Beginner and Night-time Land Navigation

This is finally a chance for us to spend an entire day on the subject of land navigation. This is a skill that is required for our scout specialty. It is critical for them to be able to use maps of all kinds and navigate across every type of terrain. This weekend is where those skills are born.

There is a minimum $35 deposit to register for this course.

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OVERVIEW OF FULL COURSE

Saturday is the basic land navigation course. This is the same course that we have been teaching at least once a year for several years, usually out at the White Ranch (4,000 acres) which is about a 40 minute drive northwest from downtown San Antonio (about 15 minutes outside Helotes).

After the full day of basic land navigation (details below) and a break for dinner (no food provided), we will spend the evening practicing land navigation during night. This will be taught and practiced with compass, map as well moon & stars if they are visible. This course of instruction and field practice will be finished by midnight.

As always, this has nothing to do with using GPS, so leave those gadgets at home. :)

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CLASS DETAILS:

Class Location: the Helotes area, just outside of San Antonio, TX. Subject to change.

Class Hours: Beginning Land Navigation, March 15, 9 - 5 pm, followed by a meal break. Night Land Navigation begins at 7:30 pm.

Class Tuition: $100

Tuition discount: Bring a friend and pay in advance> Tuition is $90 each.

Packing List: Bring your own water and food for meals. Wear comfortable clothing and good shoes or boots to hike up and down hills in, sunscreen, rain gear, etc., weather-dependent, compass, time-piece, hat and notepad/pen.

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Basic Class Details:

The class is a full-day class, rain or shine, from 9am to about 5pm. Bring your own lunch. There is a huge lodge with a kitchen and bathrooms for the morning classes, so you can warm stuff up on a gas stove or oven if you need to, but I recommend you just bring a cold lunch, as we'll most likely be outside all morning for the classroom portion of the day, unless there is inclement weather.

We will be located on a 4,000+ acre, hill-country ranch which is about 10-15 minutes drive outside of Helotes on Bandera Road (10 minutes past the Helotes Creek Nature Center, for those of you who have been coming out to the classes there). Aside from learning and practicing map reading and orienteering, it will be a great chance to spend some time hiking and enjoying an extremely pristine and beautiful location.

For you folks used coming out from Austin to the THP training center, you'll find it about a 30 minute drive longer than to there - including the 10 minute or so of drive on the ranch itself.

What the workshop will cover:

Topographical Map Reading - Identifying and reading terrain features, contour lines, man-made features, understanding how to relate what you are seeing on a 2D map to your 3D surroundings.Compass Use (including azimuths), Practice Compass CoursePace Counting, Getting your own personal pace countA practice orienteering course. This will be done in teams of at least 2, for safety, and will have some basic points to find, as well as some more advanced points for people who have already done a lot of land navigation but want the practice and refresher training.

For the orienteering course, we'll be using standard orienteering markers that will be similar to how the markers will work for a survival race. However, we're going to add in a little bit of the "survival racing" element to it. We'll run it as a "Rogaine" (not the hair cream! check it out here (http://rogaine.asn.au/What-is-Rogaining-/) - thanks Gib, for introducing this concept to me), which will allow the teams to use a little bit of strategy. Rather than telling you "this is point #1, this is point #2," etc., you'll have a map with all the points on it that you need to find. The order you do it in is up to you as long as you stay together as a team. Additionally, we may have some other "survival race" aspects to help reinforce the learning. For instance, if you find "point # 18," you can answer a written question related to point #18 when you get back, that will give your team a few extra points. This will all be in the spirit of friendly competition at most, but is a way to help learn and practice the material in a way that will really help you remember what you're learning.

Dress in layers, bring a lunch, trail snacks, some way to carry water (i.e., canteen, camelback, etc), good shoes or boots to hike up and down hills in, sunscreen, rain gear, etc., weather-dependent. The orienteering course will probably run most if not all afternoon, so there will be quite a bit of hiking. Bring your own compass if you have one you want to use. We'll have some inexpensive ones available in the $5.00 - $10.00 range if you want to buy one out there, but you'll need to have a compass of your own.

Night Land Navigation Details:

This class will start at 7:30 PM and will cover moon and star locations for orientation during the night in our northern latitudes at different times of year (when they are visible).

We will then move into compass use and terrain association at night. Some of the concepts will be repeated from the basic class, but as everyone will see, there is a big difference between practicing these concepts during the day and night. Pace counting and compass azimuths become much more important.

We will do a full-class orienteering course (as one or two groups, depending on class size) to talk through many of the concepts as we go. We will then run a short orienteering course with smaller teams. These will both points that were located during the day course as well as specific night- points. The class will rendezvous at a specific point to finish the course with and then take turns using compass navigation to find our way back to the starting point.

Compass is required for this course. We will have some for sale if you do not have one.

Compass is required for this course. We will have some if you do not have one. Additionally we will supply map protractors for the course.