Orienteering
Posted by Paul Allyn Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:27:00 GMT
Kathy and I started orienteering last year. We love it, but as a pastor and most events around Pittsburgh being on Sunday, we don’t get to go as often as we like. I must admit, on the face of it, orienteering doesn’t sound like much – “Here’s a compass. Here’s a map. Find these places in the woods. Be back as quick as you can.” But if you like being outside, it is fun. I suppose the fun for me is with just a compass and a map I can actually find very specific places I have never been to before in an environment I have never seen. I regret I no longer have the knees to go crashing about in the woods full tilt!
Here’s a blow by blow of the last event Kathy and I went to. I hope it gives you an idea of what orienteering is like. Thanks to the Western Pennsylvania Orienteering Club for permission to use portions of their map! If you have never seen an orienteering map before – in brief, they are highly detailed, right down to the tree stumps. Orange is open area(go fast), green is dense vegetation (go slow), and white is wooded but mostly open. The route we actually followed is in yellow (not necessarily a recommended routing).
From the start (the red triangle in the upper left side of the map – not the circle with the 1) we headed S to Control Point (CP) 2 – aiming for the eastern end of the second copse, it was flat and open, no problems.
From CP 2 we headed downhill and W. I tried to set a quick walking pace, but Kathy’s back was troubling her – having stumbled on the stairs in the house the other day (fashionable shoes will do that) – so we slowed down. Rounding the wooded area we were first trying to pick up a trail heading S and then immediately find one going E. 
We missed the E trail. On realizing this we decided to continue S. The terrain E was lousy without a good backstop if we overshot CP 4. This error cost at least 10 minutes. We pressed S until we picked up the fence line then turned E until we found the stream, then N to find CP 4. There was a lot of scrambling over dead fall and walking the creek bed.
One of the things we figured out was, if we were on a trail, Kathy could move along pretty well, so we limited our bushwhacking to fairly easy terrain. CP 2 to 4 involved a long down hill section that was off camber, which really bothered Kathy’s back.
From CP 4 it was steep uphill to pick up a trail, followed it briefly S, then NE, SE, NE along trails until we got to the gas line clear cut, which took us right to CP 7. Easy, except for the first uphill bit from CP 4.
From CP 7 we picked up the road, went around the bend and looked for a good way down towards CP 10. This should have been a no brainer, but we wandered up and down the trail by CP 10 looking for it before deciding there was a course error and abandoned the search. As it turned out, CP 10 had been stolen – we identified the “unique feature” where CP 10 should have been (a pile of manure) and were awarded the CP. Even so, we fooled around for more than 10 minutes looking for something that wasn’t there. Had CP 10 been there, we would have come out of the woods SE of the road almost on top of it. Sigh. When you go orienteering, bear in mind there may be course errors. Most events we have been on have had 1 course error. Be sure of your location and then press on.
If we had picked up CP 4 more easily and if CP 10 had been there, we probably would have gone for CPs 11 & 12 before going for CP 9. But we lost a significant amount of time with CPs 4&10 so…
From the phantom CP 10 it was back up the hill to the road, NE along the road a short ways to the opening. At the E end of the opening area there was a CP, but it wasn’t for our course! The course designer tried to trick us! Ha! We didn’t fall for it and went NW till we picked up the trail which took us right to CP 9.
From CP 9 to CP 6 we went straight through the woods. There was a lot of open space between the trees, so we took a compass bearing and stuck to it. When we saw CP 6, it was about 10 feet to the right. Pretty good for staying on a straight bearing in the woods! There are better ways than just looking at your compass.
We took another bearing to take us straight to CP 8, but when we got on the road, we followed it for about 10 yards before turning in. CP 8 was hard to see because it was placed very low, we were no more than 5 feet from it when we saw it, right on the bearing we took from the road.
We decided to stick to the trails on our way from CP 8 to CP 5, figuring we could make better time following the trails than bushwhacking straight for CP 5. This turned out to be a good call as Kathy was able to set a good pace. When we picked up the more or less N trail we headed straight for the park boundary (a good backstop!) and found the W trail immediately. Following the trail, finding CP 5 was easy.
From CP 5 we headed a little W of S, picked up the trail that ran NE-SW and followed it out of the woods. When we exited the woods, we could see the access road N of CP 3 and we headed straight for it. There was no opening so we followed S along the road till there was an opening in the brush easy enough to get through. We turned in and there was CP 3. Continuing W we hopped a creek and thought about going for CP 1. We thought we only had 4 minutes left and the watch we had hasn’t a runners model (having left mine at home – dumb, dumb, dumb) thus we weren’t sure about the exact time. We went straight for the finish, coming in with 120 seconds to spare.
Not a bad 90 minutes of orienteering for a couple of middle aged folks!
God give you joy
Paul+
