Years ago there was a couple from Arkansas who went hiking in Big Bend which is a pretty expansive place. The woman was a reporter if I’m recalling correctly. So they go off on a day hike together and promptly became lost. She later related in her multiple part story of the five or so days they were lost that the map they had with them was not very detailed and was something like an inch of it for the area they were walking. I have a friend who lives in Texas and enjoys hiking there. We were discussing the lost people and I told him that if they would have simply taken a good sighting compass and chose two distant landmarks about 90° from each other and marked the vectors right at their car they would have been able to get back by dinner time that first day with that information alone. They would not even have needed a map though they should have made sure and had a good detailed map as well.

Those who do venture off from their vehicles should have and know how to use a compass for triangulation. One really needs to start out using it, not when they become lost. Vehicles become hidden in the landscape as do camps and anything one might find. Some landscapes are particularly confusing. I think most here know all this but we’ve come across quite a few that only use the compass to orient their map. Shooting an actual bearing is something foreign to them.

In the Mountaineers 10 Essentials navigation is #1 for an important reason.