Foot orienteering (or Foot-O) is the traditional and most common form of orienteering.

Orienteering Hutt Valley and its neighbouring club, Orienteering Wellington, have a combined events calendar and there are usually foot orienteering events in the Wellington region most Sundays from autumn through to spring.

What is it?

Foot orienteering involves navigating around a pre-set course on foot with a map and compass visiting each checkpoint (control) on the course in the correct order. The route choice is not set and comes down to the skill and strategy of the orienteer. It is usually undertaken individually and participants on each course have staggered start times.

See information about Getting Started with Orienteering. The IOF has printable booklets describing the symbols used for control decriptions and map features.

Distance events

Foot orienteering events are traditionally held in forest, farmland, or bush with a focus on endurance and longer-distance navigation. Around the Hutt Valley and Wellington region the town belts and regional parks give us many course options but for most forest courses we need to go to the Manawatu or Wairarapa.

The Wellington region CSW and OY series on Sunday mornings are all typically distance events and normally have 5 or 6 courses set. National or regional championship events will typically have a dozen or more courses.

The technical difficulty of each course is labelled as white (very easy), yellow (easy), orange (medium), or red (hard). There are usually multiple red courses (typically short, medium, and/or long)

Sprint events

An increasing number of foot orienteering events are urban-based sprint courses. These are typically short races around school or tertiary campuses, parks, and other cityscapes — where the focus is on speed and split-second decision making.

In late summer/early autumn Orienteering Hutt Valley and Orienteering Wellington together run an after-work & CSW sprint series. Later in spring there is usually an O-Max series of after-work sprints.

Score events

These are essentially short rogaines — usually only an hour long. They can be undertaken individually or as teams and will have a mass start. Generally, more difficult controls will be awarded more points, and the objective of the score event is to visit as many controls as you can (in any order) within the hour to maximise your points score. Like a rogaine, you'll be penalised if you arrive back late.

Normally in late winter/early spring Orienteering Hutt Valley and Orienteering Wellington together run a "Winter Score" series.

Anytime Orienteering

Orienteering Hutt Valley has local maps available to download and use so you can do some orienteering or some practise at a time that suits you.