There are several reasons you need a compass if you’re serious about outdoor adventure. Let me take you through part my Mountain Leader assessment to give you a flavour of a couple. One of the trickier tasks was the night navigation. We’d set up camp and were about to venture back out into the dark armed with our headlamps, topographical maps of the region and our compasses. We were individually assigned navigational legs to take charge of, leading the rest of the group across complex terrain and through the pitch black to specific points among the peaks.
A combination of faultless map reading, precisely taken compass bearings, accurate pacing and a solid grasp of what the terrain was doing underfoot was needed to successfully pull off each leg of micro navigation. The feeling of satisfaction of navigating in such a way cannot be understated, neither can the usefulness of such skills in the great outdoors.
