orienteering | Tales from the Hutt

Last year, I took the BCEP class with the Mazamas – Basic Climbing Education Program. It was interesting; a great chance to review my well-trained skills, practice some that I hadn’t used in ages, and get to meet some new climbing and outdoors people. It was fun, and ticked all the boxes that I had hoped that it would.

My faith in the outdoors community reinvigorated, I quickly and happily volunteered to help teach BCEP this year. I was expecting to assist with the same group that I’d taken the class with the previous year, since leaders tend to continue teaching year over year, so I was a bit surprised when I was placed with a different group… but it turns out, this new group was just starting out – the first year the leader had led a BCEP team on their own.

The chance to help out with a new group, and to help build a similar culture of excitement and optimism for the outdoors? All while getting to show people the unbridled joy of rock climbing? Of seeing new views off the side of a mountain?

Well. Sign me right the heck up.

Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023

Land Navigation. Orienteering, travel by compass and map.

Not the most common, in this day and age, thanks to GPS and well-marked trails… but the thing is, glaciers don’t really have well marked trails. And while the summit is generally pretty obvious… the route to get there isn’t always to clear cut. And the descent down is usually even less so evident…

Sometimes, the old-school is the best-school – Which is definitely the case when it comes to making sure people are ready for adventures in the back country. With that in mind, our BCEP team forged onward with practicing the age-old skill of navigating with a map and compass.

As with most hikes, there’s not really too much for me to say about this orienteering course. We walked, stopped at various checkpoints to do skills practice, and we moved onward. It rained a bit, my map got wet, and I pushed the limits of what would happen to a paper map that gets waterlogged.

(Ed Note: Don’t worry, Dear Reader, because Ben had a backup map in a waterproof sleeve in case the experiment didn’t go so well. Turns out, though, paper is more resilient than we generally give it credit for… and his map stayed perfectly serviceable throughout)

We found out points, helped people out who weren’t quite feeling it, and had an absolute blast of a time… without ever leaving city limits.

Who are the Mazamas, you may ask? And what’s BCEP, you may enquire? Well, let me fill you in dear reader. When I first moved to Oregon, I pretty quickly heard about a mountaineering group in town called The Mazamas.

Similar to the AMC back in Boston, they teach classes and do conservation outreach projects. Over the years, I’d interacted with them tangentially – attending a few classes, volunteering with a few groups, but I’d never been able to actually take a course officially. I’d applied to their Advanced Rock climbing class, but wasn’t accepted for one reason or another.

Now, nearly seven years after first moving to Oregon, I was trying again. This time beginning at the bottom – while you may notice that I’m not quite a beginner when it comes to the outdoors, I was tired. These last few years haven’t been easy, and I was just tired of fighting… the chance to just sit back and meet new people while enjoying a few group hikes was more than worth the price of admission.

Friday, 01-Apr-2022

No, really, this isn’t an April Fools joke.

Yes, I know that Mt. Tabor is only like… a single square mile. And it’s in the middle of the city. And I had a clear map that I’d printed out earlier.

But you know what?

The whole fun of BCEP for me is to practice things… Some of them I’ve learned before, but haven’t used in ages. So today, I was orienteering! Reviewing my old land navigation skills, and pulling out that compass that’s been hanging in my room for years.

I met up with two of the group assistants in the morning, relaxing in the sun by one of the reservoirs at Mt. Tabor. The weather report hadn’t been perfect, but the day had come through with shining (literally) colors… Breaking beautifully warm and bright, with more flowers blooming than I could have imagined.

We hopped to it, working our way through the land-navigation packet one step at a time. We didn’t rush, but didn’t slouch either… Both of my companions being amazingly supportive and fun, letting me take the lead and helping me work through the process using my older model compass. I can’t even remember when I bought this compass, but it’s one of the old-style Lensatic Compasses – no magnetic declination setting or anything, so I had to manually adjust the declination reading every time… which isn’t really that hard, but I did get mixed up a few times due to the negative modifier for Oregon…

Anyways, my inability to do math aside, we had a great time. We walked through the steps, chatted a lot, and enjoyed a perfect walk in the park. Smelled the flowers, took in the sunlight, and… just appreciated.

After finishing up, we parted ways. They headed out, and I took a bit of a walk around… just relishing the chance to stretch my legs and enjoy the spring weather. I even stopped by the garden shop on the way home, picking up (possibly too many) new plants for the balcony!

It’s been a rough few years, but simple and fun trips like this are helping me feel some confidence in the world ahead. I think it’s going to be pretty excellent.