Photo by Kamp Fender.
Vulcan Orienteering Club (VOC) leaders, from left, Joey Ciza, Anne Mathews and James Pilman stand at the club’s registration area at Oak Mountain State Park. The group is excited to help grow the sport of orienteering and accommodate participants of all ages.
For most, navigating with a map is a thing of the past, but for the Vulcan Orienteering Club (VOC), that’s all they have to aid them in their adventures through the forest — that, and a single compass.
“It’s a lot more than just reading maps, though,” longtime member, organizer and orienteer James Pilman said.
The VOC, which is the only Orienteering USA group in the state, offers participants of all ages the opportunity to learn the sport from September through May of each year, with monthly meets and training days designated at Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham and occasionally at Wind Creek State Park in Alexander City.
Orienteering, which the local VOC dubs “the thinking sport,” combines racing with navigation, where individual participants or small teams use a specially-created, highly-detailed map and a compass to maneuver across diverse terrain off the beaten path of the 9,940-acre state park.
Although it’s a competitive and timed international sport — one that will be featured in the 2021 World Games in Birmingham — VOC orienteering is also an informal, family-friendly opportunity for people to learn about how to use maps and navigate nature spots through a “walk in the woods,” Pilman said.
Each first-time participant gets a free beginner training. Orienteering, he added, gives children, families and individuals the chance to become confident and familiar with exploring the outdoors in a safe, supervised setting.
“It’s a three-hour time limit no matter what. After three hours is over, we start looking for you. We’ve never left anyone out in the woods — that’s our motto,” Pilman joked. “… Out of 20 years, we've only had one or two people, nothing seriously, but one or two times where people concerned us, and we had to go look. It’s a pretty good record.”
Photo by Kamp Fender.
Vulcan Orienteering Club Vice President James Pilman, right, gives a crash course to a new orienteer participant before he heads out on his own.
Pilman said one of the best orienteers he’s seen is also one of the youngest. He said she came along to the meets with her older brothers for years and eventually got really good at it on her own.
“She’s one of the best orienteers in the Southeast in her age group right now. It’s kind of cool. [Orienteering] is for beginners, young people, families can go,” he said, and they compete in different age groups and difficulty levels.
In orienteering, participants take on various navigation routes that lead to a sequence of preplaced buttons, known as control points, along marked areas in the woods that participants tap as they go along the course.
These points operate on electronic punching, where competing participants use e-sticks to mark their progress along the course.
Participants are required to put their cellphones in a bag and not use them during the course, as well. Most of the time, Pilman said, the course is a giant loop so participants end back up where they started.
While competitions are all about speed, Pilman said, a lot of families use the VOC as a way to get outside and be active in a unique way, not to compete.
Pilman, a former search-and-rescue navigator and now the secretary/treasurer of VOC, helps first-time goers at meets, teaching them how to get started, what to physically do at the course and about safety. At the beginning, participants get topography — or topo — maps.
“You can’t teach them a lot about topo maps, but I tell them what else to do. ‘You go to this control. It has a number on it. Punch it with your fingers or a stick,’ and then I teach them how to use a compass to orient a map,” Pilman said. “It’s a sport. It’s fun.”
Pilman said there’s not really a place in Birmingham to learn map reading, except for the VOC. Generally, participants start and end at the same place, and each time the location and route are changed so longtime participants don’t have an advantage over the newer participants.
Topo maps, which show carefully plotted and accurate elevation changes on a fast surface, use the metric system symbols that are mostly internationally recognized, so someone from anywhere in the world is able to navigate with a map.
Most topo maps don’t show details, Pilman said, but the Oak Mountain State Park maps are made by the VOC organizers to include more information. Every year, members go out and do what they call “field checking” to update the maps for people to navigate, including details as small as a boulder that is less than a foot wide.
“Basically [the maps] show elevation changes on a flat surface of a map. Every line goes up its particular amount on the map of how many feet or meters to the next line and then you can tell where a hilltop is, a valley is, a stream is, a lake is, so it’s just a repetition of what’s actually on the ground,”he said.
Photo by Kamp Fender.
Club members compare compasses.
Prior investigation of the competition area is forbidden, and participants are not allowed to use anything but the compass and map to navigate. All participants are also encouraged to wear a whistle in case assistance is needed. Pilman said about 30 to 50 people come to each meet.
Orienteering is for all ages, Pilman said. Parents sometimes come with their babies strapped onto them or with young children. Those families, he added, won’t be doing it the “hardcore” way, running and racing the whole time. Many teenagers and young adult teams race that way and even go on to compete at other spots around the nation.
“Some people get a map and compass, and if they have a mountain in front of them, they’ll still climb up and then down it,” Pilman said, “but we walk around the mountain. If there’s a stream and it’s impassable, then you can read a map and find a bridge and navigate to the bridge to get over it.”
A lot of people from outdoor clubs, ROTC groups, trail runners and adventure runners come to the meet, Pilman said, so they can learn to navigate, make new route choices and ultimately shorten their time in their other competitive outdoor activities.
The distance, amount of controls and general amount of time it takes to win depends on the course people choose. There is the option of seven levels of courses, ranging from beginner to advanced. Usually, Pilman said, people advance over the courses as they improve.
Pilman encourages bigger groups to split up into groups of three or four people so everyone is able to use the map and actually experience how to do it. Even though they offer water throughout the course, Pilman suggests people bring water, food and bug spray.
The cost to run a course is $7, and the meets are generally the third Saturday of the month. Pilman said they skip the month of December because it’s too cold and the summer months because it’s too hot.
When the World Games come to Birmingham, Pilman said, the VOC will be volunteering and inviting people to join them as international professional orienteers take on a new course at OMSP.
There will also be orienteering competitions in two cityscape courses in downtown Birmingham.
For more information, go to vulcanorienteering.org.
