Bitterroot Weekend Event Recap

September 20-21, 2025

Grizzly Orienteering invited orienteers to enjoy some warm fall weather in the Bitterroot Range of Montana. The first day was a middle distance NRE in steep terrain with intricate rock details. The second day provided tremendous contrast to the first, with open forest and broad hillsides.

Host: Grizzly Orienteering (GrizO)

Venues: Soft Rock Recreation Area (Sat) and Larry Creek Recreation (Sun) Area, south of Missoula, MT

Event Director: Emily Johnson

Course Setters: Siri Christopherson (Sat) and Chris Caldwell (Sun)

Results, Maps, and Photos

2025 Golden Service Award Winners

This year nine orienteers received Golden Service Awards, announced at the 2025 Annual General Meeting. The purpose of the Orienteering USA Golden Service Award is to recognize those individuals who have provided exceptional service to the sport of orienteering that extends beyond the local club level. Read on for bit about each of this year’s awardees!

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2025 Silva Award: Peter Goodwin

Congratulations to Peter Goodwin of Up North Orienteers (UNO), the recipient of the 2025 Silva Award, Orienteering USA’s highest honor for service to the sport.

Orienteering Cincinnati nominates Peter Goodwin for the Silva Award. Peter is the former President of Orienteering USA with a long history of advocacy for US Orienteering. He organized a series of mapping and lidar clinics at NREs in the years prior to Covid. He is a long-time OUSA course consultant, where he has advised OCIN and many other OUSA clubs on their national ranking events. His work has been instrumental in making OUSA NRE courses more interesting and age-level appropriate, contributing to the success of our national-level events. It is recorded in OUSA board meeting minutes that Peter verbally guaranteed the OUSA Loan to BAOC for their 10-day NAOC and California O-Fest event held near Truckee and Lake Tahoe. Peter’s support helped ensure the success of this event that later experienced significant disruption to their financial planning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting delays.

The Silva Award is given annually to an orienteer who, along with being a member of Orienteering USA, has demonstrated outstanding service to orienteering in the United States over the past five years. The recipient need not be a terrific orienteer, and orienteering skill is not considered in determining the award winner. The essential quality of every winner has been service to promoting and sustaining orienteering, to making the sport work in this country, and in helping to build the organizations needed to make orienteering successful.

September Forum: Silva O Camp

The September forum will take place on Thursday, September 25th at 8:30pm ET on Google Meet.

This July, three Youth Development Program athletes attended Silva O’ Camp, an IOF-endorsed orienteering camp with over 200 athletes held in the Czech Republic. The athletes trained seriously and got up to some serious fun! Join us for this forum to learn more about the camp and hear directly from athletes and coaches.

You can read a bit about the US experience here.

Join on Google Meet on Thursday, September 25th at 8:30pm ET.

Add to your Google Calendar.

Silva O’ Camp 2025 Recap

This July, three YDP athletes attended Silva O’ Camp, an IOF-endorsed orienteering camp with over 200 athletes held in the Czech Republic. The athletes got up to some serious training and serious fun. Read about it below: 

It’s summer camp in full swing — campfires, card games, dips in the river, friendships made in one week that last a lifetime. On the menu for daily activities? Orienteering, orienteering, and more orienteering. 

The USA was represented by three athletes (Finlay Rebbeck, Zoe Liu Coates, and Ally Liu Coates) from Cascade and three coaches at Silva O’Camp 2025, an international summer camp for young orienteers held in Vidnava, Czech Republic. While Silva camp has been around for decades, it has been an IOF endorsed camp since 2023. This year’s small American team was an exploratory group supported by the YDP to gauge the suitability of the camp for our youth.

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Mount Hood Forest 2-Day Event Recap

Aug 31-Sep 1, 2025

Hosts: Mount Hood Orienteering and Columbia River Orienteering Club
Venues: Skyline Sno-Park and Billy Bob Sno-Park, in the shadows of Mt Hood, Oregon

Two clubs, two days of challenging orienteering in the shadow of Mount Hood, Oregon!

Results, Maps, and Media

World Masters Champs 2025 Event Recap

Aug 8-15, 2025

Sharon Crawford and Peter Gagarin with their bronze medals from the Sprint Final.

With over 2,000 entries this year, the World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC) in Girona, Spain, was clearly the place to be. The WMOC is the IOF championship event for those aged 35 and older, and every year Masters athletes from around the world travel to compete, some of them against friends they’ve known for many decades.

All photos from Evalin Brautigam. Map snippets from Livelox.

There were 34 US athletes in attendance this year, from clubs all over the country. The highlights for the US contingent include three podium trips for Sharon Crawford (W80), who earned a bronze in the sprint, and silver in both the middle and long. Over in M80, Peter Gagarin earned bronze medals in the sprint and long.

Maps, Results, and Photos

There does not appear to be an official repository for routes and maps, but this search on Livelox should get you some wildcat entries with plenty to look at.

Lots more results, splits, and photos on the official WMOC site.

August Forum: VR Orienteering Demo

The August forum will take place on Wednesday, August 27th at 8:30pm ET on Google Meet.

Join Elias “Eli” Jimenez, founder of VentR-out, for a live demo of a virtual reality orienteering simulation grounded in the fundamentals of the sport. Drawing on past experiences competing in and organizing adventure races, he sees VR’s potential for simulating outdoor experiences in a new way. This early-stage project highlights VR as a promising medium for orienteering training. Get a first-hand look at what’s possible, where it could go next, and how you could help shape its evolution.

Join on Google Meet on Wednesday, August 27th at 8:30pm ET.