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.
- Sat, Apr 25, 2020
- Kitsap Navigation Committee
- Navigation
- Adults
- Easy/Moderate
- Moderate
- Mileage: 5.0 mi
- Elevation Gain: 1,000 ft
- 24 (32 capacity)
- 4 (10 capacity)
- Cancellation & Refund Policy
We will meet at the Kitsap Program Center to go over the plan for the day, answer any questions and choose carpools at 8:00 A.M.
Students who successfully complete the eLearning workshop 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:
Green Mountain: Gold Creek Trail
-
USGS Holly
USGS Wildcat Lake
WA DNR Green Mountain State Forest
see Notes - See full route/place details.
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.