Month: November 2025

YMP November Map of the Month

The Youth Mapping Program November Map of the Month is Gold Trail School in Cold Springs, CA.

This map is used to teach fifth-grade students about geography, map reading, and orienteering. Since then, the school has had a map made of a bordering property to create even larger courses. Eventually, the goal is to teach older students to use Purple Pen to plan courses for younger students. 

“The best outcome is having the ability to run my own orienteering events on my school campus. I do not have to depend on others or get permission from Admin to take a field trip. Additionally, having my own map allows me to make progressively more challenging courses as my students’ skills improve.”

Are you interested in flexing your cartography skills and joining the growing team of YMP mappers? Sign up here. 

Introductory mapping training opportunity

There are a handful of spaces available for a series of three FREE online mapping workshops from Jeff Teutsch of Navigation Sports. The workshops are designed for members of Grizzly Orienteering, but are applicable to anyone interested in learning the basics of orienteering mapping. The training will take place on Thursdays, November 20, December 4, and December 11 from 5:30pm-8:00pm Mountain Time.

Subjects covered in the three sessions will be:

  • Intro to mapping/Starting a map project
  • Using OCAD
  • Generating basic contours

If you are interested and able to commit to attending all three online sessions in real time, please contact the Mapping Committee at Mapping@nullorienteeringusa.org to get yourself on the list of candidates for the available spaces. Please tell us:

  • who you are,
  • your OUSA club affiliation,
  • about your mapping experience, if any, and
  • what mapping project(s) you would hope to work on within a year of taking the training.

To reiterate, thanks to grant funding from OUSA these workshops are being provided FREE OF CHARGE to participants. We hope to see this opportunity fully subscribed. Email applications for spaces should be submitted no later than midnight on Friday, November 7.