I intend to do my first adventure race in a few months and am looking for a book that will help me learn the basics of land navigation/orienteering with a map and compass. Any recommendations?
Hey KO - adventure race director here.
I’m sure some of the military folks will tell you differently, but I think the key to land nav is practice. Real, in the field practice. When I learned, I made up a course on paper and went out and found the points on my course.
Get yourself a topo map, a compass, a GPS (for backup if you get REALLY lost). Before you go out, familiarize yourself with the topo map and the features on it. Know what roads, trails, streams, hilltops, reentrants look like. Know what the countour interval is. Know how old the map is. That way when you are out practicing you can start to get the feel of translating the map features to the actual land features.
On the topo map, mark some points that you’ll use as checkpoints. Ones to use starting out may be road intersections, stream crossings, hilltops, etc. Make them obvious points starting out. When you get to each point, verify using the GPS.
Few other points:
- The compass is NEVER wrong. Despite what the terrain features are around you and where you think you are.
- Go to an O-meet
- Practice with someone who is very experienced
Lastly, and probably most important thing in AR. You may be fast, but if you are going fast in the wrong direction you are slow.
Hope this helps a little.
atl_tony, you wouldn’t happen to be the director of the Blue Ridge Mtn race, would you? I see from your web site that you’re in Woodstock, GA, which is close to where that race takes place. If so, that’s the race I’m planning to do. I’m looking forward to it.
I plan to take a two-day course taught by a local army land nav instructor but I was hoping to review a good basic book beforehand and to try some of the exercises you mentioned.
NOLS puts out a fairly decent book on the basics of map and compass work. There are others also. Practicing won’t help much if you don’t know the basics: orienting your map to the compass, what all of those squiggly lines mean,figuring out how to plot a course, etc. Once you get an idea of what all that means go practice.
No I’m not, but I know Ron Zadroga very well. He put on the USARA nationals course and does the BRMAR every year - very good guy and good race director. His races used to be pretty straightforward but over the last few years he has made them more nav based. If you have time, get up to Blue Ridge and train on the Aska trails and trails around Brawley Mountain and the Swinging Bridge. I have a feeling this year may use the Rich Mountain area too.
I directed the NGAR and SMAR and designed the course for the Checkpoint Zero Adventure Race the last two years.
Hey KO - adventure race director here.
I’m sure some of the military folks will tell you differently, but I think the key to land nav is practice. Real, in the field practice. When I learned, I made up a course on paper and went out and found the points on my course.
Get yourself a topo map, a compass, a GPS (for backup if you get REALLY lost). Before you go out, familiarize yourself with the topo map and the features on it. Know what roads, trails, streams, hilltops, reentrants look like. Know what the countour interval is. Know how old the map is. That way when you are out practicing you can start to get the feel of translating the map features to the actual land features.
On the topo map, mark some points that you’ll use as checkpoints. Ones to use starting out may be road intersections, stream crossings, hilltops, etc. Make them obvious points starting out. When you get to each point, verify using the GPS.
Few other points:
- The compass is NEVER wrong. Despite what the terrain features are around you and where you think you are.
- Go to an O-meet
- Practice with someone who is very experienced
Lastly, and probably most important thing in AR. You may be fast, but if you are going fast in the wrong direction you are slow.
Long time military guy here…and I agree with you 100%. Some things are extremely difficult to learn out of a book, and effective land nav is one of them.
The last sentence says it all!
I am a land surveyor and spend most of my time in the wilderness using quad maps and a compass to try and find section corners. Like the others have said, the best way to learn and get comfortable with it is to spend time doing it. Orienteering meets are a great way to get your skills going too. If you find navigation is not for you, ya could always find a team that already has a good navigator.
Have you tried your local REI? I went to one a few years ago at our local store which held them monthly. They were taught by the local search and rescue group.
Add a military protractor to your list of equipment, should be able to get one at a good outdoor store or military surplus place. It is a transparent piece of plastic that you use to generate 8 digit MGRS coordinates. I like the ones with the squares on the inside rather than the triangles. Poke a small hole in the center and take a piece of thread and insert it into the center, tie a small knot on both ends so it doesn’t come out and you can use for quick azimuths. If you use white string you can also calibrate it to the map’s scale by coloring it to match the distances. Makes guaging distance and direction easier.
http://www.maptools.com/products/MilScale.html
http://www.uspatriotstore.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=390 I prefer this one, especially since it has a reference on it for magnetic declination. 1-2 degrees may not make that much difference if there are good landmarks around but if you are using dead reckoning any errors are going to be increased their further you are traveling.
When navigating, always ask yourself, “does this make sense.” Years back I took a turn too soon because we hadn’t traveled as far as we thought and we ended up losing a lot of altitude. A quick glance of our map and the topo lines would have told us we shouldn’t had lost that much altitude and we could have corrected before it was too late.
http://www.marines.cc/downloads/guidebook-of-essential-subjects/part5.pdf
Scroll down towards the end, and there’s a fairly decent few pages of summary.
Before buying anything from REI or something like that, I’d Google “Land Navigation” or “Orienteering” and look for either the Boy Scouts Handbook or Merit Badge pamphlets or the USMC or US Army references. The Boy Scouts manuals are designed for kids to learn from, so they should be easy, and the military manuals are usually no-nonsense and also designed for young guys who maybe don’t have college educations.