Unfortunately I have many wonderful friends in New Zealand.. and coupled with my intrinsic laziness, I haven’t really needed to be able to practice my navigation skills as I could (and can) just rely on them. However, some friends leave travelling, some get married and have babies and generally it’s a good thing to know.
So… I decided to try and put this to right – and signed up for a mountain skills course (for the princely sum of $100!! beat that) for a weekend. Maaike decided that she didn’t trust my navigation before or after course and ought to learn it herself too..
The main difference thing was unlearning what I had learned in Scouts. There was this catchy phrase
“From Grid to Mag add – from Mag to Grid get rid“
Now, that’s all well and good in Ireland, but in New Zealand it’s the exact opposite. Which kinda explained why when I first tested to see if my old technique worked ended up with me pointing 46 degrees away from everyone else. Sigh. Still – got it now.
Headed up on the Friday night – staying at Lake Pearson (which saved a ridiculously early start in the morning)
The next two days were spent learning how to relate a map to the real world – and understanding and taking account of where True North is, and Magnetic North – what they mean, and how to use them. Here’s a nice image of Magnetic Declination from wikipedia and how it changes over time
Every so often the poles flip.. so North becomes South… wonder what happens to birds when that happens?
Anyway – we did various exercises like navigating through thick bush following a bearing to see how accurate you could be. We were aiming for this corner – and came out about 5m from it (after 360m of going through the bush – not too bad at all)
And yes, lots of map and compass work.. All in all an excellent weekend. Now all that’s left to do is to head out and start using it. If this is my last post – it probably means I’m 44 degrees off over a cliff somewhere. And yes, I am allowed to joke about it. And no, writing it here isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference! In fact, it might make me remember better. So there.
 |
 |
 |
|
Leave a Reply