Finding the finish line as a 1st-time orienteerer

It just didn’t make any sense.

There I stood, rooted in the grass at Forest Park, alternating stares between the highly-detailed map in my hands and the tall broad-leaved tree rising in front of me. The map seemed to indicate the checkpoint I was seeking was right under my nose, yet the tree clearly did not contain the orange-and-white flagged box I was looking for, no matter how intently I gazed at it.

Meanwhile my team partner, my wife Chelsea, had trekked off around the bend to conduct a search of her own, taking our finger punch with her and leaving our team scattered like a 4-year-old’s toys on the living room floor.

We only had the one map, but clearly we were not on the same page.

Such was our first crack at orienteering, the land-navigation sport in which individuals and teams use a map, a compass and their legs to locate checkpoints in the fastest possible time. This was the first checkpoint on our course, and if this was an indication of how the day was going to go it was possible we’d never make it out of Forest Park alive.

This adventure was borne out of a story I wrote in December about the Washington Interscholastic Orienteering League, a competitive series for Puget Sound area elementary, middle and high school students. I’d never heard of orienteering before doing the story, but despite the cold and rainy conditions at Kenmore’s Saint Edward State Park that day I was sufficiently intrigued that I decided to give it a try for myself. Fortunately, the Cascade Orienteering Club, which runs the WIOL, had a Wednesday Evening Series event scheduled for July 18 at Forest Park, so I circled the date in my calendar and invited Chelsea to join me, which she eagerly accepted.

An introduction to competitive orienteering from Everett Herald on Vimeo.

When we reached the park we located PollyAnn Najarian, the mother of Kamiak High School orienteer and December story subject Audrey Javadoff, who generously offered a compass for Chelsea and I to use. She also informed us that REI was going to have a film crew at the event to shoot a video about orienteering. What? You mean I wasn’t even the biggest media presence there? I tried to console myself by saying that they probably got the idea for the video by reading my initial story.

We checked in for our 1.7-kilometer, 12-checkpoint course — the second hardest of the four courses available that day — and before starting I decided we needed assistance, so I went around asking experienced orienteers their No. 1 piece of advice for people trying the sport for the first time.

“You’re not lost, you’re just confused. You can figure it out,” veteran orienteer Harvey Friedman told us.

Easy for him to say.

Experienced orienteers run the course in an effort to finish with the fastest possible time, but we decided to walk, figuring the process of locating the checkpoints was challenge enough for newbies. I had second thoughts about this when soon after entering the course an approximately 10-year-old kid wearing a red Cascade Orienteering Club t-shirt zoomed past. He was the first of many who passed us.

The course took us across expansive fields, past various buildings, and along dirt trails through wooded areas of the park. Some of the trails were steep and slippery, requiring cautious pitter-patter steps so that we didn’t fall. “How does anyone run on these trails?” Chelsea asked.

About midway through the course, once Chelsea and I developed a rhythm, the number of runners passing us dissipated. I commented to her that it may be an indication we were improving in our navigation skills. Then it dawned on me that the reason why no one was passing may be because there was no one left behind us on the course.

Oops.

Because of the elevation gains, orienteering proved to be a workout even without running. We reached one leg where we had to choose whether to take the short route, which was straight uphill, or choose to go the long way around that was less steep. Less steep, please!

Finally we reached our last leg. We sauntered back to the starting gate, ready to punch ourselves out of the course, only to be told we needed to check our map again, at which point we realized the starting point wasn’t actually the finishing one.

Oops.

But we finished, and we did so while finding all the checkpoints in the correct order. We had no idea what our time of 49 minutes, 13 seconds meant, but we considered it a victory just reaching the finish line.

“Smile and have fun,” had been club member Mike Schuh’s advice. In the end that’s what we did. We both enjoyed our first experience orienteering, and we’d be happy to try it again, maybe even running next time.

As we were walking back to our car we spied the REI crew’s van, so we walked over to chat about their project — though what I was really wanted to know was if my story had been the inspiration for the shoot. It turned out that one of the film crew was an orienteer and served as inspiration.

Darnit!

My intention had been to go online the next morning and see how we stacked up to the competition once the results were available, but my competitive nature failed me and I didn’t remember to check until several days later after my subconscious woke me from slumber in startled realization. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand, navigated to the Cascade Orienteering Club’s website and discovered we actually finished fifth among the 15 competitors on Course 2. We were way behind the winner, club member Brian Gruber who scorched the course in 20:51. But we were well ahead of the slowest time of 1:57.42.

“Good job us!” Chelsea exclaimed.

But then I made the mistake of checking the times on Course 4, which was the 2.9-kilometer Course 3 added to Course 2 for a 4.6-kilometer total. Three people completed the two courses — which contained 32 checkpoints! — faster than it took us to do just the short one.

Oops.

Follow Nick Patterson on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.