Shelter, water, fire, food, navigation, and first aid, in priority order.
By the Navigation Team Knowing how to read a map and use a compass is one thing. Actually finding your way through real, unfamiliar country, with its dense woods, confusing valleys, and featureless stretches, is another. That practical craft is orienteering: the skill of moving confidently through terrain you have never seen, staying found rather … Read more
By the Navigation Team The smartphone in your pocket is one of the most powerful navigation tools ever created, capable of pinpointing your location, mapping a route, and guiding you turn by turn anywhere in the world. Add satellite messengers and specialized apps, and modern technology gives the outdoors traveler capabilities that would have seemed … Read more
By the Field Skills Team Long before satellites and compasses, people crossed oceans and continents using nothing but the sky, the land, and careful observation. Those natural navigation skills still work, and they become priceless on the day your compass is lost and your phone is dead. Reading direction from the natural world will rarely … Read more
By the Navigation Team A dedicated GPS device can be a wonderful navigation tool, pinpointing your location anywhere on earth with remarkable accuracy. It can also lull you into a dangerous dependence, because the moment its batteries die or it fails, a person who relied on it entirely is suddenly lost. The key to using … Read more
By the Navigation Team A GPS is wonderful right up until the battery dies, the signal drops in a canyon, or the device takes a swim in a creek. When that happens, the person who can read a topographic map and shoot a bearing with a compass is found and safe, while the person who … Read more
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