Help for navigationally challenged

[Adam G]

I’m a terrible navigator. I’ve taken a formal, fairly intense navigation class and learned how to use a map and compass. I feel reasonably comfortable doing that.

However, I find it really hard to keep directions straight in my head. For example, I recently pulled into a parking lot at a grocery store in a city that I was completely unfamiliar with. I made a conscious mental note of where I came in and where I needed to go out because I know that I’m terrible at these things.

I exited via a different driveway. Despite my mental preparation, I turned the wrong way on the street outside and ended up going the wrong way.

There’s probably something wrong with my brain. From what I’ve read, some people’s brains just don’t do this well.

Has anyone overcome this?

I thought about orienteering. I went to one orienteering event with my wife. It was super weird due to the people, and she hated it because it was too easy for her. They also have very few events. I’m not sure it’s for me.

[BlackHatGuy]

“Has anyone overcome this?”

Yes, with a built in GPS in my car. Not making fun, I suffer from the same directionally challenged issue. Without the GPS I’d always be making wrong turns. Same in the wilderness. I’m good with a compass and map, so not the same as driving. But without the compass and map, no go. And someone will chime in with checking the sun’s position in the sky, etc. Sure, but that just doesn’t help me. Don’t know why, but it just doesn’t.

[Rex Sanders]

I’ve found that daily turn-by-turn instructions reduce my mental workload and let me enjoy hiking more  – though I’m decent at navigation.

I usually make a spreadsheet with segment-by-segment mileage and other notes anyway, so adding turns is relatively easy. If the trails have good signs, I rarely need to pull out a map.

For example:

On this trip I had reserved campsites; free-form trips might benefit from other list styles.

Maybe something like this could help you.

— Rex

 

[MJ H]

I grew up in the land of square corners on all roads before moving east to a place where the roads were less regular because of geographic necessity. I found myself continually losing my way because I was thinking (without being really aware it) that each time I turned, I was going 90 degrees. Once I stopped doing that, I got lost less in the city.

I’m not sure how that applies when hiking. I think I’d get lost pretty quickly if I got too far from a trail in a forested area. If I get off the trail, I make careful mental notes and/or lay my trekking poles so they point back to the trail.

[Rex Sanders]

Decades ago, a good friend couldn’t tell left from right. But tell her to turn East or North, and she’d be fine. Playing navigator while she drove was an interesting mental challenge.

When I move to a new region, it takes me a few years to re-orient. In the greater LA area, all the mountain ranges run east-west, and most streets are on a grid, which made orientation easy.

Moved to the SF Bay area — where the mountains run northwestish-southeastish and the roads curve — and I struggled for years to stay oriented. We talked about logical north and south on major roads, which broke down as you got further south.

Next was the Monterey Bay area, where Highway 1 makes a big C-shaped curve. Logical north-south is even wackier; for example, part of northbound Highway 1 in Santa Cruz runs due south for a mile. We still say “head north on Highway 1,” but it could be off the compass direction by 180°!

In Hawaii, “makai” is toward the ocean / downhill, and “mauka” is inland / uphill. I find those concepts useful in coastal California, too.

Sometimes changing the frame of reference helps, depends on your particular navigational challenges.

— Rex

[David Thomas]

When I sleep in my car on a road trip, I always park the car pointing the direction I’ll be leaving.  I don’t need it so much to orient myself if I had a minute to consider it (but others might find it helps with that), but do so in case someone started something and I wanted to bolt immediately upon waking.

Maybe similar tricks could help if you lay out some sticks or rocks in the direction of your next day’s hike when you arrive in camp.

One thing that helped au pairs we had from Scotland, England and Thailand is that I’d put on a “Stay Right” note with a right arrow in front of the steering wheel.  I do the reverse for myself in Britain, Zimbabwe, NZ and the USVI: if I get momentarily confused, I just look at it and can quickly respond appropriately.

[Jenny A]

There are small compasses out there that you can attach to things, like the Suunto Clipper that slides onto a watchband (if you wear a watch).  Accuracy wouldn’t be tremendous but ought to provide a good enough idea of where north is.

My brain might be weird, but I am almost physically uncomfortable if I don’t know my orientation to North.  I do not like flat places or cities where I can’t see physical landforms that serve as references.  I actually do wear an ABC watch or carry a small compass when confronted with that challenge.

[David Thomas]

“I do not like cities where I can’t see physical landforms that serve as references. “

You can always use the old Native American trick to determine direction:

The solar panels point south.

[David Thomas]

But north for Roger.

[Adam G]

Thanks for the advice. I was wondering if you could look at a situation I ran into recently.

I was backpacking in the spring. The trail was completely snow covered with no tracks to follow. Our goal was to go from Snow Lakes up to Lake Viviane. As you can see, the summer route runs entirely through the trees. It stays to the north of Snow Creek until it reaches the lake outlet. Snow Creek was buried and not too obvious. I had intensely studied this map prior to the trip because I knew it would be one of the more challenging areas.

The terrain through the trees is quite a bit more complicated than the map. There are small hills and rocks that make a walking as the crow flies impossible. We were navigating around those obstacles. At some point, I got turned around and ended up crossing over Snow Creek and walking south. Fortunately, my friends pointed this out.

If I stopped every 50 feet and took a bearing to another landmark (e.g. tree or rock), I could have followed it. That’s slow and not particularly practical. I do have a Suunto watch with a compass on it. I have found it to be quite flaky though.

For those navigationally challenged, how would you approach this part of the trip?

[Jerry Adams]

GPS

That route is difficult when there’s no snow

Enchantments in spring, nice!

[Ito Jakuchu]

Have you tried walking with a small button compass on your keys or watch for a while. I’m not great at directions but not horrible either. But I found when walking around for a while with a compass on my wrist (I had a ABC watch already though) it greatly enhanced my sense of direction after a while. This helped in unknown cities as well as mountains.

[Roger Caffin]

But north for Roger.
We are aware that a lot of Americans are hemispherically-challenged.

Cheers

[Roger Caffin]

For those navigationally challenged, how would you approach this part of the trip?
Learn to navigate and use a map and compass. You do after all have a very obvious valley to follow – even in the snow.
If the bottom of the valley is too full of stuff, move up the side of the hill to a more open area and use map and compass.

I am well aware that I have fixed, loud and possibly well-known views on this subject – all very true. You owe it to your family and to the SAR people to learn to navigate properly, especially if you want to go off-trail. There is no substitute.
You can of course have lots of fun learning.

Cheers

[Matthew / BPL]

Adam, I don’t have a ton of experience in the snow but the route you show on the map and describe roughly parallels a creek. If you stay in the “gully” more or less you should be following the creek upstream.

Look up the concept of “handrails” as a navigational aide while hiking. Once you establish that you want to move in a specific direction then you can look at a map and find some handrails you don’t want to cross. These can be a road, trail, ridgeline, creek, treeline, etc.

Another thought: Navigate using a map and compass but verify your position regularly using gps. Perhaps that will help you gain confidence.

[MJ H]

We are aware that a lot of Americans are hemispherically-challenged.

Are you calling us fat?

[Roger Caffin]

lot of Americans are hemispherically-challenged.
Are you calling us fat?
That would be perhaps ‘spherically challenged’?
:)

Cheers

[Adam G]

I thought I’d update on what I’m talking about. I recently was backpacking with plans to camp near a lake. This was a popular lake, with many campsites surrounding it. There was a trail running completely around the lake. We arrived late and were looking for a campsite. There were numerous paths running uphill from the lake to campsites that were above it in the forest. None of these were marked on the map. We were exploring each one. At one of them, we ran into the camp where there were two women camping. We had a nice chat, but returned to the main trail to find another campsite. As we were wandering around the lake, I passed a junction and asked my wife if we should check it out. She noted that the women were camped there and we had just checked this out maybe 5 minutes ago.

This is the issue I’m talking about. Simply walking around the lake got me disoriented enough that I could not remember where that trail was. I took a formal map and compass course. It was intense. I can follow a bearing in a whiteout. That skill is worthless in this situation.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Adam

I think I understand what you are saying. Just being able to follow a compass course is not enough. The next skill you could consider developing is what some call ‘situation awareness’.

As you walk around the lake, keep noting the various features and map them into your mind. You don’t need to be able to say where North is all the time, but you need to know almost automatically where you are in relation to the lake. The outlet is over there, a spur coming down is here, and so on.

The same applies in most any environment. Watch for side creeks and forks as you walk up a valley, watch for joining spurs as you climb a mountain, and so on.

Cheers

[Federico Calboli]

(Based on what you say) my impression is that you have the potential to be an excellent navigator, but you just simply start navigating only well past the point where you’re lost or things are confusing. The fact you feel that checking the route regularly is slow and ‘not practical’ seems to be the problem.  Sticking to pure geography, you do not seem to ask yourself where you were, where you are and in where you are going *often enough*, and you do not seem to pay enough attention to your surroundings to recognise places you might have visited before (based on what you say).  ‘Sense of direction’ is the internalisation of the work one needs to do to check a route and stay on it, plus doing the damn work.  A good memory of a map helps, but that’s it.

Asking yourself often ‘which direction am I facing? what time is it?  where is the sun?’, and decreasing the threshold at which you notice stuff (stop often and describe what you see to yourself, even in wood cover) should help a lot.  There is no magic bullet, there is exercise.  I would argue that people with a good sense of direction do the stuff above quite a lot, either naturally or though training.

 

 

 

[Adam G]

It’s certainly true that I could be more attentive to things. I have made a conscious effort to notice more things such as the rate of ascent/descent, water crossing, obvious trees or rocks, etc. I’ve also tried announcing what I see and also what I should see on map. These have helped somewhat. My attempts to stop and look at the map have not been so successful, as my hiking partner is annoyed that I’m constantly stopping.

I do think that spatial orientation is still a problem. I had another episode where I completely lost my orientation. We were driving somewhere and stopped off at the grocery store in an unfamiliar location. GPS led us to the grocery store just off the freeway. Since I knew it was an unfamiliar area, I made a mental note that we turned left into the parking lot where the enormous sign was, and I needed to turn right from there in order to return to the freeway.

There wasn’t much parking available, so we drove around for a bit to find a spot. During that time, I was focused on finding a spot. We found one, and walked into the store. We wandered around the store to find what we needed, and then exited the store in a different exit. I was a bit disoriented as to where the car was, but I found it pretty easily because I knew it was in one of a few rows. I decided to exit the parking lot, but I had to take an alternate exit than the one I came into. If I had been alone, I probably would have driven around the parking lot until I found that sign, but I was not alone so I just exited.

All I needed to do was to locate where the sign was to re-establish my handrail. I couldn’t and turned the wrong way. I had no idea where the sign was relative to parking spot. I had driven around too much looking for a spot that I had completely lost my spatial orientation.

My wife thought it was crazy. You could blindfold her and spin her around a dozen times in different directions and she could find that sign. I’m hoping that there’s at least something I can do to gain something like that.

[Federico Calboli]

First off, I apologise if my previous post came across as condescending — I am naturally brusque and I will not change that, but I do not mean to offend.  In your example you had to concentrate on something else that was not your handrail, and you should not beat yourself up too much because you think other people would do better — get them to try in the same exact circumstances and see how well THEY do.  Work at it, expect slow gradual improvements and a number of mistakes at any point, some utterly egregious, and be aware that I think I am describing the situation most people are in.

Parking lots are actually confusing, so if it helps check where the sun is and try and find as may reference points as possible.  Finding a spot can be a PITA and stressful — if that is the case you might need to find your bearings again, and that’s fair, not a special limitation you have.  Many people do take a few tries before being familiar with a place and thus show effortless navigation.

[Jerry Adams]

” I am naturally brusque and I will not change that, but I do not mean to offend. ”

Many of us can claim that : )

I though A’s and F’s comments were good

There’s some episode of Radio Lab or something that talked about a culture that did not use the terms left and right, but instead N, S, E, and W, (and in between).  You didn’t say something is to the left of you, but something is to the north of you, for example.  It was difficult for the narrator (a westerner) initially, but after a while of using directions, in the narrator’s mind he could visualize a map of wherever he was with N, S, E, and W identified (N going up I assume)

[Roger Caffin]

It takes time and practice. Watching the sun direction automatically and sub-consciously becomes a habit. When we stop to look at the map we usually take a mental image of contours for the next few hours.

In a word – practice.

Cheers

[Matthew / BPL]

Adam, I hear you on your examples. I often have trouble in parking lots and forests, too. Everything looks the same and it takes very conscious effort for me to catalog enough details thst I don’t get lost on a smaller scale. I feel like I’m good at macro-navigation but micro-navigation is a challenge for me.

That means I get turned around sometimes on trail after a break or a pee. It definitely means I lose the car in the parking lot from time to time.

[Author]

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