Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will discover the special orientation challenges in different conditions and how to navigate in each one of them. Let’s start with the first situation that you are likely to hike in it. Forest : A lot of people think of … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where the fun stuff starts to show, at least for me. Why? Because you will finally learn, how to choose your hike itinerary. What route choices I have? In the wilderness, most of the time, you will have to choose between: the … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to increase your chances of arriving at your destination successfully. Why you should learn this technique? You should learn this technique, because following a bearing, even after 10 years of experience in the wilderness, you will still … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to navigate with estimates. When it’s useful? Knowing how to do that is useful : When you are in a dense forest, where all of what you see are similar When you navigate by night and you … Read more

Do you know that, if you are in the wilderness and every 5 minutes you see someone turning his back to look at you, this person is not a weirdo, he is just trying to get a visual memory of his walking-back path? Yes, this is one of the techniques that you should do in … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to estimate how far away you are to a landmark. You will learn: Knowing that will help you : 1) To locate yourself in regards to a landmark. Because, with a back bearing plotted on your map, … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to locate yourself on your map. In this lesson, you will learn:  In the first scenario, you will learn how to locate yourself, using two landmarks. In the second scenario, you will learn how to locate yourself … Read more

Let’s imagine this scenario. You are hiking following a trail on your map, and unexpectedly you found a trail intersection in front of you that you don’t have on your map. This can happen to you even if your map is just 2 years old. So, which one of the trails is the one that … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters. You will learn: How to take a bearing from your map and follow it in the field. This is a key skill that you will often use to navigate in the wilderness because it does work even when it’s dark and you … Read more

Hello and welcome to this video of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn multiple things about the magnetic declination, like : How much you will deviate from your route if you forget your magnetic declination? When you can ignore your magnetic declination? How to get this year’s magnetic declination of your … Read more

Hello and welcome to this easy to digest but an important lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to orient your map to the compass or to the geographic north, it’s the same thing. Why you should orient your map in the first place? Getting your map oriented, should … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Course. What we will see: Talk again about the geographic and magnetic Norths The declination between them How to orient your compass to the geographic north.   Magnetic declination: Like I’ve said before, the red needle of your compass aim at the magnetic … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course, Wilderness Navigation Masters. What you will learn: What are the three types of bearings? How to shoot and follow a bearing   Direct bearing: This is the easiest one to follow because here, you see your destination and you walk to it. You may ask … Read more

Hello and welcome to this short lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn what a compass is able to do and what’s not. But first, … Always carry a magnetic compass and a topographic map: I want you to know is that you have to always carry a compass with … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn about the forward bearing and the back bearing. What is bearing? This term of the bearing may seem meaningless to you the first time you hear it, but it’s not the case, because, as we’ve seen before, a bearing … Read more

Hello and welcome to this light information lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will be introduced to some little information that will be useful in the next lessons. You will learn: There are three things that I want you to learn in this lesson : The first thing, what are these … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to use pace count to measure ground distance. Why I should measure it in the first place? You may have this question: but why should I measure a distance if I already traveled it? I understand if … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to estimate your walking or hiking time just from your topographic map. 3 categories of terrain: Now, that you know your trail on your map and you are looking for a walking distance time calculator, you have … Read more

Hello, and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Master, where you will learn to measure distance on your topographic map. Why you should measure distance on map? Why this is important to know because when you know the distance from your starting point to your arrival point or from your actual … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Master, where you will learn how to draw topographic profile using online tools. What is a topographic profile: You may ask me, but first, what is exactly a topographic profile and how can he help me in my outdoor navigation? Good question. A … Read more

Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to locate yourself on your map to navigate using a topographic map only. This is an interesting lesson because once you finish watching it, you can start imagining yourself during your outdoor activity taking landmarks from your … Read more

For the same hiking distance, going uphill will take you more time than going on a flat surface. I think it’s common sense. Because the walking speed going uphill is slower than the walking speed going on a flat surface. For that, in order to estimate the walking time of our hike, (which have ascents … Read more

Even we’ve already seen a little bit about how to read a map in one of the previous articles, in this one, we will dig a little bit much deeper into that. Hello and welcome to this article of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where we will learn how to read a topographic map. … Read more

Hello and welcome to this article of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where I will talk about what are these lines that we found on a topographic map and how to use them to get an idea of the relief. The first thing to know, these lines are named contour lines or elevation lines. … Read more

Imagine yourself hiking, and after an hour, to feel sure about your way you ask someone how to get to a certain mountain peak, and he replies to you with : It’s easy, do you see this natural arch, behind it you will start seeing your mountain peak. To arrive at it, just take one … Read more

If you get dizzy immediately after you see a topographic map because you don’t know what these lines and different colors and symbols mean, it’s ok, no one comes to this life already knowing how to read a topographic map. Hello and welcome to this video of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where I … Read more

Hello and welcome. After this article, you will be familiar with the different elements of a topographic map. Which will allow you to understand topo maps and switch easily between different ones. So, if you want to have the ability to start understanding every map that land on your hands, just give me a little … Read more

Hello and welcome to this video of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to choose your map. In this video, I will introduce you to three different types of maps, and let you know the one that suits our needs? what scale to choose? and things to consider before you … Read more