Map key

Orienteering maps use special keys to descibe the reality in two dimensions. For classical Foot orienteering, there are two such a keys, which differ from each other only in some details, basics are always some. Less used is sprint key – only for sprint distance competitions. By far most used is classical, forest, key used for middle, long, night or relay competitions. Now we will concentrate on this one and look on some important features and symbols.

If you would like to start doing orienteering, it's necessary to know map key before. But don’t be afraid, it’s a question of a few minutes to explain symbols with most importance. Everything is intuitive so after few map trainings or competition, you won’t have problems to understand everything on a map.

Example of a map with course (and hand drawn route choices - that is not on your running map, of course)

Below is a selection of some more important things. Symbols are usually out scale – because of easier reading – and are divided into several categories:

• Land features comprise how terrain is modelled – they use generally brown (showing altitude), black (rocks) and blue (water) colours. 
• Vegetation is used for all from open grass land to forest trees – yellow (something open) and green (something more or less difficult to run through) colours.
• Manmade objects is everything created by humankind (except some land changing features like a hole to ground or new watercourse – they still belong to their categories). They use several colours.
• Technical is for easier orientation. There belongs magnetic north line (in black or blue colour).
• Overprint symbols are used for orienteering courses – they indicate course itself and also some restrictions/highlights of area (like forbidden area or passage through fence which is difficult to see on map).

Land features

Contours - brown lines connecting places with same altitude - more close together, more steep hillside is

Erosion gully

Knoll

Pit

Cliff - one of the forms

Boulder and boulder cluster (several boulders too close to each other that is impossible to map each alone)

Lake/pond

Crossable watercourse  with bridge (it's possible to cross on other places than through bridge)

Marsh

Vegetation

Levels of (tree) vegetation from open forest (white) to the most difficult to run through - more green, more difficult to run throught because of young tress growing close together etc.

Open land - like meadows

Undergrowth - usually some bramble

Man made

Communications - major road, vehicle track and small path - there are many map key symbols for communications, these are just examples - roads with brown are very significant, bold black too (but little bit less) and thin ones are sometimes difficult to find during running

Bridge

Fence - impossible to cross (when there is only one line down, not two like in this example, it's possible to cross)

Building

Paved area

Small tower - especially shooting tower for foresters

Technical

Magnetic north line - line always leading from south to north - there are two colours used for it - black as a basic and blue used on maps on which is not much water (blue) objects, such as swamps in Scandinavia

Overprint symbols (they are printed over other map symbols)

Start (triangle), line (connecting start, controls and finish), control (circle) with it's course number (5 means it's a fifth control on course - number is just an exemple, there should be number 1 when there is only one control on this course) and finish (double circle)

Out of bonds area - impossible to go through

And that's all for our first tour through orienteering map key symbols, if you want to know more, look at International Orienteering Federation webpages and find International Specifications for Orienteering Maps (this link may not work forever, that's why the document is described).