The Pacific Northwest is full of weekend hikers trekking their favorite routes past waterfalls, wildflower meadows, and mountain views. It’s full of skiers and snowboarders, kayakers, and runners. If you’re one of these many outdoor enthusiasts, consider adding a little-known sport to your list this year. Orienteering is a largely undiscovered sport that’s one of the best ways to explore the outdoors.
What is Orienteering?
I used to say orienteering is like a cross-country race, except the route isn’t marked ahead of you with chalk or streamers or signs. That’s kind of true, but a cross-country race conjures images of intense athletes, toes to the starting line, waiting for the sound of the gun. Orienteering can certainly be intense, but it’s a sport for all ages that’s as much for hikers as it is for runners.
Orienteering typically takes place in wild terrain—forests, sagebrush scrublands, deserts, open grasslands. But it can also take place in pastures, college campuses, or the serpentine alleyways and cobbled streets of old town centers. Wherever you’re orienteering, you’ll be given a map that shows where you’re starting and a dozen or so checkpoints you’ll need to find before reaching the finish line. You’ll also have a compass. How you get between the checkpoints is entirely up to you.
The map shows all kinds of obstacles: swamps and lakes, impenetrable vegetation, barbed wire that you can roll under or climb over, fences that are too tall to cross, out-of-bounds areas, streams that are crossable and rivers that are not, cliffs and boulders, and contour lines that illustrate the shape of the land. Is it faster to go over the giant hill or around it? It might depend on whether you’re running or walking. The best route for you may not be the best route for the next orienteer.
Since navigation is central to orienteering, the star of the cross-country team may lose an orienteering race to a middle-aged hiker; it truly is a sport for all ages. The faster you run, the harder it is to read a complicated map at the same time. Many have taken off running only to realize they ran in the wrong direction. The faster you can move while also navigating well, the better you’ll do at orienteering. If you can run while accurately reading the map, that’s of course best.
A Sample Orienteering Weekend
To bring orienteering to life, here’s a look into one of our latest navigation race adventures, this time in the Cascade mountains of Washington State. This one was a twist on the standard orienteering style—instead of finding your way to all the checkpoints in order, the challenge was to find as many checkpoints as possible within the time limit. My mom and I chose the 8-hour navigation race option, and Bryan and my dad chose the 2-hour navigation race. Check out our video below, and then read on for the highlights!
Video highlights from an orienteering weekend
Spring rains and snow melt had turned the mountain meadows into swampland and swelled the streams into deeper and wider channels. Remnants of snow remained in scattered patchworks. The first wildflowers were just pushing up through the soggy soil.
“How are we going to get over that?” asked my mom, as we reached the edge of a stream. There was no way we’d be able to jump over this one.
We set about searching up and down the stream for a log crossing or a rock hop, but there were none to be found.
“There’s a narrower point here,” I called.
A tangle of weeds and sticks jutted out into the stream here. I stepped gingerly onto them. They sagged a little and water pooled around my treads, but didn’t top my shoes. I took another step.
At last I was at the edge of the brush peninsula. The opposite bank still looked impossibly far away.
I braced and made the leap. My back shoe caught the edge of the bank and partly submerged in water, but I was across!
Meanwhile, Bryan and my dad were enjoying spotting wildlife on their course—toads, a newt, a chipmunk, and a scattering of wildlife bones from something larger—possibly a deer?
At the finish line, the organizers greeted the variously disheveled but happy competitors with cups of steaming soup. Nothing seems better than a hot Cup O’Noodle after 8 hours wandering about a soggy forest in the rain!
Orienteering Clubs in the Pacific Northwest
If you’d like to try orienteering or navigation races, I’d recommend checking out the following clubs in Washington and Oregon. There are usually courses available that are geared toward beginners, so no worries about getting started.
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Cascade Orienteering Club (Washington; generally based around Seattle and surrounding areas)
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Northwest Nav Races (Washington; generally based around Seattle and surrounding areas)
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Columbia River Orienteering Club (Oregon; generally based around Portland and surrounding areas)
Other Adventures in the Pacific Northwest
Thanks for joining us for orienteering, the sport for all ages! For more adventure ideas in the Pacific Northwest, check out our PNW Trip Planner. You can find adventures near you and filter by season and difficulty level. There are weird and wonderful things to explore any time of year. The trip planner links to blog posts to help you plan your next adventure.
Happy exploring!
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