A new survey has revealed five of the most common mistakes made when navigating on the hills – although I am struggling to believe point five.
The study, which was commissioned by Brunton and carried out by Strong Roots Training, has been revealed in the run up to the Telegraph Outdoor and Adventure Travel show from February 12 to 15.
Apparently, the five most common navigational errors are:
- Holding the map 180 degrees the wrong way round when taking a bearing i.e. getting north and south mixed up.
- Using a compass near metal objects, or near electronic items, thus causing the magnetic needle to be inaccurate.
- Looking at the map all of the time and not looking at visual clues in the real world.
- Losing concentration and walking too far when you get to your point, then falling victim to confirmation bias. (This is the tendency to see things that confirm you are right, but miss things that show you are wrong.)
- Only carrying one compass with you. (If one breaks you are stuck.)
Here’s a compass question for you
The first four points are fairly obvious and do make sense but point number five. Really? Has anyone suffered a broken compass? Dave of MyOutdoors.co.uk tells me he once sat on a compass and broke it but this must be a very rare occurrence given how robust most are.
I would have thought that a more likely situation for mistake number five would be forgetting the compass in the first place, because you think you can rely on a GPS gadget or because you simply don’t imagine you’ll need a compass.
What does anyone else think?
Anyway, Brunton TruArc Compass Demos will take place at the Telegraph Outdoor and Adventure Travel show on the Brunton stand [OU1314].
To find out more about Brunton visit: bruntoneurope.com