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Hiking Navigation Gear List

My Navigation Toolkit consists of a couple of maps, compass, whistle, watch:altimeter, pencil, paper, and a smartphone running the Gaia Navigation App
My Navigation Toolkit consists of a couple of maps, compass, whistle, watch, altimeter, pencil, paper, and a smartphone running the Gaia Navigation App. Sometimes, I also bring a GPS receiver.

I carry a variety of navigation tools and devices on my hikes and backpacking trips because I’ve never found once that’s perfectly reliable or easy to use in all situations. Every navigation tool and device has different strengths and weakness, as I describe below.

Maps

Map quality varies widely, which is why I usually carry two or three maps when I go hiking and backpacking. For example, many hiking-specific maps only show hiking trails even though they intersect ski trails, snowmobile trails, rural roads, fire lanes, or old logging skid ways. That can get real confusing if you happen across them and they’re not on your hiking trail map. Hiking trails may be also be closed or rerouted, bridges washed by spring floods, or new trails created that aren’t reflected on published maps. I often find that carrying multiple paper maps from different sources gives me more useful information than one alone.

Compass

While I’m a compass expert, I use it a lot less than you might expect, mainly when I can’t see where I’m going off-trail in dense forest or fog. The rest of the time, I follow landforms or handrails depicted on my map, like ridges that head in the direction I want to go.

One reason I use a compass instead of a GPS or smartphone app for following bearings is that it’s faster and simpler to quickly glance at, without having to fumble around with buttons or a touch screen. And the lack of batteries means that it will work all the time. A compass alone can’t tell you where you are or where you’ve been however, which is the biggest benefit of using a GPS-enabled device.

I carry a Suunto M3 compass on my hikes. It has a declination adjustment, so I can navigate using map north, instead of magnetic north. This means that I never have to add or subtract degrees to bearings when translating between the map and a bearing that I want to follow on my compass or from the field to the map. Adding and subtracting declination adjustments is a huge source of confusion and errors, for beginners and experts alike, but that goes away with a declination adjustable compass.

With a declination-adjusted compass, the needle of your compass still points to magnetic north, but the bearing on your compass bezel is offset using the declination marked on your map, so that the number of degrees that you read off the bezel factors the declination in, without you having to add or subtract degrees in your head.

Watch

I wear a solar-powered watch when I hike, a Casio Pathfinder. A watch is great for estimating the distance you’ve traveled when hiking along a trail. I typically hike at 2 miles per hour, including breaks. Knowing this lets me estimate my position on a map as long as I make a note of when I’ve started my hike. It’s surprisingly accurate. A watch also lets me keep track of how long it is to sunset, so I know when I should start looking for a campsite.

Whistle

I always bring a Fox 40 classic whistle on my hikes. Why is a whistle a navigational instrument? It’s a lot louder than the human voice and you won’t get as exhausted blowing on it as you will shouting. But how do you navigate with it? Easy, when I hike with other people, it’s easy to lose track of them in dense forest or fog. Blowing my whistle helps me signal them, so we can regroup. A whistle can also be used to signal directions to a partner; for example, 1 blast – move right, or 2 blasts – move left, when we’re using a navigation technique called leapfrogging.

What’s leapfrogging? When hiking off-trail in a forest, you find a tree on your bearing and hike toward it, so you don’t have to keep looking at your compass all the time. Do this over and over, and you’ll keep hiking in the direction you want to go. You use a similar technique when there are no trees, but you send a partner out ahead of you on the bearing to be a virtual tree (a fixed point you can sight on), and hike to them before repeating the process. This is very useful in fog when you can’t see anything except your partner’s silhouette in the distance. Using a whistle to get them aligned on the bearing, using the 1 blast, 2 blast technique described above, is useful when you can’t hear your voices above the wind.

Altimeter

I have a barometric altimeter built into my watch which measures my elevation. I use it much more than my compass because it lets me pinpoint my elevation on a topographic map. For example, if I’ve been hiking up a mountain on a trail, I can look at my altimeter, read my elevation, and pinpoint my location using the contour lines on a map. My altimeter is accurate to within 20′, so I can get an excellent position fix.

Barometric altimeters measure air pressure and are prone to fluctuation when weather fronts pass through, so you need to check and recalibrate them during the day. Whenever you pass a landmark with a known elevation marked on your maps such as a mountain summit or viewpoint, usually every 3-4 hours, it’s good to check that your altimeter matches the elevation marked on the map. If not, you adjust it so that they match, and continue on your way.

GaiaGPS Navigation App (iPhone or Android)

GaiaGPS is a very easy-to-use and comprehensive navigation app available on iPhone or Android phones. It includes all of the maps (including 24ks) you’ll ever need for free, unlike Garmin devices where they cost extra. You can download maps for offline use, create waypoints and routes, track yourself, and find your current location. It’s also highly interoperable with your other smartphone apps, making it easy to transfer data between your phone and computer. I use it on most of my hikes if only to track myself so I can publish tracks of my hikes.

Of course, the beauty of carrying a smartphone navigation app is that it weighs nothing since you’re probably carrying a phone anyway. I can get a full day out of battery life on my iPhone when running Gaia, simply by turning off app notifications, and running it in airplane mode, and low battery mode.

Pencil and Paper

I always bring a pencil and some paper on trips because I like to plan my hike at night for the next day, including the trails I’ll be hiking, distances, elevations, and key landmarks. A pencil and paper are good for recording bearing changes, times, and observations, leaving notes for other hikers, creating shopping lists, and so on. While you can record a lot of this information on a smartphone, that uses battery power. You also can’t hand someone a note written on a smartphone, unless you both have network access. Paper notes written with a pencil are more portable.

Staying Found

While all of these navigation resources, tools, and devices are useful in different ways, the best way to use them is to frequently check your position and validate it on your map, so you always know where you are. This process, called “staying found” is the essence of good navigation.

When navigating, it’s best to use several different data points to confirm your location. For example, you can use an altimeter elevation, a bearing for the trail you’re hiking, and a visible landform or two on separate compass bearings to determine where you are on the trail and that you’re headed in the right direction. GPS devices and smartphone apps, for all their strengths, can generate incorrect results, especially if they’re configured incorrectly, so it’s always best to confirm your location with as many devices and sources of information as possible to stay found. If they’re all in agreement, you’re probably where you think you are.

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17 comments

  1. Thanks for the article on navigation.
    I really wish there was a good course for this. I have bought the last book on navigation you recommended, and still am working through it. Nothing beats using it in the field with a person with a lot of experience.
    I just learn better this way.

  2. I have to agree that “Staying Found” is the most important navigation tool that all hikers can use when out on the trail. A goodly number of hikers don’t regularly keep track of their position on the map so when it finally comes time for them to try and figure out “Where am I?”, they struggle to pinpoint there location, or even worse, they discover that they just hiked several miles down the wrong trail. Staying on top of where you are makes “Staying Found” all that much easier.

  3. Dumb question here. I get so much glare off the smart phone screen in sunny conditions that I can’t see it at all. Any recommendations, besides cover my head in a jacket ?

  4. Dexter Robinson (dexhiker)

    Nice list of navigation gear. Glad to see that map and compass were included as I fear many are relying solely on a smartphone app these days as their sole means of navigation. Couple comments:
    1) The link for the Casio Pathfinder took me to the compass on Amazon.
    2) “Staying Found” by June Fleming is the best book I’ve found for learning map and compass. I used it for a recent course I taught on map and compass. Her technique for relating the map with the compass is to orient the map with the real world. Once you do that you can forget about adjusting for declination, i.e. adding or subtracting declination or adjusting your compass for it. Very simple.
    3) Declination varies by location AND date. I’ve noticed that some hiking maps are off by several degrees which can affect navigation of several miles or more. You can get the correct declination for your hike location and date from NOAA.
    4) I have tried several smartphone apps but have found that “IHikeGPS” to be a good all purpose navigation app at half the price of Gaia. However, it does take a little getting use to.
    5) Tip for winter use of a smartphone when hiking – stick a toe warmer on the back of it.

    • Fixed that link sorry. A compass is just so much faster to use than a smartphone or gps when walking…just glance at it.

      also – most people don’t actually stay on a bearing but vary +/- 3 degrees as they walk. It’s best to break a route into much smaller legs than several miles, so you have less bearing drift.

      • On a winter bushwhack to Mt. Isolation from the Isolation trail to the saddle between Mt. Isolation and Mt. Davis I plotted and uploaded the route to my GPS using Garmin’s mapping software but in the field I used my compass to set the bearing and the GPS to stay on course. Even without the GPS I would have eventually hit the Davis Path – the compass was much easier to use . For above treeline winter hikes I always determine and record on my map different compass bearings in the event of an unexpected whiteout. There is no escaping that a knowing how to use a compass is a very important skill to have when hiking any time of the year.

  5. Great post Philip.

    I agree about the issues with cell phones. I teach a nav class for forestry students at the local community college. We use the eTrex 30 too. Great GPS at a reasonable price.

    Many thanks.

    Blake

  6. Up here in the PNW, the paper often needs to be waterproof due to rain & soggy conditions. A lot of folks use Rite in the Rain notebooks.

  7. Back in the day (before GPS, multi-function watches or cell phones) I was skiing up the Kahiltna Glacier in the Alaska Range with two teammates, tied into a 60meter climbing rope at 30 meter intervals. We had 30 miles to ski that day, moving from the Pika Glacier to the Denali basecamp below Mt. Hunter. The cloud layer descended until we found ourselves skiing in a virtual whiteout.

    Within about 20 minutes I noticed that the down-glacier wind, which had been hitting me in the face, was now hitting the back of my neck. A quick look at the compass confirmed that we had skied in a 180 degree circle and were now headed back down-glacier.

    Reoriented, we skied a compass course the rest of the day. Visibility was never more than the length of our rope. The person at the back end of the rope held the compass and signaled the leader with whistle blasts to ski rightward or leftward as needed. We kept an eye on our altimeter, and made a hard right at 6500′ to ski up the side glacier towards what we hoped would be basecamp. And we nailed it!

    These days I have an iPhone running Gaia, a multi-function watch, CalTopo maps, all the modern navigational tools. But my compass is still my primary tool, using skills that proved their worth 40 years ago in Alaska.

  8. Ben (Grease Spot)

    On the AT, I stepped off the trail twice and got back on going the other way–I know that sounds stupid, so maybe I am the only person to whom it happens–I was so certain that I had to be going the right way that I persisted in my error inspite of mounting evidence. Now I either glance at location of the sun or my compass before I step off.

  9. I might suggest the Garmin Explorer Plus as a GPS that also provides a texting service if needed. As a solo hiker, my wife needs to feel assured that she can contact me. This devices allows her to see where I am on the trail and txt me if there is an emergency back home or if I have an emergency.

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