[jltsiren]

> Navigating with a map and compass is a difficult skill that takes a lot of practise

That's a serious exaggeration. Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school when I was that age, and then it was practiced a few times every year. Probably to ensure that men didn't waste too much time learning basic skills in mandatory military service.

[reportingsjr]

Navigating with a map and compass on a well worn, maintained trail is one thing. Using a map and compass in an area with numerous social trails, unofficial/unmarked trails, animal paths, etc is a different beast. Especially if you're in an area where it is either difficult to see landmarks, such as in a heavily forested gorge area, or there are minimal landmarks.

Last month I took a trip to the swiss alps, and planned out a route with a topo map to try and link up some minor peaks off trail. Got to the first peak and realized the section I thought was a fairly steep, maybe tricky 3rd class, was actually well in to 4th class terrain and I had no chance. All because I misread the map!

[AdamJacobMuller]

> Using a map and compass in an area with numerous social trails, unofficial/unmarked trails, animal paths, etc is a different beast

Sure, it's different, but it's hardly difficult. I was a boy scout and was doing it regularly at 10 years old. The scoutmasters would hide caches of things (candy/toys/etc) in the woods somewhere and we were given compasses + paper maps only, not that there was anything else we would have reasonably had back in those days.

[s0rce]

I'm pretty experienced and if you lose track of where you are it can be very difficult to find yourself with a map and compass, often requiring significant moving around. This is particularly true in poor visibility or when everything is covered in snow. If you keep your bearings and know where you are (which you really need to when relying on a map and compass) then I agree its not terrible to navigate.

[jfoutz]

100% yup, it's surprisingly easy to not know where you are.

I was never much of a scout, but the best advice I ever got was go downhill. If you find water, follow the water down. People live downhill. people use water. Finding somebody, anybody, means food and shelter. There are a handful of box canons in the world where this doesn't work, but like, you should know that there is one nearby before the outset. And even if you fall into the box canyon trap, you know where you are.

Yeah, for any casual hiker that goes way off into the woods, first, you're and idiot. Second, why are you wearing cotton? Third, go downhill.

[s0rce]

Usually yes but one exception is very rugged mountains with steep valleys like the coast range in north Vancouver or big sur. You'll end up trapped.

[jfoutz]

That's a great point. I was working on the assumption that you had a map and a compass. When you get to dangerous terrain, hopefully you can pin down that you're on one of two or three possible spots - so maybe you can figure out where you are.

Regardless, yeah, wandering off in the woods unprepared is dangerous. and it's easy to get hurt and have worse things happen.

[bmacho]

Erm, no. Better to go up on a mountain so you can see where you are.

[reportingsjr]

A simple scenario to test your idea out: you're hiking lower on a mountain and not 100% confident exactly where you are on a trail. An unexpected thunderstorm appears and you want to bail ASAP.

Do you climb up to an exposed area in the mountains to figure out where you are? While a storm rolls in?

Or, do you stay roughly where you are, lower down, and try to use map to locate yourself?

[lmc]

> That's a serious exaggeration.

It really isn't. I did all that as a kid and still get hopelessly lost. Source: Experienced hiker, backpacker and mountain runner, over several continents.

[haswell]

The trouble here is that now we have two opposing anecdotes.

Makes me think there is more to this. I suspect there are other major variables in play. I get hopelessly lost. My brother is exactly the opposite. He has special awareness and a sense of direction that is natural and innate. I think my issue is Aphantasia.

This makes me think the training is both reasonable and natural for some, and extremely difficult for others.

Pre-technology, tracking/navigation was a highly valued skillset, and seemingly evidence that some people were just much better at it than others if accounts of famous trackers/navigators are to be believed.

[makeitdouble]

We’re on an international board with people doing vastly different things.

I do a lot of casual hiking, and can see places that have basically no affordance and no permanent paths for kilometers. I would be completely lost without GPS giving me my current position, and can’t see what I would use to derive that just from a map and a compass. People doing it the old fashion way probably keep track of the sun position as they walk and somewhat have a sense of the distance they moved, but that’s way beyond “just use a map and a compass” territory.

Then a lot of people hike in the mountains with named paths and a clear view of the other peaks, which makes it a lot more trivial than other situations, for instance.

[randomsearch]

I’ve never met a single hiker who could easily navigate with map and compass in low visibility. I mean, how do you think you’re doing to do it if you can barely see your hand in front of your face? Navigating via map is ok if you have good visibility and can pick out landmarks. If you have a compass and can at least see some of the surrounding terrain a short distance away, you can maybe do it. But, as others pointed out, stick yourself on a mountain with no well worn tourist trail and low visibility and a compass won’t save you. It’s mostly trial and error at that point.

As my partner put it when discussing a group of fell runners - they all talk about navigating via compass, but in reality they just use gps all the time.

Until fairly recently I navigated entirely by map. The maps in the U.K. are slightly inaccurate despite their reputation, so even on a good day I’d make small mistakes. I switched to a phone map so I didn’t have to carry a big cumbersome physical map with me, and then I realised the value of gps. I’ve hiked in low visibility since when I would have definitely have gotten lost without gps - a gazillion criss crossing trails, high erosion, long flat featureless moorland with no landmarks whatsoever… challenging on a good day.

[samatman]

Orienteering is a sport, people do it competitively.

That implies that, while talent for it varies, it's difficult to do well.

[prawn]

I've done a sport which is like orienteering in rougher terrain and generally for a longer period (24 hour events). You're navigating by moonlight or with headlamps for a reasonable portion of the event. I've never felt that the compass and map aspect is the difficult bit that defines the top competitors - they win because they run for longer, pick a better overall route strategy, can freelance by reading contours in rugged terrain, etc. You usually get lost because you make personal interpretations of landscape (is this the fourth watercourse since the knoll, or the fifth?) rather than mess up with the compass.

You compete as pairs or more, so you always confirm compass bearings with each other, then confirm a target on the landscape.

Up thread, someone talks about low visibility in fog, but it's probably not too different from using a headlamp. You pick a bush or a stick if you have to, and try not to take your eyes off it.

[c23gooey]

That sounds fun! What is it called?

[prawn]

Rogaining. Invented in Australia, popular in a few countries in Europe, and does exist in the US too. This is my local organisation: https://sarogaining.com.au/

The 24-hour events are the majors (state/national/international championships) but they also have 6-15 hour events plus 3-hour urban events for newcomers/families. Plus a cycling version. The 6 hour events are usually in pine forests with logging/walking trails so can suit rookies as well.

Two of my kids (9yo and 6yo) and I won the family category last year (no other family entered the 24 hour event! ;)) in our state championships. 40km in 24 hours. I let them sleep from 11pm until 6am, though to be honest my ankles needed the rest too.

It's not all brawn either. People stay competitive into their 70s. Mixed or female teams are always at or near the top. Some 13yo girls came second in one 6hr event a few years back (they just ran the entire time but got beaten by semi-pro marathon runners). You can finish near the top by walking quickly or trotting, but picking a good route, being careful with map and compass, etc - no one characteristic wins the 24 hour events.

[aplummer]

Sounds like rogaining. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogaining

[MichaelCollins]

Riding bicycles is also a sport, but children learn how to do it well enough. Orienteering as a sport is done for speed, precision, or optimal route planning. The basics of knowing how to use a map and compass and figuring out roughly where you are can be (and is) taught to children.

[recursive]

The sport comes from doing it better than the competitors. It says nothing about how difficult it is to do well enough. Running is a sport.

[PeterisP]

The tricky part of orienteering as a sport is doing it very rapidly, wasting zero time while running, but all competitive folks manage do it roughly equally (there is some advantage in being able to accurately predict which of two routes will be slightly faster due to terrain) and the actual competition is mostly about running speed, not about map reading.

[peyton]

Come on, we teach it in cub scouts.

[dataflow]

> I get hopelessly lost. My brother is exactly the opposite.

That's definitely an interesting anecdote. Just to double check - I assume this is when you're on the same trail, right? So the terrain/trail difficulty isn't a factor here?

[haswell]

Correct. He just has a significantly better sense of direction and spacial awareness than I do.

[watwut]

I dont think they are opposing anecdotes. One of them is about 10 years old kids having a lesson in terrain and situation picked by teachers. The kid succeed and then conclude they are super smart navigators able to get out of any situation with compass.

And the other one is adults getting lost while hiking in difficult terrain/weather.

Teachers have genuine interest in all kids getting back reasonably fast and all kids learning something. Teachers try to pick terrain with just right difficulty for kids. The kids get to exercise a bit of navigation, learn something in safe setup. That is not the same as adult hiker in random place.

[lmc]

> The trouble here is that now we have two opposing anecdotes.

Actually, i was agreeing with the GP, so it's at least 2 v 1 ;-)

[godelski]

Let me make it 2v2 then.

But I'll also note that I only know a handful of people that drive around without putting on their GPS. The people that use GPS tend to be bad at navigating without it. The people that don't use GPS tend to be better.

I'm not sure why this is controversial, given that we could rewrite the headline as "Study shows that those that practice spacial skills are better at spacial skills." The fact that everyone is arguing here seems a bit silly to me.

[tsimionescu]

The argument is not about the article, it is about whether "primarily rely on a map and compass, your GPS is only backup at best" is good advice for amateur hikers.

[godelski]

Which I still personally agree with. Until recently GPS has been a pretty expensive tool. Even now, a dedicated device costs hundreds of dollars and typically require subscriptions. Your phone also isn't going to be reliable since its battery life is extremely limited (especially when people forget to turn off their data and so their battery drains even faster than expected). This is probably the dominating factor in that recommendation. If you are going to rely on your phone for navigation you BETTER have a backup. If you are going to rely on a map, you SHOULD have a backup, but it isn't necessary. They are going with the safest option because they recognize that people will typically bring only one form of navigation. The only thing I'd change is removing the "only" and "at best" part from your quote. "Primarily rely on a map and compass, your GPS is a backup."

[ghaff]

Well, at least primarily rely on a map. I do tend to carry a compass in less familiar/more challenging situations but for hiking on trails a map by itself will generally do the job.

Some people are talking about situations that would be very challenging without GPS--low visibility/no trails--and I'd just say that I'd definitely want backup in those conditions. I wouldn't want to depend on a single phone.

[denkmoon]

>Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school when I was that age, and then it was practiced a few times every year.

When I was in school, in the 90s and 00s, in Australia, we did this maybe a handful of times throughout my entire education. Not a single time that I can recall we actually managed to navigate correctly.

Theoretically navigating with a map and compass is not hard, but I sure as shit would not want my life depending on my ability to do so.

[kurthr]

What was the declination on your compass set to?

Navigating with a low resolution map without a good view of peaks/valleys is hard enough... but if you don't realize magnetic north is off (or correct the wrong direction), it's easy to end up lost.

[mbeex]

> Theoretically navigating with a map and compass is not hard, but I sure as shit would not want my life depending on my ability to do so.

Would you rather rely on your phone that hasn't been charged for two days?

Actually, the situation is not even a trade-off. There is no dichotomy. When you use both, you simply gain a convenient extra layer of redundancy.

[ARandomerDude]

When I was in the military they would drop us off by vehicle or helicopter at some unknown spot in the woods, give us a map and compass, not tell us where we were starting, and tell us to collect stamps at certain waypoints within a given amount of time. It's much harder than you think if you start out lost.

[daleharvey]

I wasn't talking about how to orient a map, I was speaking about traversing mountains where being metres off route is potentially fatal with little to no visibility. Saying that is difficult is not exagerating.

[throw827474737]

And there you would tell the average joe: Use GPS and you can do it!! Please not!??

[ImPostingOnHN]

that seems like it's outside of the scope of "extremely incapable hikers who just want to go 1 route from A to B with no danger" unless there's a super chill trail or something

[sandworm101]

It depends on terrain. I hiked/climber in BC for a decade pre-gps. We carried maps but rarely ever used them for navigation, as opposed to planning. Mountain peaks on the horizon (real mountains, not UK hills) made navigation very intuitive. Even in zero visibility, the slope of the terrain keeps you orientated. Sound is also a huge aspect. One can "feel" a forrest through the fog because it sucks up sound, as opposed to rock mountains that echo.

[withinboredom]

Def learned this skill in the army. Still count my steps as a habit. I can tell you how many kilometers I walk, and it is usually almost what my watch says I walked.

I’m still not sure which one is more correct.

[bootlegboots]

lol i did geology for my undergrad which required making geologic maps of areas by map and compass. My 2 cents is that knowing generally where you are when it's good visibility and there are clear dinstinct landmarks is easy peasy (eg there is a road that generally goes east west, and I know it's south of me, there is a single hill that is generally in that direction and a lake I can see in that direction means I'm probably in this area). Knowing exactly where you are when there is not good visibility is significantly more challenging because you need to keep accurate track of exactly what direction and how far you have gone (with some adjustment for elevation) because your current location is constantly being calculated relative to your previous location. The math is easy peasy, it's just a lot to mentally track for a sustained period of time especially if you've been out all day and conditions arent great. As soon as you lose track of your paces, you just gotta hope someone in the group remembers or hope that there is some reference point that you can see otherwise that map is gonna be looking pretty wonky lol.

[seer]

That form of navigating is sufficiently challenging that it is a sport in its own right - orienteering.

There is no “navigate by gps” sport, because that is the easy one.

[watwut]

> Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school

Yeah, but most of them still consistently sucked at it. The elementary school terrain was picked so that it is as easy as possible, with zero possibility to get lost or confused.

[throwawaysleep]

If something needs to be taught in class and practiced several times annually, it is a relatively expensive skill.

A lot more expensive than using a GPS.