Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challenge

Cartography, maps, navigation, GPS and more.
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johngo
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Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challenge

Post by johngo » June 29th, 2016, 10:27 am

Think your backcountry navigation skills are up to par? Take the Wilderness Navigation Challenge and find out.
The Challenge is a series of questions and answers/explanations that cover beginner to intermediate navigation skills.

If you can answer most of the questions correctly, congrats, your navigation skills are pretty solid!

If you get stuck on a few, most answer slides have a link to an instructional video that covers that particular question in more detail.
The videos are part of an navigation instructional series produced by the Columbia River Orienteering Club.
You can see the videos at croc.org > Get Better, or search YouTube for "Columbia River Orienteering Club"

What do you think of the questions?
How did you do on the Challenge?
What additional topics do you think might be good to add?

The navigation challenge is a PDF file that is hosted on a shared Google Drive.
It is linked to from the croc.org site:

http://www.croc.org/navigation-challenge/

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johngo
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by johngo » December 2nd, 2016, 3:28 pm

Wowzer, all these people on this board who are fairly active hikers, and no one has tried this wilderness challenge yet?

People here apparently are fine with 43 pages of pictures of their dogs, but no one wants to talk / learn about something more substantial, like learning proper navigation techniques, sheesh . . .

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retired jerry
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by retired jerry » December 2nd, 2016, 4:41 pm

don't forget people like to complain about Northwest Forest Pass :)

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Guy
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by Guy » December 2nd, 2016, 6:18 pm

johngo wrote:Wowzer, all these people on this board who are fairly active hikers, and no one has tried this wilderness challenge yet?

People here apparently are fine with 43 pages of pictures of their dogs, but no one wants to talk / learn about something more substantial, like learning proper navigation techniques, sheesh . . .
Perhaps not the best approach in encouraging people to take part but you never know ;)

Now how about that damned Forest Pass Jerry...........
hiking log & photos.
Ad monte summa aut mors

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Charley
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by Charley » December 2nd, 2016, 6:26 pm

johngo wrote:Wowzer, all these people on this board who are fairly active hikers, and no one has tried this wilderness challenge yet?

People here apparently are fine with 43 pages of pictures of their dogs, but no one wants to talk / learn about something more substantial, like learning proper navigation techniques, sheesh . . .
I guess most of us actually prefer to learn navigation by navigating on trail and off trail, rather than by visiting your website.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

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Koda
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by Koda » December 2nd, 2016, 7:25 pm

johngo wrote:Wowzer, all these people on this board who are fairly active hikers, and no one has tried this wilderness challenge yet?

People here apparently are fine with 43 pages of pictures of their dogs, but no one wants to talk / learn about something more substantial, like learning proper navigation techniques, sheesh . . .
we've had plenty of navigation threads on here in fact one of the forum members created several lessons shared here.

Most users on this forum never leave the trail...
lightweight, cheap, strong... pick 2

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Waffle Stomper
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by Waffle Stomper » December 2nd, 2016, 8:15 pm

Somebody seems a bit grumpy today. For the record this is the first time I saw this post because it happened to move up in the que of "unread posts" which is how I pretty much navigate the site. Navigate, get it, a bit of a pun. Just trying to lighten things up.

Back to the question about the Navigation Challenge, feedback request. When I click on a challenge, I tend to expect something that is more interactive. While I found the information interesting, the format was a little disappointing. Still a good read.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

Lurch
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by Lurch » December 2nd, 2016, 10:25 pm

a 130 page powerpoint style pdf "navigation challenge" isn't really the most appealing for people casually browsing the internet either, especially when you have to jump through hoops to find it.

I still haven't hit the challenge part yet? Not sure that I'd agree with everything in there either

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RobFromRedland
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by RobFromRedland » December 3rd, 2016, 7:39 am

Waffle Stomper wrote:Somebody seems a bit grumpy today. For the record this is the first time I saw this post because it happened to move up in the que of "unread posts" which is how I pretty much navigate the site. Navigate, get it, a bit of a pun. Just trying to lighten things up.

Back to the question about the Navigation Challenge, feedback request. When I click on a challenge, I tend to expect something that is more interactive. While I found the information interesting, the format was a little disappointing. Still a good read.
Ditto on this. I'd not seen this before either. I checked it out, and while I found it interesting, the format wasn't the best for an online "challenge". It also seemed a bit of a hard sell for the caltopo website, which I found rather odd.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW! What a ride! - Hunter S. Thompson

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johngo
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Re: Test your navigation skills with the Navigation Challeng

Post by johngo » December 3rd, 2016, 5:03 pm

Charley wrote:
johngo wrote:Wowzer, all these people on this board who are fairly active hikers, and no one has tried this wilderness challenge yet?

People here apparently are fine with 43 pages of pictures of their dogs, but no one wants to talk / learn about something more substantial, like learning proper navigation techniques, sheesh . . .
I guess most of us actually prefer to learn navigation by navigating on trail and off trail, rather than by visiting your website.
Well, you certainly can learn some aspects of navigation by going out and stumbling around in the woods, or by making some mistakes and being lucky enough to overcome them. I'm sure all of us are probably done that to some degree or another. However, those reading those who do not yet have the basic skills would benefit from a couple of hours of learning the core techniques in a nice dry house before they head out to practice them in the wet and wild.

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