Navigating whiteouts

I would assume they would have a spare map rob but it isn't often mentioned. I assume a gps user also carries a backup - be thatvanother gps or paper map.

Husky, the point is if a gps is considered essential equipment for the conditions. Doesn't mean you have to have one or indeed a phone. Modern phones mostly have a gps built in so that solves that problem.
To venture into conditions which may present difficult navigation options and travel requires what most would agree is essential equipment which all costs money e.g. Crampons, axe, bothy etc. if you don't want to get any od these that's fine but they still remain on the essential kit list.

Not being able to use a gps you own is user error and not the equipment's problem. Does anyone take an ice axe out with them and when they come to use it don't know how to?

Would anyone like to come up with a list of "essential"
kit for navigating on a mid season hill trip. Where does
must have finish and nice to have start.? Cheers.

Essential kit for navigating mid season? Map, compass, knowledge of how to use them - and common sense!  Some means of telling the time?

CP.

 I don't reckon you can put it all down to "user error", take myself as an example, I'm a 'silver back', who has never used a GPS. So I'm meant to know how to use one as soon as I take it out of the box?

 Sorry, but no way. Even reading destruction manual, will not teach you everything.

 Like using a map and compass, you can learn something new everyday.

"So I'm meant to know how to use one as soon as I take it out of the box?"

I don't think that's what Parky's saying, when he uses the term "user error".

Does someone know what to do with a map and compass the moment they first see/buy one? How do they learn? Read books and manuals, search out info online, attend courses, pick other people's brains, practice everything they've learned...  basically get interested enough to acquire the skills. And people acquire them to different levels - there are advanced navigators and basic navigators with map and compass.

No different with gps. It's a mistake to think it's a wonder gizmo and all you need to do is get out of the box and switch it on. All the same resources are out there to help you learn how to use it to best advantage - the manual is only a (usually pretty poor) start, a bit like the little "taking a bearing" leaflet that comes in the box with a Silva compass. How far you take learning the skills is a personal choice, but choosing not to get acquainted with all the things it can do and the tips and tricks of using it is a limitation of the person, not the device, and in that sense "user error".

You're right about learning something new all the time though, whether with map and compass or gps, but I suspect for whatever reason a lot of people don't get beyond the very basics with gps.

Parky's my hero, he's such an iconoclast.

huskyman wrote (see)

CP,

 As I said before not everyone has/can afford a GPS, even a non mapping one.

 A lot of people with non mapping ones, would have no idea how to enter a 'route' anyway.

 A lot of people are not as skilled at using GPS as you are. So can't use it's full capabilities as much as you can.

I'm not advocating GPS over conventional mapping.

I'm not suggesting that GPS is essential.

All I'm saying is how I've found myself using a mapping GPS.

I don't enter routes into the GPS; I simply look at the map it presents, and navigate as I would with a map.

It was merely a comment, not an argument for or against GPS.

And I've not made any comment about 'user error'; that was Parky...

But, if you want to learn any new skill, you have to practice.  You can teach an old dog new tricks.  It just takes a bit longer...

;-)

husky, matt has partly covered what i mean by "user error" and i use this term to cover most of the objections (or as i prefer just plain excuses) to gps. the only thing a gps can do is not work - just as any other equipment can break/not work.

running out of batteries -  put fresh ones in it. haven't got spare batteries?. make note to use more common sense and be grateful it wasn't your headtorch batteries didn't die in the dark.

run out of map - retrace your steps until you are back on the map - easy peasy to do - and make note to self to pay more attention and buy more maps

don't know how to do that - if you want to then learn how to do that if you think it's going to be useful

the screen freezes on the gps and the batteres are crap in the cold and i keep it in my pack lid - i don't know if that is user error or just plain feckwittedness.

yep. a gps is an expensive bit of kit - expensive being relative as to how much the toy sitting in your rucksack cost. i am at a loss to understand why people who buy a gps only use it to get a location fix without even learning to use the basic features which can get you out of all sorts of trouble. learn how to enter a goto point (waypoint), learn how trackback works and how to save a track at the very least.

just as a compass is a very handy gadget (and it IS just a gadget) for telling you which way is north we all know it has rather more uses than that and those uses we have to learn and adapt to our own preferences. you would probably find someone's insistence on pulling their gadget out of their pack only when they felt the need to know which way was north somewhat bewildering.

in conditions like a whiteout a gps is immensely superior to a map and compass (tells you where you are, can tell you where to go, how far it is and can guide you back the way you came with the press of a button and it doesn't care if it's day or night. and a mpping gps lets you do all that without even having to press another button or look at the paper map). in other situations the map and compass is a better bet. whether an individual feels that makes it essential is their own call.

you are quite correct that a gps is not a cheap acquistion, even a "cheap" one, but this is solely down to if you consider it to be "essential" or not. perhaps a bad analogy but how many times is an ice axe used in anger as a safety device, e.g. arresting a slide? another expensive piece of equipment but is it essential? is it more essential if you haven't got crampons or is the axe less essential if you have crampons? i don't need an answer to any of that but i use it to try to illustrate what we all think of as essential equipment or not. it all boils down to personal choice.

what would your opinion be of someone who buys an ice axe (gps) but doesn't know how to use it?

my basic default mode is people can wear and use and carry whatever they like, or not. if something doesn't work then i assume a valuable bit of experience will have been learnt and they won't repeat it next time - and becasue things went bad they will probably tell 20 other people not to do what they did.

waldo, i would say essential equipment is what you take with every trip otherwise why are you carrying it. i would also assume that you know how to use it. your essential equipment will be different to someone else's.

CP, sorry got names mixed up.

 Matt, until you mentioned those courses I'd not heard about them. (Unfortunatly I can't find any near where I live).

Parky, if you don't know about the 'advanced' features, how can you use them. Do courses like Matt said, look on internet, ask someone who uses model you've got. That I understand, but you have to know about them first. I know I didn't until now.

Parky, the last three lines of your message was right on the ball."Essentials are different for each individual". I don,t
use a GPS but have friends who would,nt go on the Hills without
it, although they have walked the best part of their lives
with just map and compass.Cheers.

Essential equipment...

Eyes. Brain.

Maps (paper/electronic),compass and GPS are useful to have, but you don't necessarily need them.

True enough, but in the absence of outdoor shops selling brains....  

i suspect that Waldo and I both learnt our navigation skills long before hand-held satnavs were invented. In my case, my father taught me how to map read using the 5th edition of the 1:63360 OS map and an old-fashioned brass pocket compass. From there I graduated through the 1:63360 7th series and then, with joy, to the first 1:25,000 maps and a Silva baseplate compass. Navigation then became a delight and I was able to wander confidently throughout Great Britain.

I'm not unintelligent and I'm not proud of being a technophobe, but it is a fact that I've never been able to understand gadgets that don't have moving parts. I understand how a clockwork watch works but not a digital watch. A few years ago I purchased a Suunto Vector wrist computer but it took me months to learn how to use it. I have the simplest of mobile phones but rarely use it and have to carry the instructions with me. I seem to lose most of the calls I receive and I've only ever sent one text message and that was as an experiment.

I lead commercial walks and walking tours and I decided that I had to have a satnav after reading about a fatal accident in which the coroner criticized the walk leader for not carrying a satnav. I finally got round to buying an eTrex which I soon lost and then bought a Geko 201. I was not comfortable using either instrument and then read a review of the Garmin 401 wrist satnav. This, I decided was exactly what I wanted; a non-mapping satnav that would leave my hands free and a paper map to consult (I have an interest in the the formation of the landscape and man's effect on it so I need more than a tiny section of a map on a screen).

It took me months to learn how to plot routes on Grough mapping software and download them to my Foretrex and then to discover its many useful functions. But it was worth the effort! I can now amaze my clients by telling them the exact distance to within three decimal places it is to the pub or the railway station; the speed at which we are walking; our overall average speed; our total height gain; and our estimated time of arrival to catch the train. One of the clubs which I lead keeps a record of the year's mileage for each member and awards patches for those who cover a specific distance. They can't argue with the distance recorded on my satnav!

What other navigation tools do I carry? A print-out of my route which I can fold and tuck into my pocket; the relevant Explorer map; and spare batteries for the satnav.

My insurance company now insist that I publish and circulate to all participants a risk assessment for all the walks that I lead.

Hugh

Essential equipment...

Eyes. Brain.

If you'll be moving around some sort of thing to allow you to do that...

Much as it's popular to state maps as "essential", you need to remember that the UK's hills were conquered long before one could buy an OS Landranger.  

Pete.

My professional life sometimes involves being in places where maps are so basic that they're worse than useless. In order to find interesting routes, I sometimes have to make it all up as I go along. Being able to 'read' the terrain is a skill worth cultivating. As a teenager, trial and error made me appreciate that you shouldn't walk on that flat, green sphagnum moss, and nor should you ever try and thrash your way through dense coniferous forest, gorse bushes or brambles. Some rivers you can ford easily, and others you should avoid altogether. I've looked over cliff faces and convinced myself that there's no way down, only to have some guy armed with a long pole simply leap off the edge and slide down the pole to safe ground. People used to travel like that in Britain, but not any more!

 Pete wrote:

<Much as it's popular to state maps as "essential", you need to remember that the UK's hills were conquered long before one could buy an OS Landranger.>

True, but not really relevant and a bit of an over-simplification, Pete!

Maps, or at the very least guidebooks, are essential in the lowland countryside of England where you are required to follow rights of way, some of which are not visible on the ground, and where the field furniture lacks signposts and waymarks.

Ever tried to follow a public path without a map in the Fens, Romney Marsh, the Somerset Levels, or in dense woodland criss-crossed with tracks and firebreaks?

Some contributors to this forum overlook the elementary fact that only a relatively small proportion of England is mountainous.

Hugh

Ever tried to follow a public path without a map in the Fens, Romney Marsh, the Somerset Levels, or in dense woodland criss-crossed with tracks and firebreaks?

On at least two of those, yes...

But let's say it was none.  Would these exceptions somewhere mean that maps are always "essential" throughout the whole of the UK?  There's no shortage of tracks in lowland England where the waymarking is fine, so neither maps or guides are needed.

Pete.

> I have the simplest of mobile phones but rarely use it and have to carry the instructions with me. I seem to lose most of the calls I receive and I've only ever sent one text message and that was as an experiment.

As with all things in life, practice makes perfect.  If you don't use something, you will never learn how to use it.

> Parky, if you don't know about the 'advanced' features, how can you use them.

RTFM...

Granted, I'm struggling to interpret the Chinglish manual for some cheap 'camera sunglasses' I bought recently, and all attempts to get it to set the time and date have failed so far...

The greatest RTFM snafu I've yet come across was a tale my dad told me.  He used to supply teachers' INSET courses in London with equipment, and his unit once purchased a film projector which came with instructions on a spool of film...