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Navigation Field Trip

Field trip: Wilderness Navigation

Navigation Field Trip - Green Mountain: Gold Creek Trail

This is a one-day Navigation course field trip which will meet at the Gold Creek Parking Lot (Washington State Park Pass required for parking) and will proceed to navigation field exercises on Gold Mountain.

Contacts

Placeholder Contact Profile
Greg Thies
Primary Leader
  • Easy/Moderate
  • Challenging
  • Mileage: 5.0 mi
  • Elevation Gain: 1,000 ft

Meet at the Gold Creek Trail parking lot at the southern portion of the parking lot near the outhouse no later than 8:00 AM on Saturday, February 21, 2015.  We will proceed directly uphill to Gold Mountain to begin our navigation field trip exercises.  We will return to the parking lot by approximately mid-afternoon, though the time may vary depending on how many students participate in the field trip.

Students who successfully complete the classroom session will participate in the field trip, which involves a number of activities that will test your knowledge of map, compass, and navigation principles in real world conditions. Successful completion of the field session is required in order to earn your Navigation certification. For the field session, you will be travelling steep, rough terrain on Gold Mountain, west of Bremerton.  Some areas feature logging slash covered by brush and blackberry vines and other areas have dense forest. Students will perform some navigation activities with partners.  The final exercise will involve solo travel following a bearing down a densely forested and vegetated hillside until you intersect a trail,  which will allow the accuracy of your navigation to be measured from the correct intersection point.

Badges

students will earn:

instructors will earn:

Route/Place

Green Mountain: Gold Creek Trail

Roster
Required Equipment

Required Equipment

Mountaineers-acceptable compass is mandatory.  (See Required Equipment in Navigation Seminar for specifics).  Each student must have his or her own Mountaineers-acceptable compass for the field trip as they cannot be shared during the field trip. 

You'll also need appropriate clothing and footwear, including hiking boots, sturdy rain gear, extra warm garments, hat and gloves.  Bring your Ten Essentials, lunch and extra food, plenty of water, and ziplock bags of at least 1 gallon size to protect maps and other handouts.  Grayscale copies of the appropriate USGS topo map will be provided for students to use in the field exercises.   Even when it is not raining or snowing, the brush you'll be travelling through is usually wet, so do not wear cotton clothing and be sure to bring your raingear.   The field session usually ends mid-afternoon, but the ending time can vary and everyone will stay until the last student returns to the parking lot

Trip Reports