Backwoods Orienteering Klub, founded November 15, 1978 sponsors events and teaches orienteering in the North Carolina piedmont, around Raleigh, NC.
We invite you to try orienteering with us. Everyone is welcome at all our events. We always offer beginning, intermediate, advanced and expert courses (routes through the woods) at every Regular event.
We had perfect orienteering weather for Sunday’s event at Carolina North – sunshine with beautiful fall colours. Almost 100 people turned out to enjoy the day. The forest has a large number of trails so we left the trails off the expert (brown, green and red) maps. That proved to be challenging because the features […]
Read MoreWe are going to have our annual meeting as usual starting with a pizza dinner. After dinner we will start the meeting. The meeting will also be virtual on Google Meet. You will receve the meeting code by Saturday, but you need to register.
Everyone please register to attend the meeting both for in-person and via Google Meet.
Here is the link to the Agenda. You are welcome to add items by commenting on it.
Here is the link to our 2026 planning calendar. Current event directors should add events they want to run to the calendar others are welcome to comment on it. If you want to help out with an event send an email to Info@BackwoodsOK.org and let us know so we can match you up to help with an event.
You are welcome to bring a salad or desert to the dinner if you wish, but this is not necessary.
We rolled the dice when we moved our annual coastal events into hurricane season. But this time, we won! Conditions were nearly perfect, and the courses were as technical and challenging as we can possibly offer. Every year, I design courses that are as hard as possible; and every year our runners impress me by […]
Read MoreWe will have an OPEN event at Carolina North Forest on Sunday, November 2nd, 2025. Remember that the clocks change that morning! Please make sure you register before 6pm, October 31st 2025.
The event center will be at the side of the Seawell Elementary School car park, Chapel Hill , off Homestead Rd. GPS:- 35°56’26.0″N 79°04’41.1″W . Note there will be road works on I40, Junction 266.
Important: If you registered before Wednesday evening Oct 29, please note that this event is NOT at the Orange County Health Center as stated on the registration page up until Wednesday evening. Ot wo;; be at Seawell Elementary
The event starts at 10:30 am and everybody must report to the Finish by 2.00 PM.
We will have all regular courses from beginner to expert, White through Red.
Course distances are:
NOTE:- For those of you who think that Carolina North forest has too many distracting tracks, the expert (Brown, Green, Red) courses will run on maps without tracks (the Railroad line and roads will be marked).
If you are new to orienteering, we recommend that you check out these short videos to prepare for the event.
An Orienteering Class (Video 14:24) This class video includes the information in the following two videos:
An Orienteering Map Explained (Video 3:52)
An Orienteering Thumb Compass Explained (Video 1:26)
Entries open Mon Oct 27th
We will use Livelox so you can see your route on the map after the event along with everyone else on your course. This is great both because you can learn a lot about route choice, and fun to see how others’ choices affected their run. The easiest way to use Livelox is to download the Livelox app to your phone. Then, when you start open the app on your phone and click “Start Recording”. After the event, at 3:00pm, the event will be published on Livelox.com and you can select your “Class” which is the same as your course. Then you will be offered the event to choose so you can see your and everyone else’s routes. (You can also upload your route from your GPS watch.)
Help with control pick-up would be greatly appreciated.
Paul and Ian
Wow! What a great day for a race; and what a great group of folks who came out to enjoy 8 hours of trekking, biking, and paddling around Umstead and Lake Crabtree. The spirit of adventure racers really bouys me, and makes all of the effort spent organizing an event like this trivial in comparison […]
Read More