The Minnesota Orienteering Club Celebrates Half a Century of Cunning Running

“There’s something primal about running through the woods off-trail. You’re ducking under branches, jumping over logs and rocks, it just feels really cool,” said longtime orienteer Will Daniels. “I love the navigation component and thinking about what’s the most efficient route I can take that no one else will think of.”

The Minnesota Orienteering Club, MNOC, or “Minn-ock,” as members pronounce the acronym, will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a series of events in late April. The club was founded in 1976 by Bill Schmidt, who worked for the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Orienteering itself goes back to the late 19th century, when it was developed in Sweden for military training. The map and compass sport spread to the civilian population in Scandinavia and eventually took root in the United States.

Club president Peter Wentzel lives in south Minneapolis and has been an avid orienteer since 2007. “Orienteering has taken me to so many places that are beautiful locations across the world. Ireland, Canada, and across the USA. It gets you out, and you meet a bunch of like-minded people, and you get to challenge yourself mentally,” Wentzel said, from Tucson, where he spends six months a year and is active during winter with the Tucson Orienteering Club.

The Minnesota Orienteering Club has about twenty events annually, most of them in the spring and fall, though there are a smattering in summer and on skis in winter. “Summer is too hot and buggy, with too much vegetation,” said club member Will Daniels, “but after the leaves come off and before, it’s really nice to run through the woods.”

An orienteering course consists of ten to twenty stations, or controls, scattered over a specially mapped course in parkland. A control consists of an orange-and-white kite at a location shown on the orienteering map. There’s usually an electronic box at each control that participants check in with by using a small electronic device worn on their finger. The electronic box at the control communicates with the device on the orienteer’s finger, confirming they were there and recording the time. Controls are fixed in place, but the route taken to them is not, and therein is the essence of orienteering.

“Orienteering is a sport about route choice and decision making and determining what’s the most efficient way for you to get there as quickly as you can without getting what we call mis-oriented,” said Wentzel. “It really is about route choice. We don’t limit participants to trails or manmade features to navigate by.”

So, the orienteer, carrying a map, faces an array of questions, such as: is it faster to follow, for instance, a hiking trail, or to create a shortcut by barreling through the woods? When an orienteering meet begins, rather than the participants flowing in a human river along the same course, like a standard running race, the racers instead forge off in their own directions, each navigating from a carried map and strategizing to find the fastest way to the controls.

Orienteering maps are very detailed and internationally standardized. “You can go to Japan or Russia or Greece, and the map is going to look the same. You can compete on a map and understand all the symbology on it to effectively complete a course,” said Wentzel. Green: forest; tan: grassland; black: man-made objects. There’s a different symbol for an impassable cliff versus one that can be scrambled up.

Wentzel says there are several thousand active orienteers in the United States and that Minnesota has about 200. About 100 participants show up to any given meet. (Wisconsin has its own club called the Badger Orienteering Club.) “I think it’s been very stable,” Wentzel said about the sport’s popularity in recent decades. “You always have people that are new or leaving the area, while others become enamored with the sport or fade away.” He says the club attracts runners, triathletes, and general outdoor enthusiasts, though all levels of competition are welcome. “There are people who love to show up and walk the course. We have kids out there who are participating at six years old. We have people coming to meets who are well into their late 70s. So it is a sport for all ages.”

Will Daniels, who lives in Duluth and in February organized an orienteering meet on skis (called a Ski-O—the O of course stands for orienteering), started orienteering with his family when he was in fifth grade and continues to do so now in his 40s. Prior to the Ski-O at Spirit Mountain’s Nordic trails, he prepped the course in his free time by snowshoeing on the trails to offer ski orienteers multiple options for racing to controls through the woods. “Everyone who tries orienteering just really loves it,” Daniels said.

Wentzel said orienteering is good for both the body and mind. He cited a 2024 study done by universities in Ontario that found: “The sport of orienteering simultaneously combines exercise with spatial navigation and, therefore, may result in greater cognitive benefits than exercising only, especially at vigorous intensities.”

“It engages your brain the whole time you’re out running,” he said. “I have a normal running route in Minneapolis that I’ve done without having a single thought. Your mind is just blank. With orienteering, your mind is engaged the whole time.”

Beginner courses for kids are as short as 1.5 kilometers with easy-to-find controls. Beginner adults are welcome to participate in events. Wentzel said, “You can go there as a beginner and not know anything about it and find someone to spend 10 to 15 minutes with you and show you how things work. Every meet has a variety of courses geared toward beginners, intermediates, and advanced.” Advanced courses can be more than ten kilometers long with harder-to-find controls.

“It’s a sport that travels well,” Wentzel said. “All you need is a pair of shoes, a compass, and a map. It is, for the most part, a nonprofit, volunteer-led sport. There aren’t many organizations making a ton of money from hosting races. We couldn’t host a single event without the volunteers. It’s an inexpensive event. Typically, to come and compete, it’s $15 or less. You can have a team on that entry, so you can have 2 or 3 people come out and spread the cost amongst them and go out and enjoy the woods as a group.”

On April 18th, the MNOC is hosting a skills clinic at French Regional Park in Plymouth, Minnesota. “This is truly an intro to orienteering,” Wentzel said. “Anyone interested can come out.” The day features both a classroom session and a guided orienteering run in the park. Then, on the weekend of April 25th and 26th, the club is hosting a two-day anniversary celebration. Saturday’s portion will be at Lake Elmo Regional Park—east of the Twin Cities—and include a middle-distance race, a short-distance race, and a retro race. The retro race will feature handmade black-and-white maps and pin punches rather than electronic stamps at the controls. Sunday’s event will be at Lake Maria State Park, near St. Cloud, and feature a regular meet. For information on these and other events, click on the “event schedule” tab of the club’s website: https://www.mnoc.org.