Mapping practical session

Andy explaining what to map

Six members from EckO enjoyed a very informative mapping session late last month. Did you know that not every feature is marked on an orienteering map? An orienteering map is very much the mappers interpretation of what is seen and one mapper's map could be very different to another mapper's map! Ahhh...that could explain a lot of my orienteering difficulties - it has to the mapper's fault.

Inspired by a LOC zoom mapping session and a couple of BO webinars, club member Andy Dale offered to run a practical mapping session on the wonderful Connel Hills. He ran the session on a hidden gem of an area and proceeded to enthuse six EckO 'would be' mappers into the intricacies of mapping.

We spent a very pleasant morning armed with base maps, compasses, pencils and a variety of coloured pens wandering around and discussing various mapping issues eg what features should be mapped, what features should be left out, should all boulders be mapped and what about crags? Did you know that contours can be artistically tweaked?

We are hoping to run more mapping workshops in the near future. Many thanks Andy for running the first of hopefully many outdoor mapping workshops.