How to wander around in the woods and not get lost
Wilderness navigation is an essential skill to competently find your way around when foraging, hunting, hiking and exploring in the woods of British Columbia. The EatWild Wilderness Navigation Workshop will help you build the confidence and skills you need to wander around in wilderness, navigate terrain, explore habitat, and confidently make it back to camp safely.
The two-day comprehensive workshop will help you build proficiency with four essential orienteering tools: a compass, topographic map, google earth, and GPS. Using these four tools, the EatWild team will help you build confidence in navigation, terrain assessment, and route finding.
Throughout the workshop we will also expose you to recent innovations in navigation technology using smartphone and iPads. The mapping and navigation potential of this technology is changing rapidly and is truly changing the way we can explore wilderness. We will show you how to use what we feel are the essential apps for both smart phones and iPads.
The workshop is a two-part format. Our in-class Wednesday evening session will be comprised of an intro all of our navigation tools. You will have the opportunity to work with google earth on your smart phone and familiarize yourself with GPS technology and basic functions. You will also learn the fundamentals of map and compass skills.
The Sunday session will allow us to get out in the field and test out our new skills. You will spend the day experiencing hands-on learning exercises that will help build your orienteering confidence and skills.
The course will be held at Stanley Park. The Sunday course will break for lunch around 1pm. Please bring a lunch or plan to pick something up at the concession nearby.
What To Bring
- You must bring a compass, it is the most essential tool for finding your way around the woods.
- If you have a GPS, please bring it so you can become familiar with its most useful tools.
- If you have a smart phone or iPad please download the Google Earth app.
- If you don’t have a GPS then you can download the GPS Kit app on to your smart phone. This will turn your smart phone into a GPS.
- If you don’t have a smart phone or GPS we can share. Lots of my mentors get around the bush just fine without these gadgets.
These items are required for the course.
- Compass (or purchase one from EatWild for $20)
- Good Footwear
- Rain Gear
- Clothes Appropriate for Hiking
- Water Bottle
- Lunch
- Snacks to Get You Through the Day
Not required but nice to have.
- GPS
- Smart Phone
- iPad
- Pencil and Note Book
- Small Ruler
Upcoming Wilderness Navigation Workshop Dates
Registration and Costs
Keep in mind the course date is the starting date, pay attention to the structure of the course. This workshop runs two days, two different times and two different locations. Wednesday April 13th (6:30PM-9PM) at Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House and Sunday April 17th (10AM-4PM) at Stanley Park Ecology Society.
Course costs are $130 per person. Lunch and snacks are not included.