Wilderness Navigation

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BADGES

This course earns you the Basic Navigation and the Basic GPS badges.  The Basic Navigation badge, which is valid for 3 years, is a requirement for many advanced courses such as Climbing, Scrambling and Intermediate Snowshoeing. 

DIFFICULTY

This is not a beginner's course. It focuses on "off-trail" navigation requirements for Climbing, Scrambling, Intermediate Snowshoeing and other more advanced courses. As part of the Field Trip, participants will be required to hike off trail across rugged terrain with fallen logs, creeks, brush, and steep slopes. There are no prerequisites for Wilderness Navigation. This course is suitable for students with little or no navigation experience.

If you are simply looking for a more introductory course or something focused on "on-trail" navigation, consider "Staying Found On-Trail Navigation".  That course is taught in the spring and is focused on the skills needed for on-trail hiking. 

Objectives

The four class activities build upon each other, with these ultimate learning goals:

• Skilled in using a topo hiking map.  Understand contour lines, distance scales and coordinate markings.
• Skilled in using a compass to measure or plot bearings on a map as well as measure and follow bearings outside.
• Skilled in using a phone based GPS mapping app.
• Skilled in navigating through actual on-trail and off-trail terrain.

Structure

This Wilderness Navigation Course has three activities. To graduate, you must complete all three:

1. Map, Compass and GPS Self-Study
2. In-Person evening Workshop in Bellevue
3. In-Person all-day weekend Field Trip

ACTIVITy overviews

There are 3 separate activities which must be completed in order to successfully pass this course. Below are overviews of each activity.  Click on the links further down this page to read more details about each one.

1. Online Map, Compass & GPS Self-Study. This is done at your your own pace over a 4-week period. It takes about 20 hours to complete.  That is a lot of time.  Check your calendar to make sure you can dedicate 5 hours per week for this activity.  The activity covers the basics of map & compass, coordinate systems, plotting and taking bearings and coordinates, altimeter and GPS system basics, and an introduction to trip planning. It includes readings from the book and practical exercises at home with map and compass. 
   As part of this activity, you will need to install either the free or paid versions of either Gaia GPS, CalTopo or both. For the purposes of this course, the free versions are 100% adequate.  
   If you already subscribe to another GPS app such as OnX or Strava you are not required to use Gaia or CalTopo.  As long as the app you use has the off-trail mountaineering features necessary to complete the exercises, which exactly reflect the features you will need on real scramble and climbing trips.
   NOTE:  In the past, we had 2 separate online self-study courses.  We have redone the second course one to focus on just the most important GPS features and then appended it to the first course.  The result is a combined activity that is about 75% as much work as the prior two combined and will give you a total of 4 weeks to complete it.
2. Workshop is a 2.5 hour weeknight in-person session held in Bellevue. At tables, you will work small groups and do practical exercises with Map and Compass to solidify what you've learned in preparation for the Field Trip.
3. Field Trip is an all-day event at the Raging River State Forest near Preston, WA. It includes both on and off-trail exercises, with about 3.0 miles of hiking and 800' of elevation gain. You'll tie together different ways to use map, compass, and GPS.  The actual hiking part is quite easy and is at a slow pace, but the 2 hours of off-trail terrain can be challenging for those with weak joints or other physical limitations.

 ENROLLMENT

We encourage you to enroll even if there is a waitlist. There are always some cancellations the moment before the course begins. No fee is required to be on the waitlist. The waitlist is managed on a first come, first served basis. If a slot opens, you will receive an email offering you the option to register. Payment of course fees are required upon accepting the offer to enroll.

UNDER 18 without your parent attending?

Contact the course leader before signing up.  At the Workshop and Field Trip, we have to have a Youth Qualified instructor and we can't guarantee that one will be available.

cancellation

Up until the start of the course, you can cancel and get a full refund.  After that, there is no refund.  If you have very little flexibility in your schedule, you might consider taking the course through another branch.

THINGS TO DO after your register

• Immediately after registering, there is no action you need to take.  We will reach out to all the registered and waitlisted students a week before the course starts with any important updates and instructions on how to register and get going on the Self-Study activity.
• Registration for the workshop and field trip take place a couple weeks before those activities.
• NOTE: Several of the activities are just for instructors.  Please don't register for the "Instructor Training Sessions".  Those are just for our new volunteer instructors
• Obtain required equipment and materials listed in “Required Equipment” and “Course Materials” tabs

KEEP YOUR DATES

Once you sign up for an activity, please try to keep that date. If you move to a different session, do so very early so others have time to fill your spot or be pulled in from the activity waitlist. 
If you have lots of schedule flexibility, wait until about a week before the activity "close date" to let other students with tight schedules have first pick of dates.

Navigating this website

Sometimes it seems harder to navigate this website than to navigate outside through a dense forest.  Here are some tips:

• After you register for a course, you can find a link to its webpage, by hovering over or clicking your name at the top of the website and then clicking "My Courses and Programs".
• After you register for a course activity, you can find a link to it, just like hikes and other club activities.  Do this by hovering over or clicking your name at the top of the website and clicking on "My Activities".

REQUIRED MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT

Compass, Book, Maps, Gaia GPS Smartphone app.
Note: See Required Equipment and Course Materials tab for details and links.

Additional READING

It is not required, but we suggest that if you have time, you read the book Modern Wilderness Navigation, which is available free as a PDF.  We will send everybody on the course roster a link to the free book.

COMMUNICATING WITH COURSE AND ACTIVITY LEADERS

Please note that our VOLUNTEER leaders have busy lives and don't have time for questions you could have had answered by reading the notes on the website or in the email messages they send you.
In general, leaders will email you information 5-10 days before the start date.
Unless they say otherwise, please contact them by email using the address from the email they send out or from their profile page which you can link to by clicking their name to the right.
NOTE: If your question pertains just to one of the 3 specific activities, email the leader of the activity.  If it is a more general question about the course and not about 1 specific activity, email the course lead.  Please DO NOT CC the other leaders.  They get buried in email, so please minimize unnecessary communication

instructing, badge RENEWAL & equivalency

If you have a current Basic Navigation badge and would like to help instruct at this course, please register for the course.  When doing so, click the "instructor" option.

If you previously took the course through the Mountaineers, but your badge has expired and you need to refresh it, (required for climbing and scrambling courses as well as becoming a trip leader for some committees), you can instruct at our Workshop and Field Trip and we will renew your badge.  However, without already having your badge, the website won't let you sign-up as an instructor, so email the course lead to request this.  Include some background info, a link to your website profile page and the Workshop & Field Trip dates that work best for you. 

If you never have had a Mountaineers Basic Navigation badge, but you are already skilled in wilderness navigation through Search and Rescue or some other group, you might be eligible for "Equivalency".  See details here.