Orienteering in the Snow

I really had three choices for hiking today - well, four if you include not going anywhere as one choice.  One would be to pick a hike on my own, two would be to join the ODATC on an 8 miler in Lake Anna State Park, and three would be to go orienteering at Fork Union Military Academy (FUMA).  My Meet-up Group had organized our participation at the orienteering competition.  Because I have wanted to try orienteering again, that is what I decided to do.  There were two others going from my group, but I didn't run into them.  So it was like taking a hike by myself after all, just with specific goals.

What is orienteering?  Well, you find your way with a map and, if needed, a magnetic compass.  Leave the GPS behind, which would be cheating.  The FUMA Orienteering Club had four courses, and I choose the second easiest, being pretty new to it.  Maybe I should have stepped up and tried for a harder one.  This didn't seem as difficult as the first time I did orienteering in 2013.  The goal is to locate a number of points, each marked by a numbered flag with a paper punch.  You punch your sheet of paper - there is a distinctive pattern for each punch - to prove that you actually found the objective - and you are timed.  So it can be looked on as a competition if one wishes.  In my case, I just wanted to enjoy a walk in the woods and fields, and locate all of my flags, of which there were 12.

The topographic map is pretty detailed, with each flag location marked with a number and a circle, the course essentially following a circuit hike of a couple of miles.  The distance turned out to be 2.9 miles in my case, including some detours and a bit of wandering trying to find a few of the flags.

Here is a close up showing where flags #1 and #2 on the course that I did were located, and also #12 at the end:

Does this look like Virginia to you?  Not to me!  The snow cover was pretty much uniform, and was just a few inches deep, having compressed considerably over the last few days.  Temperatures were in the low or mid-twenties during my walk, and have rarely been above 25-35 for the past 12 days.

This was one of the prettiest spots during the entire orienteering course, with a lovely little stream flowing along.

Here is an example of a marker, each of which has a number that you compare with the list on the back of your map to make sure that you are at the right one - since it is easy to get confused, and there are four different levels of course to cover.  Note the hole punch hanging under the bag.  This flag was in the middle of soggy little wetland.

This is actually a small lake, totally frozen over.  We don't see a lot of this down this way, but when temperatures stay below freezing most of a time for a while, the laws of physics are going to be obeyed.

I enjoyed being outside in the fresh air today, and working on something challenging.  As it turned out, I only needed to use my compass a couple of times, because the map was so detailed.  I don't know if the snow made this easier or more difficult.  It made walking harder, but at the same time, there were lots of tracks that sometimes gave directional clues.  In any event, it was a fun and somewhat challenging way to start the 2015 hiking season out.  My goal is to hike 200 miles this year, so I still have 197.1 to go!

Powhite Park Orienteering

On Friday, I got an email from the Meetup Group that I sometimes go hiking with, Richmond / Charlottesville Adventurers, asking if I would be interested in orienteering at Powhite Park yesterday.  I have never done formal orienteering on a course before, and it sounded like fun, so I replied "yes."  And yesterday being a really nice late fall day, I showed up at the park, compass in hand.

My compass and route finding skills are pretty rusty.  How rusty?  Well, let's say if I had the same skill level for my job, I would have been fired long ago.  Especially since the advent of handheld geographic positioning system receivers, the compass pretty much stays in my emergency gear bag buried in my pack.  I always bring it when I hike, but it never sees the light of day.  And that is bad.  Anything electronic, like a GPS, can fail at any time, and having a compass that I have forgotten to use is not really a backup, is it?  So I think I need to make a goal of relying less on the GPS and relearning those orienteering skills - and improving significantly on what I used to know.

It turns out that the founders of my meet up group, Alec and Ellen, are also very active in the Central Virginia Orienteering Club, who put on events like this every month or so.

When I got there, I paid $5 for my map (a compass is next to worthless without a map - compass and map are one of the 10 essentials you should always take hiking).  I bought the beginner course map.  Then Ellen gave several us an orientation to orienteering, explaining how to navigate and what to do when we find one of the 17 "flags."  For this course, as it turns out, we could pretty much move along an extensive and unmarked trail system to locate the flags, so the map was really essential, and the compass less so.  The map we got was amazingly detailed, even marking things such as gullies, boulders, and large uprooted trees.  Whoever prepared it did a wonderful job, and after I had found a few flags, I learned how to make use of all of the information beyond just the contour lines.

Here is a section of the map showing more detail.  The paths (which are unmarked) are the dashed lines and the 3 meter contour lines are the narrow orange lines.  The numbered purple circles mark the locations of flags we are to find.  You can see number 3, 4, 5, and 7 here.

Here is a partial legend for the map.  On the left are a few of the symbols and markings found on the map.  On the right are some of the flags we are to find with their identifying letters.  For example, if you are looking for #8 and the flag you are looking at doesn't have an "X" on it, you are in the wrong spot.  They also give a clue what type of feature each flag is near.  For example, flag #7 is in a small gully.

After our orientation, I signed in to get my time marked down - people do this competitively as a race - and started moving to find the first "flag."  The woods are still lovely this time of year, even without many leaves.

This is an example of one of the flags.  They are meant to be easy to see.  This is not geocaching, where things are hidden.  See the red hole punch hanging below the flag?  I'll explain that in a second.  One young girl, who was trail running the more advanced course, told me how much she loves orienteering and how geocaching (which actually sounds kind of fun to me) is for "weaklings."  I had to laugh at her enthusiasm, and it was great to see a girl out by herself developing her sense of confidence and strength.  I ran into her parents later back at the starting point and complemented them on raising their kids.  They had three girls out doing this course yesterday.

So, on the side of the map is a series of little numbered boxes.  Each one represents the flag we are to find for that number.  The flags are marked with letters, and have a hole punch.  Each punch has a different pattern, so it can be determined if you really found the exact flag.  We are supposed to find the flags in numeric order, which I did, except for a little mishap where I got disoriented (and I knew I was but I didn't check my compass for some reason) and ended up finding flag 13 (which was on the east side of the park) instead of flag 8 (which was on the west side).  But even so, I did not punch the box for 13 until I found it again after 12.  I also found about 3 of the advanced course flags just by chance, because the orange and white stands out in the November woods.

Some of the paths are very easy to follow, like this one.  Others, because of leaf fall, are obscured and hard to find and see.  That is why I ended up at flag 13 instead of 8.  I knew I was going in the wrong direction but couldn't find the intersecting paths.  So I backtracked all the way back to 7, my last known exact condition, and tried again until I found it.

Flag 10 was by this pretty river.  I had lunch near here.  What, lunch, during a timed event?  Well, I was doing this for fun, not competition, and my peanut butter sandwich was calling.  It was after this point I ran into another guy, I think at flag 12, and we did the rest of the course together.  It was nice to chat with someone else while walking through the woods.

Can you imagine the force needed to snap these two large trees about 15-20 feet up?  Must have been a helluva storm!

When I got back to the start, I got my time recorded (it was a total of about 2 hours and 7 minutes, something like that.)  I don't know how far I walked.  If you did the course point to point, I assume along compass bearings, it would have been 3.2 kilometers.  But I did it along trails for the most part, and made some gaffes, so I would guess it was more like 6 or 7K.  I enjoyed this and would like to do it again, and become better and finding my way through the woods with map and compass.  Something to focus on in 2014?