Two orienteering conferences for BSA leaders are scheduled this summer at the Philmont Training Center in Cimarron NM.
The first is titled Finding Your Way and is a “train the trainer” conference that focuses on orienteering and land navigation skills. Participants learn and practice basic through advanced techniques and how to teach these skills to youth. Sessions also include how to set up and run orienteering events and develop year round programs.
Successful participants will be qualified Orienteering Merit Badge counselors. Time is also spent on GPS skills and Geocaching to use in local outdoor programs. This conference is in its twelfth year.
The second conference is titled Map My Camp. It is an outgrowth of the first conference and the idea that good orienteering programs need good maps. Participants select a local camp as a project and go home with a basic map ready for fieldwork.
Conference sessions include how to find and use publicly available geodata from orthophotos to LiDAR. This data is then used to create georeferenced terrain models complete with manmade infrastructure such as buildings, roads and trails. The addition of watershed and major vegetation features gets the map to a level that is ready for surveying on foot when the participant gets home. Making the map pretty with layout, logos and legends are also covered.
The Finding Your Way conference is scheduled for July 17-23 and is followed by the Map My Camp conference July 24-30. More information on both including cost and registration is available from the Philmont Training Center at
https://www.philmontscoutranch.org/ptc/ptc-confere...