How are your navigation and map reading skills?

bitemybanger

On a hillwalk and your GPS fails/breaks.
How confident would you be to pull out the map and compass and navigate using grid references and bearings or possibly get a re-section to plot your position if you were lost altogether?
I would consider my own skills to be of a decent standard and am comfortable navagating.
How would describe your own skills?

coach23

remember life before GPS? I prefer using a map and compass my map outlasts the battery in the gps any day of the week

bitemybanger

coach23 wrote: »

remember life before GPS? I prefer using a map and compass my map outlasts the battery in the gps any day of the week

I'd be of a similar opinion although I like my GPS I also enjoy map reading/navigating

Esroh

Love to spend time planning routes and making out route cards.
So on a walk its Map and Compass. Gps is there so I have a track log to load on to comp when I get home.

Road Bandit

I find planning a route using mapping software (trail master / geolives) a great way to really closely study your map on screen. You then have a detailed mental image of your walk. I then walk with the map / compass /gps.

loobylou

Best use I've found for a GPS is the altitude display, lets me know precisely which contour line I'm on on the map.

irishlostboy

i have never used gps.

Git101

irishlostboy wrote: »

i have never used gps.

You win the prize for best username matching thread title

Neither have I, I'm an old fashioned guy, just a map and compass thank you.
Although on a recent night hike one of the lads with me had a gps and he used it a few times to comfirm our position. I'm delighted to say that the map matched the gps.

And maps don't need batteries

Alun

My map reading and navigation skills are fine, having been learnt and refined at an early age in competitive orienteering so I'm not going to forget all that any time soon.

Having said that, these days I use computer based route planning, resulting in both a route downloaded to my GPS and a printed custom map and route card, and use both traditional map/compass techniques and the GPS interchangeably depending on the situation.

The GPS has definite advantages (in terms of ease of use) in some terrain, especially the areas of deep peat hags prevalent here in Wicklow. It's easier to take detours around large or excessively steep hags or expanses of bog without deviating significantly from your planned route.

Alun

coach23 wrote: »

remember life before GPS? I prefer using a map and compass my map outlasts the battery in the gps any day of the week

You need better batteries

hmmm

pfft all this inverse snobbery about GPS It's almost a badge of honour for some walkers to say "I don't use GPS", I find it hard to resist a bit of a gloat as they eagerly put that aside and follow me and my GPS around a barren and foggy set of hills

I think a lot of walkers love the navigation side. The wind and rain on Sunday was atrocious, and we dropped down off the unwalkable hills and still spent a happy few hours wandering around the forests off Mullaghcleevaun simply exploring odd tracks and firebreaks with map and GPS in hand.

A walker can never have enough maps. I'm carrying 3 in Wicklow now and swapping between each.

feck sake lads

reading maps emm totally useless cant get my head around all those lines.and never found anyone patient enough to teach meon different cycling tours spain/france the so called map readers got us lost every day ,kinda made me smile .
but it's a great thing to know that's for sure.i have the maps and the compass but there just ornaments in my pannier.:D

HxGH

Not too bad. I wouldn't be worried tbh. I wouldn't even go for my map. Make it a survival quest!

Names

Its nice to have the GPS as back up,but u can't beat navigating your way around with a map and compass...a better sense of achievment! but ofcourse the GPS still comes in the bag with me,great to have the altitude read out

Sev

I think people attach far too much importance to "map and compass" navigation. Sure a map is important if you're in a place you don't know. It's the emphasis on the importance of a compass that I don't understand.

I do a lot of hiking and mountaineering in a lot of places and I don't have a compass or GPS. If I want to know where I am and what direction I'm facing, I'll rely on a map and basic intuitive indicators.

First, for example, I'll remember that I was walking west 10 minutes ago and I haven't changed course since. Or perhaps I might know that the valley or river that I'm following runs NE-SW. If I'm at the top of a mountain in Wicklow and I can see the sea, then I will know that I have to be facing East. I may feel what direction the wind is blowing from and compare it to what I know from the weather forecast. And in any general case, guessing that the wind is coming from the west is a good bet (or a sea breeze if near the coast on a warm sunny day).

If these methods don't work, I will then resort to a map. I will look for at least two obvious landmarks, such as a lake, mountain, valley or river and then locate their positions on the map to mentally triangulate my position in relation to them to deduce which direction I'm facing. Often I will estimate my altitude based on the intersection of the summits of nearby mountains with the horizon to narrow down my position to being on a certain contour line.

If that fails I'll look to the sky. I will identify the position of the sun or stars (a knowledge of astronomy helps here). The vast majority of the time the sun will either be visible, or its position can be inferred. If you know what time of day it is (and take into account daylight savings time), you can generally get an estimate of direction accurate enough for navigation.

When all of these methods fail, which I find to be rare, then I start regretting not having a compass. This has only happened to me once or twice, and it's because it was night time and the sky was cloudy and the bleak wicklow horizon was difficult to make out.

I do understand that a compass may be essential if you do a lot of hiking at night or in dense fog, but I don't, and I can't imagine the majority of compass wielding walkers do. I would find a better use for a compass when navigating the city in a car at night.

I suspect some people are just bad navigators, with weaker spacial awareness and sense of direction and no amount of navigation training is going to help that.

Donny5

Sev wrote: »

First, for example, I'll remember that I was walking west 10 minutes ago and I haven't changed course since.

Human beings can't walk in a straight line. People who think they are are always walking in a spiral, unless they have external indicators. The human sense of direction is a myth. We don't have one.

You ended your rant with the supposition that most people are bad navigators, but you are in no position to judge. All your navigational techniques, which aren't very precise, rely on good visibility, daylight and easy terrain. You cannot navigate on mountains with your toolset. If you are getting away with that toolset, you aren't doing much hiking or mountaineering.

Sev

I think you misunderstand me Donny. But yes it was a rant.

All the "navigational techniques" I mentioned are the basic things that people ought to practice and be familiar with before they learn to use a compass. In a nutshell, you ought to have a look around first. It's being reliant on a compass that I don't like to see promoted.

I understand the value of a compass when it's needed. But I don't need one half as much as people seem to think you do.

As for the sense of direction. I don't mean it in the way of a physical innate sense, like hearing or touch. Obviously we cant tell direction like some migratory birds can by sensing the earth's magnetic field. But considering our hunter gatherer evolution I suspect some people still retain the faculties to navigate and judge the lay of the land if practiced and trained.

Donny5

Sev wrote: »

I think you misunderstand me Donny. But yes it was a rant.

All the "navigational techniques" I mentioned are the basic things that people ought to practice and be familiar with before they learn to use a compass. In a nutshell, you ought to have a look around first. It's being reliant on a compass that I don't like to see promoted.

I understand the value of a compass when it's needed. But I don't need one half as much as people seem to think you do.

As for the sense of direction. I don't mean it in the way of a physical innate sense, like hearing or touch. Obviously we cant tell direction like some migratory birds can by sensing the earth's magnetic field. But considering our hunter gatherer evolution I suspect some people still retain the faculties to navigate and judge the lay of the land if practiced and trained.

Okay, maybe I went off on a rant myself there. My apologies.

Sev

Well, in retrospect, the post does seem a little conceited. I have somewhat exaggerated the frequency of the success of my "methods" for the sake of making my point seem more poignant. I guess you guys will all have the last laugh when I get stranded and fall off a cliff because I got stuck out on a mountain in the dark without a compass.

Although I just wanted to highlight the point that when people look to their compass, others could just as well look around and know where north is in half the time by applying a little common sense.

I don't necessarily have superior route finding skills. But the fact that I have done a lot of hiking and climbing in remote places without ever having needed one makes me think that there's some sense to what I'm saying.

hmmm

Sev wrote: »

All the "navigational techniques" I mentioned are the basic things that people ought to practice and be familiar with before they learn to use a compass. In a nutshell, you ought to have a look around first. It's being reliant on a compass that I don't like to see promoted.

I see lots of people using compasses that have no awareness whatsoever. They'll take a bearing, get it wrong and off they'll go even when it's obvious that they are going wrong. Some people just lack a bit of basic cop on, or else they get flustered and are too focused on the mechanics of using a compass and seem to lose the ability to think clearly and calmly.

But in saying that, I've often been in situations where I've had to "trust my tools" and was glad I did, even though my intuition was telling me something else. Human instincts in navigation are notoriously bad.

Sev

Here's another few additions that came to me now,

Navigation by light pollution: This is a personal favourite. If you're close to a big town or city you can generally detect its presence by the big dirty orange glow in the sky caused by the scattering or reflection of sodium vapour streetlights in the clouds/atmosphere. This will give you a good indication of where north is if you're roaming the north wicklow hills/dublin mountains at night.

Cloud movement: If you can't tell the wind direction (because you're in a sheltered location with unpredictable air flow), you should look to the clouds. In most cases, the clouds in Ireland will be coming in from the west over the Atlantic.

Air temperature/weather system: If, for example, it's unseasonably cold (like over the cold spell recently), you can hazard a guess that the wind is coming from the north/north east. This is how I knew what side of the road to get the bus into town on a recent trip to Bucharest (I knew that the airport was north of the city).

Sev

And here's another few I just thought of,

Not that you see that many of them in the hills but: Satellite dishes are directed at satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator, which means they always point south.

And here's one that I always noticed in my youth but wasn't sure it was true, but Wikipedia confirms it: Television antennae that you find on people's rooftops in the countryside are generally directional and set up to face the transmitter, which generally means they point in the direction of the nearest town/city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_antenna#Setup

Here's another one, but it's not that relevant to mountaineering in Ireland: Cornices always form on the leeward sides of mountains, which will indicate the prevailing wind direction.

And then of course you have the obvious old favourite: More moss forms on the north side of trees.

Delta Kilo

I consider my map reading and compass skills to be quite good.

There are only a handful of times where i had to rely on using my compass to get me down off a mountain. Its a great sense of achievement and its good to know you know how to do it.

Having said that, I find that some people do place too much importance on the compass and not the actual map and a bit of common sense. I have seen walkers on calm, clear sunny days with a compass hanging off of their necks.

You are far better off in knowing how to identify mountain features instead of concentrating solely on taking a compass bearing as soon as you get to a summit! The compass should be used as a last resort, when you have no visibility essentially.

I dont use GPS because personally I dont like carrying any extra weight that I dont need as usually when I head into the mountains I go there to climb with a rack and a rope in the bag aswell and secondly I dont think a GPS is necessary in Irish mountains.

fergalr

Sev wrote: »

Here's another few additions that came to me now,


Not that you see that many of them in the hills but: Satellite dishes are directed at satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator, which means they always point south.

And here's one that I always noticed in my youth but wasn't sure it was true, but Wikipedia confirms it: Television antennae that you find on people's rooftops in the countryside are generally directional and set up to face the transmitter, which generally means they point in the direction of the nearest town/city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_antenna#Setup

Here's another one, but it's not that relevant to mountaineering in Ireland: Cornices always form on the leeward sides of mountains, which will indicate the prevailing wind direction.

And then of course you have the obvious old favourite: More moss forms on the north side of trees.



Navigation by light pollution: This is a personal favourite. If you're close to a big town or city you can generally detect its presence by the big dirty orange glow in the sky caused by the scattering or reflection of sodium vapour streetlights in the clouds/atmosphere. This will give you a good indication of where north is if you're roaming the north wicklow hills/dublin mountains at night.

None of which are any use in the mountains in a fog, or a white out, or even heavy rain at night.

Sev wrote: »

Cloud movement: If you can't tell the wind direction (because you're in a sheltered location with unpredictable air flow), you should look to the clouds. In most cases, the clouds in Ireland will be coming in from the west over the Atlantic.

Air temperature/weather system: If, for example, it's unseasonably cold (like over the cold spell recently), you can hazard a guess that the wind is coming from the north/north east. This is how I knew what side of the road to get the bus into town on a recent trip to Bucharest (I knew that the airport was north of the city).

None of which are any good if the wind is blowing a different direction than you think it is (perhaps because you are in the mountains, and the wind is being affected locally by their presence).


Now, I completely agree that some people have an overreliance on the compass.
Whenever I'm trying to teach a friend to navigate, I always tell them that the compass is a tool which points north (mostly!); and that's really all it does.
All the advanced techniques of using it are window dressing, on that one basic piece of information. Someone who learned too much, too fast can get wrapped up in various systems of using it to navigate, and forget that one basic point, and let the direction they think the compass has told them to go override their basic common sense.

Occasionally, there are world class orienteers who compete without compasses.
But the vast majority of elite orienteers use one.
Its not because they can't read a map; they are amazing at reading maps.
Its because compasses are useful, and provide another piece of information.

Sev wrote: »

When all of these methods fail, which I find to be rare, then I start regretting not having a compass. This has only happened to me once or twice, and it's because it was night time and the sky was cloudy and the bleak wicklow horizon was difficult to make out.

Maybe next time it does, you'll be in serious trouble?
Judgement is a very important part of navigation.
With respect, I think the attitude here shows poor judgement.

A compass weighs only 20-30grams, and can be bought for a little over a tenner...

You might be the best map reader in the world; but if you find yourself in conditions you didn't predict where a compass is essential, you might be in a lot of trouble. Maybe the weather changes suddenly? Or maybe you, or a member of your party gets injured, and you move more slowly than you expected?

Being aware of the fallibility of our own judgements, and constantly checking and rechecking the assumptions we are making, is a vital part of navigating well. A compass provides another way to do that.
If nothing else, they provide a useful check on our conclusions from our reading of the map and the terrain.
And maybe they save our necks when we make a mistake.

I don't know any navigators that never make mistakes.

It weighs about 1/50th as much as your litre of water.

Sev

They're all very good counter-points.

I don't disagree with anything you are saying. And I'm not championing the suggestion that we should all go out into the hills without a compass.

Just because I don't carry one doesn't mean everybody else shouldn't. The reason I don't carry a compass is not because I "shun" them out of some sense of distrust or ethical elitism. But because I don't have one, and am not bothered enough to go out and buy one, there are reasons for this.

I choose to accept a certain amount of risk that I may get lost in fog, each time I go out into the mountains without one. In the same way, I choose to accept a certain amount of risk each time I go out into the mountains without sun cream, or a map, or a first aid kit, or gps, or sunglasses, or rope, or bivvy equipment or a stove, or water, or reserve food.

The reason I choose not to carry SOME of these things SOMEtimes, is because experience has taught me, that for my chosen activity or route in the current conditions that they may simply be unnecessary (and often the issue of weight and portability on a technical climb make it unfeasible).

As a result of the feedback I have received on this thread, I have decided that the next time I'm in the Great Outdoors or 53 North, and I remember, I'll pick one up. I'll choose one that is very small, light and unintrusive. I'll hide it in a small pocket in my bag and forget about it until some time that I actually need it and remember.

The point of my rant was to illustrate that people overuse the compass and make "to much of a big deal of it" when theres a wealth of common sense one can apply before needing to take it out. And my way of trying to prove this point, is by drawing attention to myself: the fact that I get by fine without one.

Don't confuse this with me advocating that we should all go into the hills without one.

Kevin Duffy

A lot of what's being described as common sense or soft skills in this thread is actually just guesswork based on unknowns, variables, assumptions and information which won't actually help - heading the right way off the summit of Lug or Corrantuthail in bad conditions won't be helped by knowing where the sattelite dishes are aimed or an assumption that you haven't altered your direction in the absense of external reference points.

A lot of the criticism of compasses and the arguments against having one is actually a criticism of poor compass use or an inexplicably casual attitude towards carrying one - that's not the compass' fault.

There's a huge difference between over-reliance and popularity. The reason the use of map and compass together has become a popular (actually, pre-dominant) method of navigation is because it's well tested, easy to learn to do properly and works.
You can use other methods of gathering information along with it or instead of depending on circumstances and conditions, but if you want to be independent and safe on enjoyable days in the hills, no reason to not use a map and compass and get the skills to use them.

Kevin.

Alun

+1 on all that. I'm not sure whether the people here who are advocating these non-technical navigational 'methods' ever go out in the kind of conditions I regularly go out in, or sometimes despite all precautions, unexpectedly find myself in. Like you say, find yourself on the featureless top of an unfamiliar mountain when the cloud comes down, and see how far you get then with looking at moss growth on the side of a tree or satellite dishes.

As you say, Lug is a classic case in this regard, and you only need to look at the callout logs on either of the two Wicklow based MRT's to see how often someone gets disoriented on the summit and ends up heading off in the wrong direction including this one from only last weekend http://www.wicklowmountainrescue.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=198:lug-rescue12211&catid=36:news&Itemid=106

I was out that day too, and the day started out beautifully, with no cloud in sight or forecast, but on route to the top of Mullaghcleevaun from East Top we actually had a near whiteout with snow / hail for a brief period of time.

adagio

+1 (Alun/Kevin)

There is no substitute for hitting the hills w/a full bag of tricks including a map/compass and the knowledge to use them accurately.
Some day you may find yourself in a total whiteout on Lug,Corrantuthail,Ben...etc. All you may have is your map/compass/pacing and plenty of practice using them.
Many experienced people have been caught out by unexpected conditions.. I've seen solo winter climbers wandering on the Ben totally lost, people who know Wicklow, 'like the back of their hand', lost on Lug.
There are many people each year who have to be rescued (best case scenario) or who die (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/highlands-claim-15th-life-another-climber-dies-on-ben-nevis-as-winds-whip-up-ferocious-whiteouts-1396869.html)
So the question begs; Why go out unprepared? If the condition dictate that you don't required the map then don't use it. But if the sh1t hits the fan you'll need that bag of tricks.
Be safe.
A.