Wild Appalachia: Using a Map and Compass
FAYETTE COUNTY, W.Va. (WCHS) — No matter if it's fishing, hiking or hunting, many opt to use use a cell phone to navigate, but that approach can be a double-edged sword.
Dave Bieri, district supervisor with New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, said he has seen that technology fail.
"We definitely live in a time where people have gotten reliant on cell phones and devices to find their way around. It's great when it works but when you start getting into more backcountry situations where the phone reception is not so great, sometimes your batteries die," Bieri said. "You can't reach satellites where you're at and it could get you stuck."
This is why basic compass and map skills are so important.
"Using a map with a compass is a skill that a lot of most people probably don't possess anymore," Bieri said. "Anybody that spends any time in the outdoors would probably benefit from knowing at least the basic map and compass skills again, how to orient a map, how to look at a map and understand how it relates to the topography."
Simply just knowing which direction you're supposed to be going is key.
"A real basic skill is orienting the map so that basically just means putting your map so that it faces the same way as the topography in front of you," Bieri added. "It's as simple as lining up your compass. We know the red line always points, or the different needle rather, always points north. It's just a matter of finding the north arrow on your map, lining up the north arrow on your compass, and then spinning the whole thing until that north arrow actually lines up."
Bieri said topographic maps are the best to keep around, especially if you're in a wilderness setting.
"Just by looking at the contour lines, you can kind of tell the shape of different peaks that might be around you," he said. "You may be able to look at that in real life to be able to help orient yourself to where you're at."
This is especially important to know now with deer season upon us.
"Sometimes people get off the trail tracking a deer or whatever. Then all of a sudden, especially that's a good situation where you're focused on that deer in front of you, or whatever you're hunting, you kind of lose track of which way you went," Bieri said. "Then it's time to find the trail and you don't really remember which way to go. Just knowing what this looks like on the map and how that translates to what it looks like in real life is a really important skill."
