Wilderness navigation requires planning routes throughout terrain that doesn’t have pre-defined trails or roads to comply with. Whereas following a route utilizing a map and compass, GPS, map-to-terrain affiliation or simply lifeless reckoning is required, these instruments and methods don’t give you the talents to plan good cross-country routes. Half artwork and half expertise, studying the best way to plan new routes which are environment friendly to journey, protected, and quick is a ability that’s solely mastered after you’ve spent a good period of time roaming off-trail and realized the form of terrain and vegetation to keep away from.
Three Ideas
There are three ideas of wilderness navigation that you really want to bear in mind when planning wilderness routes: effectivity, security, and velocity.
Effectivity
Mountaineering cross-country is significantly tougher than mountaineering on cleared and well-defined trails. One of many first belongings you’ll discover is that the bottom is suffering from rock and natural particles that it’s worthwhile to hike over or round. Tall grass, bushes, timber, bogs, and boulders might block your means. The hills shall be steeper than you’re used to encountering on trails and your regular mountaineering tempo shall be a lot slower.
Cautious examine of a topographic map will reveal routes which are simpler to stroll than others, with gentler gradients and detours round tough obstacles. For instance, cliffs are finest hiked round somewhat than tackled head-on and the perimeters of streams are finest prevented as a result of they’re usually full of dense vegetation and flood particles.
Security
The necessity to hike throughout avalanche terrain, scree-covered slopes, and river crossings all improve the hazard of getting damage while you step off trails and head out into open nation. It’s additionally finest to keep away from steep ravines as they’re usually catchments for ankle-busting boulders, fallen timber, and vegetation. Whereas many of those hazards could be anticipated by studying to investigate topographic maps, you’ll additionally need to make real-time detours round harmful terrain you could’t anticipate primarily based on the data supplied by maps or different planning assets.
Velocity
Regardless of the issue of wilderness journey, there are land options you could comply with that make cross-country journey quicker and simpler. For instance, mountaineering above treeline is commonly quicker than beneath it, supplied you’ve got good climate. Mountaineering alongside gravel river bars can also be a lot quicker since there isn’t a impeding vegetation. However there are additionally many varieties of terrain that may considerably gradual you down as a result of they’re boulder or vegetation traps similar to steep hillsides or ravines.
A Route Planning Instance
Studying the best way to plan a route that’s vitality environment friendly, protected, and quick to hike is the essence of wilderness navigation. Let’s take a look at an instance as an instance the method.
Assume we’re standing on prime of closely forested Mt Martha (on the map above) and need to hike over to a characteristic that’s 9/10 of a mile away, because the crow flies, known as The Humps. When you have a GPS, it’s completely conceivable that you simply’d plug within the lat/lon location of The Humps, plot the shortest path to it, and set off to comply with it. However that wouldn’t be such an awesome thought, since that direct route isn’t energy-efficient, protected, or quick to hike.
Discover that the route descends very steeply down the face of Mt Martha right into a steep valley, earlier than crossing what is probably going some kind of drainage, earlier than climbing uphill to The Humps.
- The descent down the east facet of Mt Martha is 774′ in 0.4 mile, which is sort of precipitous, and there’s an excellent likelihood that it’s lined with boulders and timber which have eroded or fallen over and been swept down the hillside. Selecting your means by that crap will take an infinite quantity of vitality, you may simply twist an ankle or break a leg within the course of, and it’d in all probability be fairly gradual going. Crossing the drainage (the “V” on the backside of the valley) and climbing out of it’s also prone to be a horrendous slog since the entire particles from the slopes overhead will acquire at that time.
- Whereas the climb from the drainage to the excessive level of The Humps is simply 250′ over 0.5 miles, you’d be side-hilling, or mountaineering up the slope at an angle. You are able to do it, it’s normally extra environment friendly to hike perpendicular to the contour line to distribute the work equally between your legs. Aspect-hilling could be exhausting as a result of one leg is all the time larger than the opposite and doing extra work.
A Higher Route
The blue route (above) from Mt Martha to The Humps could be damaged down into two legs: a 0.4 mile leg which crosses the saddle to the unnamed peak south of Mt Martha, and the second leg, an 0.8 stroll down the ridge to The Humps.
- The primary leg drops 164 ft to a flat space known as a saddle earlier than climbing simply 108′ to the unnamed peak. The saddle is in all probability lined with timber, together with some blown over timber on the bottom, however simple to cross as a result of there’s so little gradient.
- The second leg steadily drops 550′ ft down the ridgeline to The Humps over the course of 0.8 miles. I might anticipate spruce above 3000′ then turning to open hardwoods that are quicker to hike by.
Whereas the blue route requires about 50% much less elevation acquire than the pink route, the most important vitality financial savings between the 2 is avoiding the particles beneath Mt Martha’s japanese slope that you simply’d must hike by. That may very well be a whole nightmare when it comes to effort, security, and velocity. There’s none of that on the blue route, though it’s 0.2 miles longer, making it a greater off path route.
Wilderness Route Planning
The essence of Wilderness Navigation is studying the best way to make choices about the perfect cross-country routes throughout unfamiliar terrain when it comes to vitality expenditure, security, and velocity. Whereas studying the best way to comply with a bearing utilizing a compass, GPS, or smartphone app is a crucial prerequisite to following a wilderness route, crucial route planning ability to develop is studying the best way to learn a topographic map and making inferences in regards to the panorama it depicts.
Whereas there’s an abundance of fantastic GPS route planning instruments obtainable, the one technique to study the implications of various landforms proven on maps is to get out and hike off-trail as a lot as you may, ideally with a associate, as a result of discussing totally different route alternate options hastens the training course of. When you may take a look at a map and shortly determine the perfect off-trail path to take, you’ll have internalized the three ideas of wilderness navigation route planning: effectivity, security, and velocity.
Think about, having the ability to hike wherever your two legs can take you. That’s while you’ll expertise the true freedom of the hills!
SectionHiker is reader-supported. We solely become profitable if you are going to buy a product by our affiliate hyperlinks. Assist us proceed to check and write unsponsored and unbiased gear opinions, newbie FAQs, and free mountaineering guides.
