest. (This is different from some government maps, which may show
fields with white and forest with green.)
Yellow
Clearings and fields.
Green
Thick brush, such as bushes or thorns.
Orienteering compasses are different from most other types of compasses, such as boating, surveying or military compasses. In a pinch, any type of compass in which you can see the needle can be used, but orienteering compasses have some advantages.
The most common type of orienteering compass is the baseplate variety. The compass needle sits in a housing in the center, which is set on a clear plastic baseplate. With this compass you can set bearings from where you are to where you are going, which is useful for finding places that have few nearby features to guide you.
Another type of orienteering compass is the thumb compass, which straps to your thumb. The thumb compass allows for quick reference since it is held against the map as you go. Some like it for its simplicity, others for speed of reference in competition. The thumb compass lets you orient the map with ease , but does not let you set bearings.
Controls
This is the point, circled on the map, which you are looking for. The (usually)
orange and white marker there is called a control marker.
Course
The orienteering course is the set of controls you are looking for.
Leg
A leg is the portion of a course between two consecutive controls.
Knoll
A small hill.
Spur
A small ridge or protrusion on a hillside.
Reentrant
A small valley or draw running down a hillside.
Contour
A brown line used to show topographic features.
Linear feature
A trail, stream, fence, stone wall, or other feature that is basically linear.
Contrast this with point features, like boulders, wells and springs, and area
features, like fields and lakes.
Catching features
A large feature which is not easy to miss in the direction you are going. You
might use a catching feature, such as a lake beyond a control, to "catch" you if
you miss the control.
A Sample Map
