Today, we’ll go through the exercise from January 19, 2026.
Task for January 19, 2026
Arrange the control points by elevation, from the lowest to the highest.
Difficulty Level: Hard
The task is to rank the control points by their elevation on the terrain, starting from the lowest one.
To do this, as usual, we’ll highlight the index contours using different colors.
The terrain here is extremely complex, with numerous depressions located on various elevation levels — a highly intricate relief structure.
We’ll begin by marking a large, narrow depression, which we’ll show in light blue. Then we’ll highlight all other smaller depression of the same level..
The next elevation level will be marked in blue.
And finally, we have the highest level — the top of the hill — which we’ll mark in red.
Now the analysis becomes easier.
We can clearly see that only one control point — Control 9 — is located below the lowest index contour, below the light blue contour line we highlighted.
So, Control 9 will be the lowest one, and we’ll start our answer with it.
We also see that only one control point — Control 2 — is located above the index contour we marked in blue. That makes Control 2 the highest and it will be the final point in our ranking.
All the remaining eight control points are positioned between the light blue index contour and the blue index contour.
Next, we see that Control 1 is located in a depression showed by the blue index contour.
This means it lies just below that contour line.
Most likely, Control 1 will be the second-to-last in our elevation ranking — almost the highest control point.
For the remaining control points, we now need to count the regular contour lines, starting from the light blue index contour — the lower one — and determine the elevation level of each point.
To make this process clearer and more visual, we’ll draw red straight lines from the light blue index contour up to each control point. This will help us see how many contour intervals were climbed.
Take, for example, Control 10.
We ascend two contour lines from the light blue index contour, then climb about half a contour interval higher, and from there descend into a pit.
So overall, we’ll record its level as 2+.
Control point number 8 is located after ascending three contour lines — that’s where the feature is placed.
We’ll mark this one as 3+.
Another example: for Control 5, we ascend two contour lines and then go up about half a contour interval further up the hill. So, we’ll record its level as 2.5+.
As for Control 6, we ascend one contour line and then descend into a pit. However, since there’s no form line shown, we can assume that the Control 6 is located just above the first form line.
Therefore, we’ll mark its level as 0.5+.
Control points 10 and 7 are assigned the same elevation level: 2+.
Similarly, control points 5 and 4 share the level 2.5+.
Likewise, control points 8 and 3 are assigned the level 3+.
So, the answer to the task — starting from the lowest point — is as follows:
9, 6, 7=10, 4=5, 3=8, 1, 2.
For more exercises, check out #orienteeringpuzzles #confidentorienteering
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