Orienteering with Map & Compass by the Hooch + Free Cookout

IN A NUTSHELL: Interested in honing your map reading, wilderness navigation and outdoor safety skills in a fun and exciting way?  For the 8th year in a row our friends in the Georgia Orienteering Club have invited a group of us from the Atlanta Outdoor Club to celebrate National Orienteering Day with them.  Join us for this big free "O Meet" that's fun for adventurers of all levels of experience and especially appropriate for novices who may never have used a magnetic compass or a "topo map" before.  This very special annual event even includes a free Hotdog Cookout with included munchies & cold refreshments!
  After introducing one another we AOCers will begin with a private 45-minute Tutorial Refresher in basic map & compass skills.  Then we'll get plenty of practice finding our way together to a series of "control flags" that have been specially hung for this O Meet in the beautiful wooded terrain by the Chattahoochee River.

WHERE & WHEN?  Our AOC "subgroup" will assemble at 9:30 AM in the breezy upstairs covered deck of the "CRNRA Environmental Education Center."  It's in the "Jones Bridge" section of the Chattahoochee River Nat'l Recreation Area - see detailed directions below.  (For a zoomable online map and satellite view of the "Ed Center" and its vicinity click on the above rectangular blue & green "Event Location" icon.)

AOC MAP & COMPASS REFRESHER TUTORIAL:  At our special private upstairs session we AOCers will spend a few minutes introducing one another, then discuss the exciting sport of Orienteering and conduct an "intro/refresher" in how to use a topographic map with a simple magnetic compass to keep ourselves safely "oriented" when exploring wilderness terrain.  You're welcome to use or share one of our "loaner compasses," but if you have a compass please bring it.  For Orienteering the clear plastic rectangular "protractor style" of compass is preferred, available at many Walmarts or at REI for about $15.00 or less.  More expensive compasses are not really necessary for recreational orienteering and wilderness hiking.

AOC "WAYFARING TEAMS" and O COURSE REGISTRATION:  Toward the end of our private Tutorial Session we'll divide into 2 or 3 separate AOC teams to do some actual orienteering at a relaxed "wayfaring" pace (hiking together rather than running) on one or more of the "Yellow" (easy-to-moderate-difficulty) "O Courses."  Each AOC Team Leader will fill out a GAOC registration form, and each of us individually will need to sign a GAOC liability waiver.  The Orienteering Club expects to have enough of their free detailed color topographic maps of the Jones Bridge unit on hand so that at most you'll have to share a map with just one other AOCer.

"O HIKE" PLAN:  After our "O Team" registration, each of our AOC teams will set out (at our assigned staggered "start times") to find a series of orange & white "control flags" in the terrain near the river.  The "Yellow" O Course(s) that we'll hike and practice on this year will have the flags typically no more than 50 yards from the nearest trail, riverbank, etc.  We’ll apply our map and compass skills and jointly agree upon appropriate "attack strategies" to locate the flags based on their marked locations on our maps. As mentioned above we’ll take a relaxed "wayfaring" pace, although many other O Meet guests will be going for max speed between controls.

FREE O DAY COOKOUT!  Stick around awhile after our "O" adventure for a Hotdog Cookout by the Ed Center, with food & refreshments provided by the GAOC (~12:00 noon - 1:30 pm) as part of their big O Day celebration. If it's convenient for you to bring a small item to contribute, please do so (e.g. a covered dish, fruit, dessert item, dessert item, etc) although our O Club friends expect to have plenty of Hot Dogs, Chips, Cold Drinks, etc. on hand for everyone to enjoy!

WHAT IS ORIENTEERING?  It’s a sport that blends the fun of a scavenger hunt with the skill and adventure of navigating between flagged checkpoints in unfamiliar natural terrain.  Wilderness skills learned and practiced through orienteering can be critical in life-or-death emergency situations.  We "orienteer" using a detailed topographic map, a simple magnetic compass and our judgment as to which route to take between checkpoints (partially hidden white & orange flags) whose positions and surrounding land & water features are shown on the map.
  We’re fortunate to have in Atlanta the GA Orienteering Club.  Dedicated "GAOC" volunteers prepare and print highly detailed "O Maps" and organize year-round O Meets and public education programs at parks and wilderness preserves throughout north Georgia—go to www.GAOrienteering.org for more details. Membership dues are only $8 per year (or $12 per couple) and non-members are also encouraged to participate in GAOC events—typically about twenty O Meets per year, all in beautiful natural areas near Atlanta.  It typically costs less than $10 - even for non-members - to register and participate on your own in each GAOC meet, and you get to keep the nice color topo map.

DIRECTIONS from  the I-285/GA 400 INTERCHANGE in NORTH ATLANTA to the CRNRA JONES BRIDGE "ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CENTER": (For a zoomable map and satellite view of the "Ed Center" and its vicinity click on the blue & green rectangular "Event Location" icon near the top of this article.)

1. From the GA-400/ I-285 Interchange take GA-400 North about 9 miles and exit at Exit #7A, GA-140 East, "Holcomb Bridge Road".

2. Take Holcomb Bridge Road eastward & southward toward Norcross about 4.5 miles to the traffic light at Barnwell Road.  (If you reach the Chattahoochee River bridge you've gone a mile too far!)

3. Turn Left onto Barnwell Rd, and go just 0.8 mile to a special CRNRA entrance road & gate on your right marked by an "Environmental Education Center" sign and perhaps a small "ORIENTEERING" sign or two. (This entrance is about a mile BEFORE the public entrance road that AOC Jones Bridge hikers and paddlers normally use.)

4. Turn Right into the Ed Center entrance road, proceed about 300 yards ahead, and park in the designated O Day area - normally the grassy field about 100 yards beyond the Ed Center building.  Thanks to the CRNRA for kindly WAIVING their usual Nat'l Park Service $3 parking fee for "O Day" participants.

5. Our AOC subgroup will gather at 9:30 AM in the spacious covered upper deck of the Ed Center building.  It's up one flight of exterior stairs from the lower covered veranda area.

GPS or GOOGLE.com/maps USERS:  You may wish to augment the above directions by inputting the following Address or Lat/Lon Coordinates as your destination:
ADDRESS:  3802 Barnwell Rd, Johns Creek, GA 30022
LAT/LON:    33.99103,-84.25917

Although "3802 Barnwell Rd" is a "dummy address" it pinpoints the entrance gate to the Ed Center.

No Charge!—Free Event with Free Parking!