Orienteering Merit Badge

Before your first event: keep the paperwork

Requirement 7(a) is taking part in three orienteering events, one of which must be a cross-country course.

Requirement 7(b) is a written report after each one, containing four things: a copy of the master map and control description sheet, a copy of the route you took, how you could improve your time between controls, and your major weaknesses on that course with what you would do about them.

The first of those four cannot be reconstructed afterwards. If you hand the map back at the finish and go home, that event's report is unwriteable. Read requirement 7(b) before your first event, not after it, which is exactly the thing a numbered list will not make you do.

Requirement 9 is free if you plan it with requirement 8

Requirement 8 has you set up a course. Requirement 9 has you act as an official at an orienteering event, and says, in its own words, that this may be during the running of the course you set up for requirement 8.

So those are one occasion, not two, and the badge tells you so in a trailing sentence that is easy to read past.

Requirement 8: two routes, and one is more than twice the other

Do ONE of the following:

• (a) Cross-country course: at least 2,000 metres, at least five control markers.
• (b) Score course: at least twelve control points, a time limit of at least 60 minutes, and a point value set for each control. Both need a master map and a control description sheet prepared. Twelve controls is a good deal more ground to survey and mark than five, so this choice is worth making deliberately.

The rest is skills, and they build in order

Compass work at requirement 3, map reading at requirement 4, pace counting at requirement 5, control descriptions and technique vocabulary at requirement 6: attack point, catching feature, aiming off, handrail, relocation. All of that is what you take to your first event, so working requirements 3 to 6 before requirement 7 is worth doing even though nothing says you must.

What this page is

The Orienteering merit badge, drawn so the three events and the paperwork they demand are visible before the first one. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.