The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors, Second Edition

I purchased this book to learn how to Navigate in a wilderness area using Map & Compass. I'm very happy with the book, as it was just what I needed. A great book on wilderness navigation. Has lots of info on Maps, understanding maps, how to hold and handle maps, map scales and etc. Also has, map and compass navigation and how to follow a course. How to use a compass and understanding declination. A whole lot more .. a great book!

I can't compare to similar books because I chose carefully and bought one. My limited experience with others isn't enough to say this is the only one for you, but I can say that by a wide margin it's the one for me. It's only ~170pp but there's scarcely a wasted word or unnecessary idea in it. Others wander through extensive desultory discussions of compass design, magnetic anomalies, map projections, tables and graphs. This book mentions each, says about it what pertains to the subject at hand and moves on. (That's the "Essential" part.) The subject at hand is not getting lost, or if necessary getting unlost. So it spends half its column-inches explaining how to use a map, how to use a compass, and how to use them together, in a progressive, logical, concise style. That's what I bought it for and I think it performs that function admirably. It's an intelligently organized instruction manual for the use of our basic tools. Where this book excels, though, is that while embracing technical assistance (map & compass) it begins and ends with a deep appreciation of the myriad clues available for determining position without technical assistance if we learn to see and understand them. (That's the "Wilderness Navigator" part.) So most of the other half of its column-inches are devoted to navigating without, or in conjunction with, map and/or compass using sun, stars, watercourses, topography etc., how to think graphically and accumulate data, and how to behave sensibly. It espouses a cogent philosophy I'll sum up in three aphorisms: pay attention to where you are and visualize where you've been; practice and theory are both essential (more of one doesn't make up for less of the other); and, if lost, thinking is a better strategy than hoping. There's the obligatory cursory examination of GPS and a nod to Orienteering, each blessedly brief because neither can be properly addressed in anything less than more than this entire book. You can ignore those bits without penalty, and you can merely read pages that examine peculiar difficulties with generic solutions, or recount illustrative anecdotes. What's left, though, demands close and repeated attention as it's precisely to the point. Declarative statements, simple illustrations and prescriptive exercises will get you thinking and navigating expertly, if you're willing to do the work. One small note: the authors recommend, correctly, acquiring a baseplate compass. However, they say more than once that among its advantages is that almost all baseplate compasses offer built-in declination adjustment. My experience is that dealers nearly always offer compasses with and without this feature that look almost identical. Above a certain price, perhaps, their statement is accurate, but novice shoppers can't count on it. Of a large class I once took, nearly half the students had bought new baseplate compasses that could not compensate for declination. Not one of them realized it. Unless you live in Wisconsin, o

I have been using a compass for many years but I always thought there was much more than I knew. I went to using GPS for all my navigation a few years ago. I purchased 3 books on compass usage a couple years ago after my wife and I broke my GPS during a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado leaving us in a bad mess. I quickly ran through the other 2, and although they were good they were not as complete as this one. I have carried it with me for 2 years now. I find that what I think I have learned is easily wrong when out in the field so I now carry it with me and practice the stuff I am unsure of. Some people think this book is wordy but I find it fascinating. I reread certain chapters over and over, finding I have glossed over something that is more important than I originally thought. If you want to trust a compass this is the book for you, but plan on spending some time with it. I am buying this book for my son-in law as he relies exclusively on a GPS. I guess the only thing I disagree with is a statement that a compass almost never breaks, as I have several that have been retired over breakage. I carry 2-3 with me now as I guess I'm not disposed to trust any one navigational instrument.

This is a excellent book if you do not have a knowledge of the wilderness. I would recommend it highly

You want to learn how to use a map and compass? For hiking or backpacking, especially remote wilderness? This is the best comprehensive book I've found on the subject, bar none. Reasons: 1. It gets to the point quickly in teaching you map & compass fundamentals. No fluff, no wasted time on esoteric principles of magnetism or the rules of orienteering competitions (a fine sport, but one bearing little resemblance to actual wilderness navigation with its special large-scale magnetic-north maps and simplified compasses etc.) Instead, this book concentrates on one objective: accurate land navigation in a wilderness environment. 2. It teaches realistic methods, and does not emphasize the unrealistic ones (one glaring example: penciling a lot of inaccurate magnetic declination lines all over your map the night before your trip (because the author used the method once for an adventure race with a special large-scale map and thinks it's cool) instead of just buying a compass with adjustable declination or pasting a pointer indicating a true bearing on your compass baseplate! Hey, sitting atop a windblown mountain is no place to attempt to draw magnetic lines of declination with a three-inch compass baseplate when you walk off your pre-marked map or have to use a friend's copy! 3. It has large, clear, easy-to-follow illustrations. Believe me, this is a rarity in most map/compass books. 4. It teaches BOTH compass dead reckoning (compass only) AND terrain association (map priority) navigation principles and shows the advantages and weaknesses of each in a given situation. Some orienteering-biased books would have you believe the compass is only good for aligning a map to magnetic north! 5. It has nice large pages and lies flat while you refer to various sections and practice using your map & compass in the field. Don't laugh. Remember, you will learn land navigation by practicing outdoors what you're reading. One session of trying to refer to the tiny pocket paperback pages and dingy photos of competing books will make you a believer in a large-paged instruction book with clear illustrations. 6. It covers more advanced map/compass skills (resection, finding position from a baseline and landmark, etc.) as well as beginner exercises, and does so in the same clear, practical way without excessive verbiage or attempts to be clever. One competing book spent 3 entire pages on how to use a 1902 compass design! 7. It warns you of the great inaccuracies of some improvised 'navigational' methods (like telling directions from a wristwatch and the sun) while still giving you useful information on finding direction from Polaris and other methods that do work well enough for emergency navigation. 8. While it has the mandatory chapter on GPS and the development of computer-generated waypoints, it does not attempt to be a 'all-method navigation' book. Such a book does not exist. Either the GPS material will be inadequate (because no general GPS book can