The Scottish Hill Runners navigation course ran over the weekend of the 10th and 11th March with Olly Stevenson and Steve Fallon in charge of imparting some navigation knowledge to a group of 14 hill and trail runners. Chris L and myself were there from Carnethy and spent the Saturday morning getting to grips with the basics/refreshing our existing knowledge of navigation. After lunch Olly claimed the rain and wind was easing (it wasn’t) so we headed out towards Capelaw and completed a few fun navigation exercises before we decided we were cold and bailed off the hill.
The short Sunday morning session built upon the knowledge imparted on the Saturday with a focus on the different forms of hill racing. We were then given some checkpoints coordinates for a mini-mountain challenge. We plotted our route and set off. After quickly finding the first two checkpoints Chris and I had to backtrack in an effort to find the map (and water bottle) we had lost even faster. From there it was plain sailing until we became befuddled looking for a stream running WSW. An hour later we had worked out that we had had the correct stream from the start but the checkpoint was to the north of the path, as opposed to the south, and we were on our way again. Stava flyby makes for interesting viewing. The last few checkpoint proved less of a challenge and we were back at the Flotterstone Inn 5 hrs 40 mins after leaving with 27k and 1100m of vertical covered. More importantly the weekend had helped us develop our navigation skills and had been great fun! A massive thanks to SHR for putting on the course and to Olly and Steve for sharing their knowledge, skills and experience with us.
John Busby
Strava flyby https://labs.strava.com/flyby/viewer/#1448155128?c=gcvtv196&z=D&t=1QfGoT&a=-BdRVnTATlY
Strava activity https://www.strava.com/activities/1448155128