There are many ways to navigate from the landscape such as the position of the sun and certain plants growing on certain sides of a mountain. However, this section contains only basic landscape navigation skills that can be applied to anything.
Hand railing
If the feature you want to navigate to is out of sight and is small and as a result might be hard to navigate to on a bearing you can use hand railing. Say you wanted to navigate to a gate in a fence but hill fog had shrouded it from view. However, you could see the fence and after looking at your map confirmed that it lead to the gate you would follow it. This is Hand Railing. Simple!
When hand railing be sure to keep checking your map. |
PacingBefore you go on your hike work out how many steps it takes you to travel 100 meters by measuring 100m on flat ground (you can measure the distance on your map). Then simply count how many steps it takes you (using your normal pace) to travel 100m. This can easily help you travel 350m for example. Say it takes you 50 steps to travel 100m. Half 50 to get 25(gives you 50m step count) and times 50 by 3 to get 150 (gives you 300m step count)add 25 and 150 together to get your 350m step count (170). When navigating along a handrail for 350m simply count to 170 steps and you should have reached your attack point.
If you think you may loose count of how far you have been on a 300m section (for example) pick up 3 stones and drop one for every 100m you walk. When they have all gone you know you are at your destination. Aiming OffYou can also take a bearing to a hand rail and estimate the distance from your position on the hand rail (such as a river) to your attack point (such as a bridge). Then pace the distance until you find the attack point. By doing this you can navigate to an out of view attack point with something to guide you if you aren't confident enough with bearings.
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