Registered: 02/23/07
Posts: 1735
Loc: California (southern)
My typical turf is somewhat different - the desert southwest and its attending mountains, which can be full of brush and very tall, dense trees at higher elevations. When I am bushwhacking off trail, what counts is the drainage in which you are traveling and how the trend of that drainage is related to your eventual goal. The critical points are the places where you will hop over to another drainage or follow a ridge line. Usually the precise compass direction in which you are going is fairly irrelevant, since you are often searching for a lane that will get you around the thick brush or waterfall, etc. that poses an obstacle. If you are following a trail, you need to check to ascertain if the trail is depicted accurately on the map (many are omitted or are works of fiction); sometimes you are sketching in the trail as you saunter along.
In practice, I am rarely consulting my compass, but I am constantly observing terrain features and confirming my position. I do, however, religiously carry a compass, because when you need it, nothing else will do quite as well, not even a GPS, which these days, is almost always along for the ride as well.
IN the Man Who Walked Through Time, Colin Fletcher tells of trying to signal his supply plane with a mirror, a large rectangle of red material...and then discovered in the desert of the southwest that a blue tarp was the only thing they saw!
"When I am bushwhacking off trail, what counts is the drainage in which you are traveling and how the trend of that drainage is related to your eventual goal. The critical points are the places where you will hop over to another drainage or follow a ridge line."
Oldranger, it wasn't until this year that I discovered this. Now it seems obvious.
I think in terms of drainage systems. As long as you are in the same system, you can keep one hand on the slope and go around it. But if you have to change hands, you are in a different system. This is a generality as I'm not sure it is perfect.
I don't know if I'm right or wrong on all this. But your post is the first thing I've seen that even hints at it.
Registered: 02/23/07
Posts: 1735
Loc: California (southern)
The thing is,in the typical basin and range mountain, you know you are somewhere within XYZ Canyon, although you may not know precisely where, but you will be there until you come out, by traveling up or down the canyon or climbing over one of the sides. That is where it gets interesting, due to cliffs, waterfalls, dense brush, and the like.
Looking for overdue hikers,very few were lost, in the sense that they had no idea of where they were. They knew they were in Sabino Canyon (a notorious canyon near Tucson), somewhere in the middle, but they didn't know how to get out....
On trips in Colorado Plateau country, where the whole trip might follow a deeply incised stream for a long ways, we have counted bends and meanders very carefully, so that we can figure out which side canyon to take to continue on our trip. It wasn't a trivial task, especially if the map was off.
While I do carry my compass, I can only recall using it once since I left the military in 2006. I was up at the Mogollon Rim a couple of winters ago to do some camping and small game hunting. I picked a page of my topo map, drove to it, took a random road, parked my truck, threw on the ol pack, and headed off into the sticks.
I went wherever I felt like walking and did not stop to look at the printed 8.5x11" topo map I brought along. As it was getting dark, I climbed a decent peak and broke out the compass. I looked at the surrounding terrain, looked at my map, shot a couple of azimuths, and figured out where I was pretty darn quick. The next day, I climbed a small mountain and called a buddy to let him know where I would be for the next month, and how to find my truck.
Other than something like that, I cannot see really needing my compass. I am beginning to learn the terrain oldranger knows so well.
I thought of an exercise that can be done easily with scouts. Lay out a zigzag course with chalklines. Have each point be 1 to 3 feet apart. Label the distances to make it easy on them.
Have them lay their compass on the line to get the bearings. Record the bearing and distances.
Then draw a scale map where 1 cm = 1 foot. On the other side, scale up. Go to a field and set up the same course with 10 feet equaling 1 foot.
This might help for those interested in the Orienteering Merit badge.
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