At the end of a recent expedition race I participated in, there was a very challenging rogaine course (an orienteering course where you could get points in any order). This course threw teams for a serious loop - there was variable terrain, giant lava fields, tough vegetation, and a lot of smaller land features that did not show up on the 1:24000 maps we were provided. This all combines to make a course that is easy to get turned around on. For example, if you're going uphill looking for a checkpoint right at the top, any downhills that aren't bigger than the contour interval (in this case, 40ft) and more than 50m wide, just will not show up on the map at all. This means that you have to have a good sense of how far you've come, and what elevation you're at. Having an altimeter helps with elevation, and a stopwatch can help with the distance one, but the gold standard is pace counting.

CalTopo is an incredible tool for making maps and courses. I use it all the time to create maps for races as well as courses. The "Pro" plan lets you make 400dpi 12x18in maps with very little fuss. Incredible! I've made Orienter compatible with CalTopo GeoJSON, so you can import and export both ways, depending on how you want to go about it.

Over the weekend, I went out on a 7h mission with a teammate. We had a blast! Unfortunately, Matthias's battery died pretty quickly into the run, so we lost the benefits of personal tracking (there were some hard points that would have been more fun with two devices roaming around). Fortunately, my phone lasted the whole time (started at 95%, ended at about 55%), and I realized I should probably write a bit about how to make batteries last long enough for very large runs.

Orienteer is designed to make it easy to learn orienteering! The quick version is - download the app and find a beginners course close to you, flip on "Learn Mode", and go run around! If you like figuring stuff out on your own, go for it - the rest of this article is a few tips on what to practice, what to pay attention to, and what to think about.

This is a collection of frequently asked questions about Orienteer - if you don't find yours listed, email me at support@orienteer.co and I'll answer your questions and I'll add them to the list below!

So you want to create a course on Orienteer.co? Sweet! Go to the create page on orienteer.co (you may need to sign up or register). Read through some of the details, basically, what the different course difficulties mean, then click “Let’s go!” at the bottom. Double-click to set checkpoints on the map, scroll your mouse to zoom in & out.