Orienteering in Jamaica

Fresh maps printed for everyone. Teams of two persons set out at 10-minute intervals to test their practical skills in orienteering in Cockpit Country. R. Stewart and S. Koenig depart Windsor House at 08:00, to set themselves in two strategic control points, R and W (see Annex 4 map). S. Koenig remained hidden near R to assess participants in how they were working with their orienteering aids (compass and map) and also to ensure that none missed the major change in direction that would take them off the trail system. The original plan was that after all teams passed point R, S. Koenig would move to point X to continue monitoring. However, three of the five teams completed the course before two teams reached point R, so evaluation at point X was limited to the final two teams. These final two teams hit point X within four meters of the control station - impressive given that the route from point W to X was a 200 m descent of a 500 hillside, along a single bearing.

Teams completed the course in 2.5 - 4.5 hours. Variation was based on the amount of time each team spent recording environmental conditions at the control points and their attention to following instructions as precisely as possible versus using the instructions to aim for the distant features (i.e., some teams paced the road and Guthrie trail as precisely as possible, others recognized that the detailed instructions for every curve of the trail was unnecessary as long as they kept track of their distances). All teams did an excellent job of sighting a distant object along their bearing line and then having one man remain stationary while guiding his partner to the next control point. Valuable lesson for future course: participants should were brightly- coloured clothes, not jungle camouflage, to aid in guiding them to the next point! R. Stewart and I returned to Windsor House with the final team at 14:30.

Running a bit behind for the afternoon lecture - the written evaluation of their abilities to create an orienteering route, write up the instructions, and have their partner draw the map. We set them to their task about 15:30, with instructions to create a route with 10 - 15 control points and to remember to follow the principal of the "path of least resistance." Nine of the 10 participants promptly set about aligning their maps to north, identifying a possible route, confirming the route as acceptable with the instructors and then determining bearings and distances. The remaining participant needed considerable guidance on how to begin and eventually we recommended that is was acceptable to create a route using the main roads so that he could at least demonstrate the basic skills of drawing a route on a map. His route was simple, but he had all bearings and distances correctly noted. The sun set before we were able to complete the exercise of partners exchanging instructions and drawing a second map - lighting at Windsor House proved inadequate to properly see topographic maps at night. R. Stewart and I then reviewed the participants' instructions and selected a course for them to ground-truth the following morning. The participants asked if we would check the course before they set out but we informed them that our job was finished - they would be fully responsible for checking the route and setting it as a "proper" orienteering course, just as R. Stewart and I had set routes for them.

So that participants could leave earlier than scheduled on Friday, we held the Friday afternoon lecture Thursday night. R. Stewart lectured on map projections, World Geodetic System (WG584) and the Jamaican Grid System (JAD69). S. Koenig gave a demonstration of Arc View using 1:50 000 and 1:12 500 maps with overlays of Forest Reserves and cave localities.