Stars Orienteering Club

Introduction to Orienteering

Please note that this article is largely borrowed, with permission, from the Greater Vancouver Orienteering Club.

About the Sport

Orienteering involves making your way across country, using a map and compass to navigate as you stroll, scramble or run. It is a sport which combines both physical fitness and quick thinking. Events are timed, and usually you must navigate around a loop course, reaching specific "control" locations along the way. At each of these "controls" you must check in, using either a Nick at NOAC punch or an electronic timing device, in order to prove at the finish that you navigated successfully to all control locations in the correct order. Events are held on a variety of terrain types, from city parks to extensive wilderness areas

You can choose at what level to pursue this intellectually and physically challenging sport. You can easily modify your approach as your skills and fitness develop. Orienteering can be a competition among elite athletes, a hiker's or jogger's quest for a "personal best", or a map and compass exercise for families, youth groups and schools

Participants are from a broad range of ages, making orienteering an ideal life sport or family activity. Courses of different lengths and levels of technical difficulty are available at most events, so participants of various levels of fitness or experience can all be challenged.

Navigation with map and compass is a skill best learned by doing, so come and try a local event with the Stars Orienteering Club. Besides the exercise and fun of the event itself, you'll gain new skills that will serve you well in adventure racing or for wilderness travel. You'll soon be ready to try a larger orienteering event in the southern Ontario

The Orienteering Map

Orienteering maps are very detailed; they are usually at a 1:10,000 or 1:15,000 scale, and include topographical features, such as contour lines, depressions, and knolls. Streams, lakes, trails, boulders, cliffs, buildings, and similar features, recognizable while traveling on foot, are all shown.

The Orienteering Course

The start of the course is marked with a triangle on the map. Control locations are shown by a circle, and the finish is shown by two concentric circles. The start, the controls, and the finish are all joined by lines indicating the order in which the controls must be visited. A course normally has between 6 and 15 controls, depending on its length and the type of event.

The Orienteering Event

There is usually a registration area at each event where you register for a course. At larger events, pre-registration is required. Compared to other sports, orienteering is a very low-cost activity. Entry fees for events are usually not more than $12 for smaller events and $25 for larger events.

The following is a description of each type of event:

Type Courses Difficulty Participants Location
A-meet 6-8 From easy to difficult, usually 8 courses. 100+ In forested terrain
B-meet 3-4 From easy to difficult, usually 3 courses. 50-100
C-meet 2 One novice, one difficult 25-60
Thomass 1 One course, with shortcut options based on age and gender 40-80 See link at Orienteering Ontario

There are also different formats for orienteering events:

.
Format Description
Regular An event where the controls must be visited in a certain order.
Score-O Here you are given a map with a certain number of controls and a time limit. The object is to reach as many controls within the time limit as possible - in any order
Rogaine A long score-O event with time limits of 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours.
Short distance A regular point to point course, but winning times of around 30 minutes.
Park-O Event in a city park.
Night-O Orienteering when it is dark. A headlamp is used.

Getting Started

Pick an event and see if there is further event information online. If not, contact the contact person for that event to get more information. For events in city parks, either running shoes or trail running shoes are ideal. Compasses can be rented at our events.