Organizer:
Salome Hussein
Date/Time:
Date(s) - Saturday 02 May, 2020
6:00 am - 6:45 am
activities
hiking
orienteering
rogaining
Autumn Wanderings – Definitive, Covid-19, Game of the Year Edition
Hello again wanderers,
Hope you’ve kept your spirits up and found ways to nourish your inner explorer, whether in a book or in the sun- or both!
First logistic order of business out of the way – The major Rogaining events, Australian and World Champs, have been postponed to 2021.
All that means is we now have heaps of time to hone our skills, find our team-mates, and learn to love getting lost.
I will run 4 workshops over next few weeks, gradually increasing in investment, skill level, and time, structured as follows (note that if you aren’t keen on navigation as a sport, that doesn’t come into play until Part 3):
- Reading Topographic Maps – 40min- Sat, May 2
- Using Navigational Tools (Compass, GPS) – 60min – Sat May 9, 2020
- Intro to Competitive Navigation: Orienteering/Rogaining/Adventure Race – 60min – Sun 17 May, 2020
- Advanced Competitive Navigation: Route Planning, Packing (water and nutrition for an endurance sport), Hazard Management, Training, Team Dynamics- 75min – Sun 24 May, 2020 (Featuring a special guest, decorated Rogainer and Adventure Racer Tristan White)
- May 25 (pending participation/interest/NSW covid policies), 1-on-1 trail runs and routeplanning exercises – Ongoing and socially driven, via group channels, like Slack/WhatsApp. This is effectively where we’re going to start deciding who we can spend 24 hours with when you’re both tired, hungry, and scared.
Keep your eyes out for the other scheduled sessions (likely to hit your inboxes in next couple hours). I will do recordings and post them in our “resources” page, which has had merely spinifex for ages but now has renewed and glorious purpose. However, the final stage of education (we’ll call it Part 4.5) is match-making teams based on fitness, skill, and relative engagement. If you never actually turn up, we don’t know who you are. You’ll miss out on that bit. Plus, we’ll play games and I take pride in being absurd — you’ll miss that too.
This Saturday, we’re learning…
- Bit of history : Humanity has come a long way. We’ve used the stars, including the sun… even when it’s overcast! What on earth is this thing?!
- The Joy of Figuring Things Out : Your primary tools for navigating- before maps, compasses, and GPS- are your Eyes and Brain. Nothing can replace attention, observation, and common sense.
- You probably don’t pull out Maps to get from your flat to campus, or to a nearby takeaway you like. You have that in your memory and, whether consciously or not, are taking in data constantly (a fire hydrant, a piece of graffiti, an intersection, etc) as a check you’re going the right way.
- When you do a well-trafficked local hike, you probably don’t get “off-trail”… why? You probably have an intuition of how a trail differs from untrampled vegetation, differs from a dry creekbed, differs from an uncomfortably long journey off a cliff edge.
- We’re going to travel the globe together. Google will drop us somewhere random, and we’re going to try to find out where. This will be our opening activity for all the remaining sessions: https://www.geoguessr.com/
- Reading Between the Lines : Topographic maps are dense with ink and information, but you’re still mainly using your primary tools (Eyes+Brain). I’ll talk us through some Map Anatomy. Most people will have the least experience with reading topographic lines, which tell you about whether terrain is steep or flat. We’ll practice with some examples.
Bonus for you… how does GPS work? :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3eX6QKS9kY
Looking forward to this next adventure with you,
Salomé (‘Sam’) Hussein
