Using lines of position to fix your location on a map

I must be getting old — I thought this was standard practice.

Do people really only rely upon a GPS fix? Absolute reliance on an electronic device and associated systems (satellites, battery pack, etc.) — and with no backup option?

Pretty good stuff.  I’ve been helping teach map & compass workshops to our local outdoors club for about 10 years, and am active in our local orienteering club as well.  We use “Linear Position” where you use LOP.  Same thing.

Good stuff.  As in the other thread, in Orienteering we call the Linear Features “Handrails”.  Something that can be followed in a compass direction until you reach a finite point (The trail crossed the power line in the middle of a thicket, 2 miles from camp).  These features are also used as “Catch feature”.  Say you are using the water channel, going NNW and were shooting/looking for some other feature (control in Orienteering speak) and there is say an oil pipeline some short distance beyond the feature.  You are following the water feature/creek and hit the oil pipeline.  OOPS!  You know you have overshot as the “Catch feature” (also a linear feature) just showed up.  But you also know right where you are!  You are at the creek crossing the pipeline.  Take a compass bearing, measure the distance (if you need) and pace count your way back to the feature you were shooting at.

Most of the under 30 hikers I know only use phone apps with GPS. They don’t even think about maps. Our major map source in town just closed down permanently. Very sad, because they had every map for everywhere in Alaska you could want. I had the lovely experience recently of teaching some map reading skills to some kids on a backpacking trip. Not sure they’ll remember or ever use it again though. But they were interested that I could read the map and tell them how much climbing we were going to be doing the next day, and where good view spots might be. Glad I learned orienteering when young. That said, I’m pretty rusty with compass these days!

Don’t forget when you can tear off half the GPS  (Preferably the half you have already treked) and use it to start a fire.

I’m with Eric.  I learned this stuff decades ago when I was sailing on a regular basis.  If you think this matters in the woods, you should try it a trackless stretch of water that is moving underneath you.  Getting a fix on those distant points of land makes all the difference.

It’s harder to do this stuff in a dense forest…but this is still my primary navigational system, if you don’t count the trail signs themselves.

Someday I’ll get a GPS, I guess…

Through the years I have owned two or three gps units.  To me they are more of a curiosity than a tool I use when hiking.   They are heavy and have short battery lives.

A better electronic tool is an altimeter.  There are many versions that last over a year on one battery and also will give you the time of day!

I always hike with a paper map and keep it in my pocket for quick references.  With a map, compass and altimeter I can usually pinpoint my location accurately.  Orienteering is a necessary skill for  backcountry activities.

No wonder everyone under 40 uses phone GPS only! And so do most over 40.
I don’t quite see this.
You can find perfectly satisfactory Chinese base-plate compasses on ebay for around $11.
You can even get a Coghlans baseplate compass for $12.34 on ebay.
So worries about the sky-high prices some places are charging seem a shade pointless. Shop around!

Advice: do NOT buy anything which is not fluid-filled. And beware of the extremely small button compasses: they can take ages to settle. Some of them just jam up.

Cheers

My favorite bit of navigation equipment is a high-quality altimeter.  

in combination with a ridgeline, ascending trail or river, you know exactly where you are.  Of course your watch and your phone have altimeters in them now too, so if you keep it adjusted, that’s a back-up to all your other tools.  Alas, like a compass, is most useful for finding your way home if you were using it on your way in.

My biggest benefit from using an altimeter is that it doesn’t get overly optimistic.  It’s emotionally draining to think the destination is just over that next ridge, and then the next one, and the next one.  If camp is 9,600 feet and I’m at 8,000, I just need to settle in for another 1600 feet of climbing.

I’m delighted to see this kind of content here.

I’ve never heard the term ‘catch feature’, I’ve always used “handrail” to apply to a feature near my destination that I know I’m going to hit more or less perpindicular to my line of travel – a stream to cross, or a road, that I can hit a little below my line and then turn up, as a precaution against overshooting a destination. So now I’ve got a better vocabulary to work with.

David – we call that “aiming off”.

Orienteering, Handrail = something you can follow along.   Catch Feature = something that would stop you in your direction of travel (you find the creek, boulder, house, trail) but I often use a Catch Feature to STOP me when I’ve overshot on a bearing.  “I’m aiming off to the NNE, once I hit the trail (handrail), I’ll know to turn Left and follow it to the second drainage BUT if I hit the next trail (Catch Feature), I know I missed the drainage.