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Navigation Field Trip

Field trip: Wilderness Navigation

Navigation Field Trip - Green Mountain: Gold Creek Trail

The field trip is a one-day outing where you will practice and demonstrate your competency in map, compass and navigation principles, complete a "leap frog" navigation exercise in pairs, and a solo navigation exercise.

Contacts

Jerry Logan
Jerry Logan
Primary Leader
Qualified Youth Leader
  • Easy/Moderate
  • For Beginners (Getting Started Series)
  • Mileage: 5.0 mi
  • Elevation Gain: 1,000 ft

We will meet at 0800 at the Gold Creek Trailhead west of Bremerton.  A Washington state Discovery Pass is required to park at the trailhead.  

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 traveling 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 thru 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.  Bring your copy of the USGS Wildcat Lake topo map to use in the field exercises.   Even when it is not raining or snowing, the brush you'll be traveling through is usually wet, so do not wear cotton clothing and be sure to bring your rain gear.   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