Orienteering is an outdoor navigation sport that challenges participants to find their way across diverse terrain using a map and compass. The goal is to visit a series of control points, in the fastest time possible. Orienteering can be enjoyed as a competitive sport or as a fun, recreational activity for all ages and skill levels, offering a great way to explore nature while testing your navigational skills.
European orienteering history
Orienteering has deep roots in Europe, where it evolved from a military exercise into a popular outdoor sport. Sweden became the pioneering country in orienteering competitions. It then spread across Europe to countries like Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Soviet Union developing strong orienteering traditions.
For us in Switzerland, it was an exercise we did in PE class regularly. At the end of middle school, we had to compete in teams against other schools in the county. As a middle schooler, I may not have appreciated the value of it, but later I participated with my husband and father-in-law in bigger events and started to enjoy it more. I hadn’t done any orienteering in years when I discovered it here in San Diego. So last year we started doing some courses as a family and really had fun all together!
Types of courses
A traditional course is a point-to-point competition in which the competitors run independently. The control points must be visited in order from start to finish and competitors are competing for the best overall time.
For an adventure trek, everyone starts and ends at the same time. Competitors attempt to gather as many points as possible by visiting controls in any order they desire within the allotted time. The focus is on route optimization. Even for the competitors who run the whole time, it is very difficult to collect all control points. There are steep penalties for returning to the start after the time limit.
Orienteering off trail
The Desert Orienteering Festival is organized by San Diego Orienteering every year in the Anza Borego Desert. We had just discovered Orienteering again when I decided to sign us up as a family last year, and we were all excited to participate. They had four different events over the weekend. We participated in two and finished happy and exhausted!
Orienteering in the desert, off trail, with just a map and compass, is quite a different experience from what we had done before! All we could see on the desert map were cardinal directions and lots of contour lines, some closer together, others further apart, indicating steeper and flatter terrain – hills and valleys and more hills and valleys. There were hardly any features like trails, water, vegetation, buildings, roads, railroads etc. That’s when you quickly find out if your map and compass skills are solid. Good luck! But don’t worry, there are lots of people out there, and not everyone is a beginner. And the organizers made sure everyone got back home safely!
Lost and found
The first event we did was an adventure trek where we started as a team, our family. Everyone started at the same time, and the goal was to find as many different control points as possible within a 2 hour time limit. The control points further away accounted for more points. We decided to optimize our route and go to some control points further away first and collect the easier ones on our way back. At some point, my boys ran ahead with dad, and I decided to head back. My goal was to “stay found”, which means “always know where I was on the map”. That worked until a ravine was in the way between me and the control point I was trying to reach. I started to retract my steps and quickly I wasn’t sure which hill I was on anymore. Everything around me looked the same. I wandered around for a while, sometimes thinking I knew where I was but I was never really sure. Self-doubt crept in, and it only got worse. Finding ways around obstacles was a challenge and got me lost repeatedly. I could see other competitors on other hills, and I knew in which direction the start and finish was, so that was reassuring. At some point I crossed paths with my boys again who were running towards the easier control points and the finish line. I made it back to the finish on time, but never found the control points I was looking for, the terrain was too steep and rocky, and the experience was quite humbling!
Wrong direction!
The second event we participated in was the next morning. For this event, there were different difficulty levels, and the control points had to be visited in order in the shortest possible time. We signed up for intermediate level, my husband and I counting on our rusty middle school experience from the past combined with brushed up map and compass skills from our recent wilderness basic course. Our start times were 2 minutes apart. Our boys started ahead of us, so that they could wait for us if they were lost. They ran off in different, wrong, directions. Then it was my start time. I called them back (we carry walkie talkies for safety), we took off together, a bit closer to but still off track. My husband saved us from total disaster and the boys took off with him after that, leaving me to test my true navigation skills again. The challenge was on! And yes, it was confusing, educational, and satisfying when I finally found the correct control points. I got lost a few times, got back on track the same amount of times, and finally made it to the finish! And again, journeying through the desert was a beautiful but humbling experience!
Get out and have fun!
We just signed up for the Desert Orienteering Festival 2025! If this sounds like a fun adventure for you and your family, I hope to see you out there, on and off trail, hopefully in the right direction!
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