Back country Night time Navigation

I'd like to hear your suggestions and recommendations to night time navigation.

I've looked at the Army field manual on this subject and the info is good, buy I would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,

Blake
www.outdoorquest.biz

Unless I was with another person, I’d probably not try to navigate through the back country at night. In my neck of the woods trails are often steep and treacherous and the risk of a fall just wouldn’t be worth it to me. Also the risk of getting really lost would be greater at night. That’s why I always carry sufficient supplies to spend the night out even on a day hike.

Take your time to acclimatise your night vision (usually takes around 20 minutes). If you have to use a flashlight so see what is in front of you, then close one eye to have a look. Again the same when reading the map. Get a compass with luminous dial and needle indicators. The amount of light to read a map may require a very low light setting (so as not to ruin your night vision) that most flashlights don't have. You only need 1-2 Lumen. Map read and navigate as normal but knowing how to count and convert the number of paces into a distance can take a little getting used to. Eat plenty of carrots and if you get lost then follow a nocturnal animal as they know where they are going. If you get really snookered then stop, wait for the sun to come up and then practice a 3 point resection to find out where you are.

Concur with that. I also reccommend a spare flashlight.

A couple of years back in a high sierra backpack, the guide took most of the group on what was supposed to be a 3 hour dayhike. I stayed in camp with mild altitude sickness. 9 hours later they got back into camp (never go off trail with a 1:200,000 scale topo as your only reference) minus one hiker. I went after him, but my flashlight died 50 yards into the trees, and my spares were back at camp. The lost hiker wandered in the next morning after losing the trail when it crossed a stream.

Not really, folks end up getting lost because they head off in a certain blase manner by NOT concentrating on the navigation, thinking that because it is daylight and they can see where they are they going they could not possibly get lost. Night navigation forces you to actually concentrate on the navigation task at hand. There is always a GPS but thats cheating. Night navigation is slightly more challenging and is actually more fun.

If you can avoid it, don't do it.

It adds lots of additional risks.



I've done very little of it and what I've done had the beginnings of major misadventure barely avoided. Even on-trail.

(Of course walkin in circles all night is a way to stay warm but most of us wouldn't call that 'navigation' unless they were big circles ;-)

A lot of variables, the most important being type of terrain, the dangers with said terrain and tracks versus no tracks.

I see no problems navigating a maze of trails in a heavily used recreational area. That is great fun. If (or rather, when) you get lost you can usually pick a trail that heads somewhere in the general direction of civilization. That trail will cross bigger trails and before you know it you know where you are.

Negotiating steep and difficult terrain without trails to follow is a totally different ball game. If you do that at night then you need to be fairly confident in your ability to find and follow "lines" of the land. You also must be fairly confident in your ability to NOT try short cuts down unknown gulleys and the like. It is very easy to become land locked if you try shortcuts in the vertical direction. You won't magically fall into a black hole because you dare to try night time navigation, but you may very easily fall when you try to extract yourself from a land locked position.


As always, the responsibility is yours. My best advice is to test and train your nighttime navigation skills in a fairly forgiving area, such as a heavily travelled recreational area, national park or the like with lots of trails.

I've tried different setups. One favorite was a dim flashlight (zebralight H50) at the lowest setting strapped to my chest, just above my map case. That gave just enough glow to see where I put my feet while being excellent for preserving night vision so I could see the faint outline of the terrain around me. It was also excellent for reading the map, although having the light so close to the map was somewhat blinding. I've also blazed through the trails with 200 lumens at my head. Great fun.

Using GPS... may be cheating, but it is also a skill that must be mastered, and something you need to train. Doing so at night is great fun and highly educational.


I think the best piece of advice is to try to develop the skill of extraction: If I'm lost (somewhere HERE on the map, but don't know exactly), then develop the skills to extract to something to big to miss. A power grid line, a road, a river, a lake, a track... Preferably, you should plan your route along such lines. Always look for them on your map. Also, develop the crucial habit of not ignoring the nagging sense of uncertainity that comes when obvious landmarks are in conflict with what you think they should be like. Usually, that is a pretty good indicator that you are about to become lost. Those skill sets are valid night and day, but are stressed much more at night. Which is why it is so fun

A few thoughts:

--If you're bushwhacking at night, don't expect a lot of speed. There are places, in dense brush and rough terrain, where 1 - 1.5 MPH is a pretty good rate in daylight. At night, my guess is you might do half that.
--Some sort of hiking staff or ski pole is just about mandatory (probing ahead for holes, or holding straight in front of you to part brush). Ditto a decent headlamp (though it's kinda fun to try to run dark and silent).
--It's amazing how important sound is at night. Stop and listen (instead of crashing around like a bull elk in rut).
--Night hazards include wildlife on the move (from bears to skunks), hitting wasp/hornet nests on the ground, twisting an ankle/knee, and the biggest hazard of all IME: running a stick into your eye.

Despite all the pitfalls, running around in a familiar patch of bush at night can be a lot of fun. Especially if you're playing evasion-and-escape with friends.

But I'd be loathe to do it in a survival scenario. Too many opportunities to make things an order of magnitude worse. SOP for me is to hole up and walk out at first light.

A Ranger trick for unaided night navigation and travel is to let your eyes adjust and to squat, or even lay flat, to catch silhouettes against the skyline. The sky is never completely black. Even on a moonless night the sky provides some light. Even surrounded by fairly dense woods it is often possible to spot a clearing indirectly by looking for a bright spot of skyshine.

It also pays to do everything possible to avoid using any lights. Even a dim red light viewed indirectly can take the edge off your night vision. If you are in a group it pays to designate a person to read maps and use lights while everyone else preserves their night vision. It sometimes helps if this person wears an eye patch. The eye not exposed to light will sympathetically react to the light even if not exposed but the effect will be muted.

An article posted by the American Optimetric Association
http://www.aoa.org/x5352.xml
It is actually a reprint of a USAF report on night vision.

You will never match a cat for night vision, their rod cells are designed differently and they have a reflective layer behind them too. But if you do the 45 minute adaption cycle you might be surprised how good your night vision is.

Besides guarding your night vision there are a few other tricks about light at night.
A small light like a candle can be seen up to 20 miles away on a clear dark night.
Most towns produce a lot of light and it shows up as skyshine. If it is dark of the moon and overcast small towns can be located up to 40 miles away by their light reflected off the clouds. Possibly much farther if you are in flat country.

If the night is clear you might get some help from the stars.
The pole star is often hard to make out, but the Big Dipper is usually easy to recognize. If you think of it as a pointer to the pole star it can give you another rough guide to north.
If you know the constellation Orion you should know the stars of Orion's belt rise and set almost due east and west. This is because they are on the celestial equator and it is true all year long.
A trick used by astronomers when trying to see dim stars is to look slightly to the side of them. That puts the light from the star on the rod cells. If you look directly at a dim star it falls on the cone cells and disappears.

However the biggest light in the sky is the moon.
If you think about the moon being roughly on the ecliptic you will understand that you can get a rough indicator for north and south.
The sun lights the side of the moon that faces it and the division between day and night on the moon is north and south.
If it was at the equinox and at it would be accurate. It varies through the year because the earths axis is tilted 22 degrees and a bit to the plane of our orbit around the Sun. That is why it is an approximate north south guide.
It also gives you east and west as it rises and sets.

Don't forget your hearing. Sounds travel a surprising distance. The sound of a distant highway or running water might help you to orient yourself.

Walking at night is more like how you would walk when stalking.
Feel the ground with your foot before shifting your weight onto your foot. You might avoid stubbing your toes if you avoid swinging your foot as much as normal too.

Be careful moving through brushy areas. It is easy to get poked by branches or tripped. Guard your eyes. If you have safety glasses they might be good to have on.

Of course if you have access to night vision goggles a lot of this changes.

I often run at night. In a urban setting or area where exterior electric illumination is going to screw w/ your night vision anyway, then use a normal headlamp or flashlight.

For 'off grid' like trail running, hiking and such, were you need illumination for personal use only and there is little or no external lighting I use a green flashlight. The easiest way is to use a version of the military's angled GI light or a step up to the Sidewinder angled LED. There are also others you can look for.

Green will not disrupt your night vision and give you a really good, though, not very far lighting. Even will running on good trail. Bushwhacking, your on your own. I have also started to use my new Tikka headlamp that has a larger red LED than the e+lite as a secondary light. Red also doesn't screw with your vision.

There is only one scenario where I would want to travel at night in a survival situation: in the desert on relatively level or only gently undulating terrain.

Otherwise, I don't see the point, unless I would be intending on making a bad situation worse. A rock rolls under your foot, you don't notice that 6" step-down or the little erosion gully, and you sprain/break your ankle or leg. Turn to speak to someone with you and walk off even a 3' cliff. If a bear was stalking you, would you know? Do you even know if you're going in the right direction?

How does getting injured, getting more tired, more stressed, possibly colder, possibly more dehydrated, or an injury help the situation?

As we've all armchair-quarterbacked, JUST STOP MOVING, for pete's sake!

And then there's possible searchers... someone in a search plane that is low on fuel thinks he saw you or your tracks just before sunset. The searchers go back at dawn and if you had been there, you're gone now. Somewhere. If you've managed to travel one mile per hour for ten hours, they've got an additional 80 miles of area to search.

Just find/build some shelter and build a fire. If nothing else, you'll be warmer, and also be able to see the oncoming bears, wolves, and zombies.

Sue

Zombies! Yoiks!

A lot of good information here. Thanks everyone.

Yeah, if you're not going to get out in an hour or two, then for sure bed down for the night while there's still light. That one was brought home to me in a big way when I kept going until after dark and then bedded down. In the morning I woke only to find that I had spent the night in poison oak. I laugh at myself now but at the time it was sheer misery, misery that lasted long after I had finally gotten out of the situation.

However, if you know where you are and you're on a good trail, I can see walking out if you know you can get out in an hour or two. Bushwhacking at night? Doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Steep, slanty trails at night? Doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

A trick that I haven't seen mentioned is using moonlight. Whenever I'm going to go overnight or on a long day hike, I visit the US Naval Observatory and get sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset information (see example below). I know how many hours of light there are. I match that against the mileage I want to cover for the day and how fast I hike. I get a pretty good idea of how early I need to be on the trail, and how much light I'll have left to set up camp when I get to my destination.

With the moonrise/set and phase information, I know whether or not I'll have moonlight by which I can explore or what have you. It's just a good idea to know what your resources are before you head out, and trust me, light is a resource.

HJ


U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department

Sun and Moon Data for One Day
The following information is provided for Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California (longitude W118.4, latitude N34.1):

Sunday
11 July 2010 Pacific Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:22 a.m.
Sunrise 5:51 a.m.
Sun transit 12:59 p.m.
Sunset 8:07 p.m.
End civil twilight 8:36 p.m.

MOON
Moonset 7:24 p.m. on preceding day
Moonrise 5:38 a.m.
Moon transit 12:59 p.m.
Moonset 8:14 p.m.
Moonrise 6:51 a.m. on following day

New Moon on 11 July 2010 at 12:40 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

If you are truly lost or disoriented at night staying in one spot and waiting for rescue makes sense. But it is pretty rare for anyone having a reasonable level of field experience to be entirely disoriented and unaware of the general lay of the land even in conditions of near total darkness.

I've never been in conditions where I simply had to completely stop. Even in complete darkness, in a cave, it is possible to keep moving very slowly and remain both oriented and safe.

The two skills you need are: a practiced sensitivity and willingness to take your time and use all your senses to develop a picture of what is around you; patience and a willingness to advance in stop-sense-move cycle.

In no-light conditions where risks are high it might take a while to get a feel for your surroundings. And you move by crawling a meter or two at a time before stopping and repeating the cycle. Full-moon, clear conditions, and flat ground with no danger and you move at a trot. Stopping just once in a while to listen and look.

The biggest obstacle to this sort of thing is the unwillingness of people to stop, calm down, and use all their senses. Training can start by taking people out into the woods. Having them lay down and create an inventory of things they sense. A very slight breeze carried the scent of flowers. And when the wind shifted a bit we could smell pine resin.

Staring up at the sky we could see the dark outline of tree branches against the sky and tell the tree was not a pine.

After a while we heard the slight sound of water, an armadillo rooting around in the leaf litter was quite loud. Over time it is easy to start to paint a picture of the landscape around us for a considerable distance.

Hmm. I'm a little skeptical about the cave thing, but I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think the biggest barrier to night time nav is people's perception of how difficult it's going to be. I got kind of used to it in the army. My wife thinks I'm nuts.

HJ