Alert:
The practice orienteering course is intended to help teach how to take a bearing and measure a distance overland using a pace count.
All that is needed to complete the practice orienteering course is a hand-held compass or a smartphone with a compass app installed on it.
The practice orienteering course is located near the skate park and directly across the road from Field 7.
The practice orienteering course consists of a known 100-foot pace count and eight numbered control points with markers that provide the distance and direction to each point.
One way to measure how far you walk on the orienteering course is to use your pace count. A pace is equal to one natural step, about 30 inches long for an average-height adult. To accurately use the pace count method on the Lake Fairfax Park Orienteering Course, you must know how many paces it takes you to walk 100 feet. To determine this, you must walk an accurately measured course and count the number of paces you take. A pace course can be as short as 100 feet, but it can also be a distance like 100 meters.
Participants should start by determining their pace count. The practice orienteering course has two posts spaced 100 feet apart. Participants should walk between the two posts while counting the number of paces it takes to cover the 100 feet. People new to orienteering would benefit from doing this several times to get an average number of paces to walk 100 feet. Additionally, traditional orienteering courses are timed events, so participants may want to also determine their jogging or running pace counts.
Once you have determined how many steps it takes you to walk 100 feet, you can determine how many steps it will take you to cover any distance. For example, if your pace count for 100 feet was 40 steps, your pace count for 25 feet would be 10 steps. Similarly, for 50 feet your pace count would be 20 steps, 30 steps for 75, and 60 steps for 150 feet.
The following four steps will help you use your compass to complete this course.
