I started adventure racing a few years ago, but have just recently gotten into it pretty hardcore. I don’t consider myself an expert, but love the challenge of adventure racing. Adventure racing is mentally, emotionally, and physically challenging! With this article, I aim to share the navigation knowledge I’ve gathered over the years.

Get a real compass that is designed for adventure racing. For one of the first 12-hour adventure races my 2-person team showed up with a Coleman 3-in-one combo: a whistle, thermometer, and compass all in one. As you can imagine, the compass was tiny and very inaccurate. The guy checking us in at the gear check-in laughed at our compass and mentioned something about us being in for a surprise. We were schooled very hard during that race, but finished the 12-hour race in 19 hours…last place! At least we finished! I strongly recommend the Brunton Eclipse Adventure Racing Compass.

This compass rocks…it has an excellent map plotting tool, comes with a cord to attach to your pack, comes with a decent instruction book, comes with a separate plotting tool, and is easy to carry and read. The instruction book that comes with this compass even tells you how to calibrate it or set the off-set. I had no idea about this prior to getting this compass. Effectively, you have to tune your compass, based on your location, in order to adjust for magnetic declination. Magnetic declination is the difference between the north geographic pole and the north magnetic pole.

As I mentioned earlier, the first 12-hour race took my team 19 hours. The winning team finished in 8 hours. We literally looked for one checkpoint for 6.5 hours! Navigation skills are critical. Adventure races use UTM coordinates. This is the best book I’ve found for UTM coordinates:

Also, buy this plotting tool. It is extremely useful for maps with different scales:

Practice plotting using these tools. When I first started out, I didn’t understand how to use the tool properly. Be sure to read the book I mentioned and you should be able to zoom in on your coordinate with the circle in the upper right corner of the appropriate scale.

Have several different colored pens, highlighters, and pencils. I prefer to plot all coordinates with a red sharpee. I use a red dot for the actual coordinate plotted and then draw a circle around the dot. The makes it easier to see on the map. I also put the number of the Checkpoint (CP) next to the circle. If I plan routes between checkpoints I use a highlighter that is easy to see on the map, such as orange or purple. When you plot, be sure to use the correct scale on your plotting tool and also be sure you’re in the correct quadrant. The trick that works well for me is to find the quadrant and then once you have the quadrant, read the clue sheet for the CP clue. If the clue is something like a “reentrant”, you can generally find the reentrant within the quadrant and then plot the coordinates to confirm. Also, so you don’t make the same mistake as my team and have to ask other teams what a “reentrant” is during the race – a reentrant typically shows up on a map as a U or V shape in contour lines. A reentrant is typically a small valley on a hillside that leads downhill to a larger valley. Typically, water would run down the reentrant from the hills when it rains.

Learn to read contour lines. Contour lines show the elevation on a topographic (topo) map. The greater the distance between contour lines, the more gradual the ascent or descent. A bunch of contour lines close together typically represents a cliff or very steep hill. Also, most maps will tell you the elevation gain between contour lines.

For my first adventure race, I bought a tiny plastic map case from REI. It was so tiny that I had to constantly refold the map. I now know better and use the Splash Caddy 12” x 12” map case.

This map case rocks…it comes complete with a strap to go around your neck for easy carrying, has Velcro tabs that easily allow you to fold the case, has hooks to attach to your pack to keep the case from flopping around, and it has two waterproof bags as well. This allows you to separate your map in one bag and passport in the other bag and put them all in the same case!

If you have any questions, feel free to add them to the comments and I’ll do my best to answer or point you in the right direction. I realize there’s a lot more to learn…that’s one of the other cool things about adventure racing – always something new to learn or experience!