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By Anonymous

1 TICKING OFF FEATURES

Whenever you’re out on the hills, use the map to form a mental picture of the terrain you’re about to encounter. This can consist of landscape features such as crags or streams; changes in the terrain or angle of slope; and path junctions. Look for detail too – for example, a kink in the stream. You should end up with a short description of the next section of your route: for example, “I’m going to stay on this footpath, which follows alongside a stream for around 200m, then cuts away to the north-west by a rocky outcrop (west) and steepens.”
Do this every time you stop to check your position on the map, and you’ll foster the hill-walkers’ elusive sixth sense: an early notion that you’ve gone wrong. This additional technique punches above its weight in poor visibility: for example, if you’re expecting a dramatic decrease in angle of slope within 100m while on a bearing, and it doesn’t materialise, you’ll stop and check that bearing before you walk yourself into trouble.

2 NAISMITH’S RULE…

…isn’t just for calculating the overall estimated time for a route – throw it into your mental toolbox and use it to aid your navigation en route too. If you have an idea how long it’ll take you to walk, say, from a summit to a path junction, you’re less likely to overshoot it – or stress yourself out looking for it before you need to. Bear in mind that this method only provides a very rough estimate, so use pace-counting (see page 30) too when you need to be accurate. But it’s a really useful technique when crossing rocky terrain which is difficult to pace over accurately.
To calculate the estimated time, Naismith’s rule dictates you allow 5km per hour plus half an hour for every 300m of ascent. On the hill, it’s much easier to work out if you remember it’ll take 12 minutes for every kilometre, plus 1 minute for every contour line (on an Ordnance Survey map) you climb. Use this technique regularly, and you’ll be able to tailor the calculation to your walking speed, increasing the accuracy of – and your confidence in – this technique.

3 TAKING A BEARING

This technique is the drill bit of your toolkit: it’ll allow you to pierce through the thickest conditions with calm, calculated accuracy. It’s simple to master but requires practice to perform under pressure, with the added fug of winter gloves.

Line up a long edge of your compass with your current position and your intended location on the map, with the direction of travel arrow (that’s the one on the baseplate – just to the right of the Silva logo in this picture) pointing in the direction you want to walk.
Holding the baseplate firmly in place, turn the housing until the orienting lines (the vertical lines on the base of the housing) run parallel with the map’s north-south grid lines. Make sure the orienting arrow (the north arrow on the housing) coincides with grid north.
Now look at the rim of the compass housing where it meets the direction of travel arrow (most compasses have a black and/or luminous index line here). The digits indicate your grid bearing – the number of degrees between grid north and your direction of travel.
Now make an allowance for magnetic variation (MV). There are all manner of rhymes to help you remember whether to add or subtract the MV – but understand the process and you’ll never falter.
MV is the discrepancy between grid north and magnetic north. Magnetic north is currently on average around 4 degrees west of grid north in Britain (but it’s decreasing and varies from area to area: check the key of your map). Because bearings are always measured in a clockwise direction, it follows that when adjusting your compass from the map (that’s grid north) to the compass (magnetic north), you ADD the 4 degrees of MV (in effect aligning the orienting lines with magnetic north). Do this by turning the housing.
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