How to read an orienteering map

1. Colours first

The great strength of an orienteering map is that colours are universal: a map drawn in Ankara reads the same for someone from Sweden.

• White — runnable forest. Beginners think white means “nothing”; it actually means open forest you can run through.
• Yellow — open land. Dark yellow is fully open, light yellow is open land with scattered trees.
• Green — vegetation that slows you. The darker the green, the slower you go. Avoiding green often wins time.
• Brown — landforms. Contours, pits, banks, knolls.
• Blue — water. Lakes, ponds, streams, marsh, wells.
• Black — rock and man-made. Roads, paths, buildings, fences, walls, boulders.
• Purple — the course. Start triangle, control circles, finish double circle, out-of-bounds areas.

2. See the shape of the land in the contours

A contour joins points of equal height. A few rules are enough:

• Close together = steep; far apart = flat.
• Closed rings show a hill (or a depression).
• V or U shapes show valleys and spurs; in a valley the V points uphill.
• Every fifth contour is thicker, which helps count height.

When choosing a route, count the climb: a common rule of thumb is that 1 metre of climb costs about 10 metres of flat running. Test it in the Route Choice Game.

3. Scale and distance

At 1:10,000, 1 mm = 10 m and 1 cm = 100 m. To judge distance, orienteers count paces (double steps): measure once how many double steps you take per 100 m, then follow the distance on the map by counting.

4. Orient the map

The most important rule: keep the map oriented so that what is ahead of you on the ground is ahead of you on the map. When the north lines are parallel to the compass needle, the map is oriented — even if the text is upside down. See How to use a compass.

5. Read the course

• Triangle: start.
• Numbered circles: controls. The feature is at the centre of the circle.
• Double circle: finish.
• The straight purple lines only show the order, not the route to take.
• The control descriptions table tells you exactly what each control is on: Control descriptions.

Try it

In the Map Lab you can switch the layers of a fictional orienteering map on and off, then take a short symbol quiz.

For the international rules behind these colours and symbols, the full list of 113 symbols and what is forbidden on sprint maps, see Orienteering Map Standards (ISOM).