Compass Basics 🧭 & Land Navigation Field Exercise🚩

If you are curious about using a compass, here is a fun "class" and exercise we can do to learn basics. My compass skills are very elementary but I have enjoyed sharing this with our hiking groups, and homeschool kids in years past.

• You will just need a baseplate compass, nothing fancier than in the photo. A small note pad and pen to do some simple math might be helpful, unless you can do these in your head! I will have the maps.
• We will be in a trailess unmaintained natural area of the park. Pants, closed toe shoes, and long sleeves required. Gloves are recommended.
• This will be a bushwack requiring you to go through tall and sometimes dense prickly vegetation in order to stay on course and find the next control marker. You must carry two liters of water and whatever personal supplies you need.
• The course was built some years back as an Eagle Scout Project. There are several courses of varying lengths. We will do the one mile, which is the shortest.
• We'll have a "classroom" session and you will head out in small teams 3-4 with staggered starts
• The exercise should take 2.5 hours or so, unless you get lost in the woods.
• There is no fee for this event.
• YOUR RSVP TO ATTEND A "SUNCOAST OUTDOORS " SPONSORED EVENT IS YOUR EXPRESS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF UNDERSTANDING AND UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE OF FULL PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND LIABILITY FOR ALL ASSOCIATED RISKS.

If you bring a guest who is not currently a member of Suncoast Outdoors, you have assumed such liability for that guest. Your guest is free to join our group and register individually, thereby releasing you from any such liability.
Possible risks from participation include, but are not limited to:
Injury from a trip & fall, venomous snakes, stinging insects, venomous spiders, wildlife encounters, heat stroke, hypothermia, noxious vegetation, weather related injury, insect or airborne transmissible virus and disease, smoke inhalation, wildfire, falling trees, drowning