An introduction. 

Last year I was a part of the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award program and this year I started the Silver award program. The program has four main aspects: Service, Skills, Physical Recreation, and Adventurous Journey. For the Silver Program, candidates must complete 26 hours of Service, Skill, and Physical Recreation and log the hours using the ‘Online Recordbook’. The Adventurous Journey aspect consists of 3 parts: preparation and training, practice journey, and qualifying journey. For the Silver program, the ‘journeys’ are 2 night, 3 day trips.

Orienteering Lesson

My group and I using a map and compass to fill out a practice route card. (Photo taken by Mr. Lockwood)

In preparations for the Practice Adventurous Journey, we had an orienteering lesson with Major Ruvan on Saturday, November 2 from 1:00pm-5:30pm. During this lesson, we reviewed some of the information I had learned last year during Duke of Edinburgh as well as learned new information and methods related to orienteering. It was very useful to practice the tasks that we will have to do during the Practice Adventurous Journey, such as creating route cards, estimating the distance we traveled, reading maps, figuring out the eastings and northings, and using compasses to find the bearing.