Join us for an advanced classic orienteering event on Saturday, April 26^th, 2025, at Horton Grove Nature Preserve, which is located 10 minutes west of Butner, NC

Please register here before 9:00 PM on Thursday, April 24, to ensure we have enough maps.

On the day of the event, you will park in the northern parking lot (6879 Jock Rd, Bahama, NC) 

The start is open between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM.  Make sure that you finish by 2:30 PM because we will begin clearing the courses at that time.

You must return to the check-in area after completing your course. This is where we will download your results.

Advanced courses: Off-trail navigation is necessary. There is usually a “catch feature” or an “attack point” within 100m of a control.  Trails can frequently be used as a route choice, but are usually not the best way.

Expert courses are all as complex as the terrain allows, with minimal use of trails, and differ only in length. The Brown course can be printed at a scale of 1:10000 upon request.

• Advanced (Orange) 3.2 km, map scale 1:10000
• Expert Short (Brown) 3.9 km, map scale 1:7500
• Expert Medium (Green) 5.7 km, map scale 1:10000
• Expert Long (Red) 7.1 km, map scale 1:10000

We will use LIVELOX so you can see your route on the map after the event, along with everyone else on your course. LIVELOX is great because you can learn a lot about route choice, and it is fun to see how others’ choices affect their runs. The easiest way to use LIVELOX is to download the LIVELOX Recorder app to your phone. Then, when you start your course, open the app on your phone, click “Start Recording,” and then “Stop Recording” at the end of your run. Later in the day, the event will be published on livelox.com, where you can select your course for viewing. Uploading your route from your Garmin or Strava account is also possible.

There are no bathrooms in this preserve, so plan accordingly.

Lina

Unlike previous years, we are trying our luck in 2025 with having our coastal weekend in the Fall. We are currently planning these events for October 25 and 26 on Bear Island, part of Hammocks Beach State Park. For those who missed orienteering in this area last year, the island offers some of the best and most technical dune terrain in the country. We are planning on offering three expert-level events: classic brown, green, and red orienteering courses on Saturday morning; a Saturday night-O for those who camp on the island; and a Sunday morning goat race.

Currently, most of Bear Island is shut down for infrastructure repairs; and the park is not currently offering its ferry to the island. The park anticipates that things will be back to normal by summer; however, if there are continued long delays, this could impact our events. It is also unclear whether we will be able to reserve a group campsite — it is possible that campers will need to make their reservations individually. Stay tuned for updates on this situation; but mark your calendars now!

It was a beautiful day for orienteering, which was fortunate since competitors on the advanced courses had to walk an extra 2 kilometers to reach a remote start and from a remote finish. Having remote start and finish allowed us to set courses in the eastern part of the park, an area with fascinating terrain […]

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On Sunday, April 6, BOK held an advanced Reveal-O and open “Explorer” course at West Point on the Eno Park. The water levels were more accommodating than the pollen levels on this warm sunny spring day, but everyone seemed to enjoy the chance to explore a new 400-acre orienteering venue in Durham. Many thanks go […]

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We will have an OPEN event at Umstead Park (North) on Sunday, April 13, 2025.

Take Glenwood Ave to the park entrance. Go south past the visitor center to the parking lots at the end of the road. Registration and starts will be in the large picnic shelter to the east of the parking area. (GPS = 35.871668, -78.759166)

The event starts at 11.30 am and everybody must finish by 2.30 PM.
We will have all regular courses from beginner to advanced, White through Red. Advanced courses will have remove start and finish.

We will also have a beginners Q&A session starting at noon. 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)

Click the following button to go directly to the registration page.

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”. Then after the event, at 2:30, 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 or Strava.)

Help with control pick-up would be greatly appreciated.

Vladimir and Tatyana