Orienteering Ottawa
Explore Nature, Discover Community, Excel in Sport.
Looking to get in touch? Meet our club's leadership, staff and volunteers - contact us!
Orienteering Ottawa is a strong community of runners, orienteers, and adventure racers who enjoy the exceptional outdoor spaces in the National Capital region. Ottawa boasts one of the largest and strongest such communities in Canada. With our 40 year history we remain at once close-knit and welcoming with old friends across the country and new friends joining regularly.
Events
We host dozens of events on our 50+ maps every year for members and newcomers alike including our popular Spring and Fall Series on Sunday mornings, our Summer Solstice Series in June, evening urban sprints in the summer and cross country ski events when winter weather cooperates. In addition, our multi-day annual Ottawa Orienteering Festival (Ottawa O-Fest), is one of the largest regular orienteering events in the country. Held over two days in the fall the Ottawa O-Fest weekend includes food, fun and games, clinics for new-comers, races for Canada's top orienteers, and everything in between. Periodically O-Fest is paired with a larger, Championship event, such as the North American Orienteering Championships as in 2014 in Arnprior. Since the first Canadian Orienteering Championships at Camp Fortune in 1968, Orienteering Ottawa has hosted the Canadian Championships several times, the most recent being in 2017 in the town of Perth and Foley Mountain Conservation Centre and will be hosting the North American Championships again in 2024.
Programs
It is very important to us that everyone have the opportunity to explore orienteering at their own pace. Every season we host introductory clinics for those wanting to learn about our sport. We also have adult intermediate and advanced skills programs for the majority of our members and an evening running program which work outs with, often, an orienteering twist. For kids, we offer our Youth programs for kids 6 - 18 years of age.
Membership
Our diverse membership ranges from newborns who accompany Mom and Dad in backpacks to the 80+ folks who continue to bring in national championship medals. Our family groups have their youngsters in our junior programs and our adventure groups work to improve their navigation skills as a team. Our more competitive members include numerous athletes on Orienteering Canada's National High Performance Program and Team Canada. In 2012 member Emily Kemp became the first North American to win a medal at the Junior World Orienteering Championships with her bronze medal run in the Long Distance in Poland. We continue to have club athletes selected for junior, senior, university world championships and others.
Whether you consider yourself an experienced athlete looking for a new challenge or simply enjoy the outdoors we encourage you to join us. Come out to learn about our high speed navigation sport, to improve your map and compass skills for your next adventure run, or to simply enjoy a hike or run in our parks and woodlands.