Orienteering is a fun activity that lets you use a map and compass — or a compass and instructions — and your pace to follow a course.
Once you learn the distance of your particular pace, you can start to learn how many steps you take per foot — and you can then, by counting your steps, walk a certain distance. Why learn to do this? For orienteering as an activity — it’s fun to challenge yourself to work through a course and see how well you did. But what if you’re trying to give someone directions? You will get better at estimating distances through orienteering.
Additionally, there are orienteering activities required for advancement — to become a First Class scout, you need to follow a one-mile orienteering course.
The Scout Handbook has instructions on how to measure your pace, as well as how to estimate the height or width of something, to get you started on orienteering. But then — how do you find a course? I hear there’s a great course at Camp K — and when I get it, I’ll let you know.
But in order to make it a little easier — we have a few courses for our troop. Mr. Reising, our Chartered Organization Representative, and his son Zach set up a short course at Bethel that hits all the Eagle projects on the property. We have a beginner course and an intermediate course set up, so you can try them both.
I expanded that to make a full one-mile course, but it’s hard in a square piece of property and gets pretty complicated. So I made one through Downtown Noblesville — this includes more than a mile walking, and lets you see the sights of town.
Thanks to a ton of construction, a few things have changed, so I went though and updated the course — and now we have a brand-new orienteering course in town. Be sure to stop by local businesses while you’re on the Square — I love to buy locally made gifts at NobleMade, a coffee at Noble Coffee and Tea, or ice cream at Alexander’s. And who doesn’t love to browse the booths at Antiques on the Square or Logan Village Mall?
How do you find these amazing Orienteering courses? Check out our Resources page, and scroll down to download them.
Have you tried one of these courses? Are you ready to try? Let us know how they went!
