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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I won't say I'm religious about it--especially if somewhere familiar--but if I'm being doctrinaire, I'd argue you should always have a physical map and compass while hiking.

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... and know how to use it ...

Fair. As someone who grew up with physical maps, using them is pretty intuitive but I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone. And, of course, some aspects of topographic maps take some education.

With respect to compass, I'm not sure how critical real orienteering is for most people. It's more about not being totally turned around and/or being able to make sure you hit some feature like a road.

Just being able to know which way is "north" is probably sufficient.

There's a difference between geographic north and magnetic north that can get pretty significant (if you live in NE US, magnetic north about 10-20° west of north). If you're sailing the clipper route, for part of your journey, your magnetic compass now points as far as northwest rather than north.

Hiking in the northeast US, you're generally speaking on trails. I'd certainly encourage people to acquaint themselves with magnetic deviation and so forth. But, especially as a backup mechanism, the main value of a compass is to avoid having absolutely no idea what direction you're going.

In my recent hiking experience, a lot of trails in the NE--even in popular parks--are pretty poorly marked, and these days, virtually every hiking trip involves at least one point where the trail makes a sharp curve, but there's something that looks trail-ish that continues ahead, and it's only a few hundred feet down the line that you realize you might have missed the trail.

The little handheld trail GPS my parents got me after my first such misadventure has proven incredibly useful for figuring out where I made the wrong move. (The first such misadventure, I was using the paper map to work out if there was a bend I missed).

A paper map of the given area will tell you what declination to set on your compass

While you're attempting to generally go downstream (think about it), even if you wind up totally turned around, then at least never leave your drainage.

Yup. I didn't know where I was, but knew what drainage I was in, and knew that my car was at the upper end of pavement at the main stream in the drainage. I went downhill until I hit the main stream. Oh, the road is paved? Follow that up to the car. No sweat, even though I really didn't know where I was. Just knowing I was within the drainage was all I needed.

I love paper maps, but I have to admit I don't use them much. Speaking of the WSJ, my paper copy is waiting out on the driveway. For hands-free reading while you're eating breakfast, it beats the snot out of reading off a screen. Something about the number of words you can read without scrolling.

As for orienteering: I learned it once and never used it. (btw, the Sierra Club course where I learned it got cancelled when someone sued over an injury in ice ax practice.)

I've seen some otherwise capable people struggle with compasses and map reading. It's a good idea to print out some basic map reading instructions and attach it to the map just in case. That way, anyone else in your family/party will have a running start if something happens to the 'map guy'.

Don't they literally teach that at school ?

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