CONTOURS ONLY
Ask your orienteering club’s mapping guru to print a special copy of your local OCAD digitized orienteering map with only the contours on them. Now set a short course with a few checkpoints. You don’t have the big trails to help you so you now must read the map constantly – keeping track of where you are.  Do not use this exercise in areas with major cliffs or rivers that present a danger.

LINE ORIENTEERING
In spring and autumn  Golden Horseshoe Orienteering hosts training nights every Wednesday night. Instead of running the course that has been set out for you, get a friend to draw a line (5 to 6km in length) on your map that follows along major features and goes past the checkpoints set out for that evening of training. Now it is your job to read the map and stay on that line. Read 100% of the details – trail junction, large boulder, clearing, ditch, etc. When you stumble across a checkpoint (and hopefully your friend hasn’t set a course up and down every hill 8 or 9 times before you find the first one) remember where it is and check to see if you were right when you get to the finish.  The key is reading all the information on the map. Try to maintain concentration and if find your mind wandering with thoughts of the pizza dinner to follow, the killing you made on the stock market that day, or why it is so bloody hot then stop, re-focus, and start again.

"PRECISION TO WIN"
This is an excellent training session for orienteering and adventure racing alike. No matter what your navigation sport interest, precision orienteering skills are essential! In gold I have heard the phrase “Putt to Win”. Well in orienteering, the precision map reading is no different that reading the green in golf. Better to take it slow and look at all the details and you will find the checkpoint faster and with less frustration.

NAVIGATION TIP #2: NAVIGATION TO HILLSIDE CHECKPOINTS

Imagine this….

It is late in the race - your team has only two checkpoints (CP) to go and the next to last CP is on the side of the Niagara Escarpment. You are racing head-to-head with another team, you are tired, a little dehydrated, head is spinning, legs are aching. “Should be simple navigation” you say, “Just over the edge and down a bit”.

Big mistake!  Such was the scenario facing the 75 teams in the 2000 Enduro race in Collingwood, Ontario in 2000.  This would be the CP that decided the race. Not the 2 hours of painful canoeing in large Georgian Bay waves, not the hike-a-bike biathlon section, not the hay bale dash or the climb on the bike up the steep slopes of the Blue Mountains – but it was the short and seemingly simple CP on the hillside.  My team initially thought this was going to be easy as well, but after making an initial error, we re-grouped and used our international orienteering experience to “spike” the CP on our second attempt. To “spike” is orienteering slang to navigate to the CP perfectly.  Here are some DONTGETLOST.CA tips on how to “spike” your next hillside CP.

"Contouring"
If you have a definite feature (trail bend, house, etc.) that is at the same height as teh CP then attack from the same height and contour into the CP.  Contouring is a term that means staying at the same elevation level. In adventure races that permit altimeters this is made easier.

“Attack from above”
In all other cases it is best to "attack from above".  In most terrain you will get a better feel for the lay of the land when running downhill compared to struggling uphill. Also if you leave the entire climb up to the checkpoint at the end of the leg, you could be tired from climbing leading to possible careless fatigue related errors. Of course, if your checkpoint is located at the base of a cliff then it is best to attack from below. Also, attacking on an angle will more often than not cause you “drop down the hillside”. It is easier to walk downhill  than uphill.

“Use the compass”
On a hill that is not too steep then it is safe to take a compass bearing.  In cases where the hillside provides a good view, it can be advantageous to take a compass bearing on a major
feature in the valley below to help locate your position on the hillside. If you can locate three major features then you can pinpoint your position by taking compass bearings and plotting these on your map through the process of "triangulation"

"Height judgment"
Judge your height gain or drop using the height of other members on your team. If you all line up above or below each other you cas estimate how high you have climbed or drop based on how tall your team members are. In adventure races that permit altimeters this is made easier.

Unless you are very familiar with the terrain or forest that you are racing in it is best to be calm and take the first CP slowly. This will permit you and your team to get a ‘feel’ for the terrain, the thickness of the woods, quality of the map, etc.   After addressing this and “spiking” (navigating without error) the first CP, then you and your team can pick up the pace and proceed with confidence. While it is possible that others will have raced harder and spiked the CP faster than you, more often than not, orienteering races are won or lost on the first CP due to nerves and a lack of appreciation of the terrain.  Oivind Thon, 2-time World Orienteering Champion in the early 1980’s had a secret for success – “Walk to CP1, jog to CP2, then run fast”

Perhaps the number one question we get asked at the SALOMON Adventure Running Series races or at our DONTGETLOST Navigation clinics is: What type of compass should I use?

Whether your outdoor interest is in adenture running, adventure racing, or orienteering the most important piece of equipment you buy is the compass.

A baseplate compass is the traditional compass, a wrist compass is attached to a wrist band and either sits on the wrist or over the back of the hand, while the thumb compass straps to the thumb. Depending on the terrain we reccomend using ither the baseplate or thumb compass or both.  Competition level orienteering compasses are nice because they are fast settling compasses with a nice fat needle. None of these compasses have a declination adjustment on them so we just draw magnetic north lines on our map.  This always gets a few strange looks when we do our navigation clinics but after the races the feedback is always positive.  It also helps that we now quote Ian Adamson from a recent Trail Runner Magazine article where he also states "draw your own magnetic north lines". So with no worrying about declination why not go with compasses the top navigators in the World use? Use an orienteering compass!

So, our preferences for a compass purchase are:

Wrist:         Brunton 66 Spectra
Thumb:      Brunton 6 Jet
Baseplate:  Brunton 1S Jet

These orienteering compasses are generally a little more expensive than the more commonly used compasses.

NAVIGATION TIP #5: USING A COMPASS