An Orienteering Day

I had wanted to check the permanent orienteering courses in Canberra for a while: today was the day! I had my sights on Weston Park.
To get there I had to walk a few kilometres. The day before I had checked the excellent ACT orienteering website and found that one of the virtual bush courses was on my way to Weston Park. I downloaded and printed the maps that I would need.

On the way to Weston Park, I chose a few points on the Stirling Ridge map and navigated to them, It was pretty straightforward as features on the ground were evident. I noticed that I did not need to take into account the magnetic deviation when using the compass.

I finally arrived at Weston Park and picked the closest point and followed the points in succession. The navigation is quite easy. However if you have never done any navigation before, it quite a lot of fun!

I came back through Stirling Ridge and chose different waypoints to navigate to, all of them through the bush. Along the way I scared a few rabbits and kangaroos. I was pleased to see that my compass navigation was spot on. My only problem was with the orienteering map: I am used to topo maps and the symbols were new to me. But it is nothing that a little practice can solve!

List of permanent and accessible orienteering courses in Canberra.

List of virtual bush and street orienteering courses in Canberra (and elsewhere) – Requires MapRun.