Land Navigation in Darkness

I'd appreciate your thoughts about hiking through the backcountry when it is extremely dark; pitch dark.

With or without GPS.

Blake

www.outdoorquest.blogspot.com

Night hiking is a tricky business.

In my part of the world, wildlife use the same corridors and trails at night. Your chances of meeting a bear or large ungulate increase, and it's hard to have the same situational awareness as in daylight.

Off trail work raises the injury potential. It's surprisingly easy to run a branch into your eye or step into a hidden hole.

I would note that the excellent LED lights we have now help to mitigate these hazards to some degree. A good headlamp with a blowtorch handheld would be the combination I'd choose. Note that large animals don't necessarily run from bright light though. Some would argue that a light that preserves your night vision might be a better choice (at least when there is some ambient light out there).

My 2c.

P.S., Don't expect to make nearly the miles during a night hike that you would make during the day in the same terrain.

You certainly would need to allow your night vision to develop and then protect it.
This is from the American Optometric Association.
http://www.aoa.org/optometrists/tools-an...nd-night-vision

The only place I would travel at night is the dessert.that would only be in a survival situation to avoid the heat and sun.The only people I know that navigate at night are military running night operations or in an E&E situation.When running night ops the military has night vision goggles.If I would hike at night it would be on a clear star filled sky with a full moon.
If you do night hike get a CAMMENGA Tritium compass.I have one and recommend it highly.yes I have done night hikes and also night patrols (in training) in the military.

BOATMAN
John

Unless you are in a position where you need to travel at night--desert or an E&E situation--your body generally wants to sleep when it's dark. Don't fight it. As a counterpoint, I have worked evenings and midnights for 32 years...in the woods. The "kids" I FTO'd always got an initial lesson of: let's sit for five minutes, with the lights out, and THEN go to work. I have a Streamlight Stylus (no affiliation) that I carry for when I REALLY can't see where I'm going; I also have a much brighter light, for when I need to blind everyone. Working in the dark has allowed me to work much more efficiently, than trying to work with any kind of light on.
For recreational hiking, wait for some moonlight, or plan to move much more slowly in starlight. I have had some wonderful times eating "lunch" in the middle of the night, overlooking the countryside...

And totally off-topic: I was home last week: but not back on a Cracker Pony in a Cypress forest. Makes me wonder why I put up with last winter here, instead of FTL...

There's two techniques I know of thats good for lowlight land navigation. The first involves walking to, and along, large terrain features. You can miss a pass, but it's hard to miss a valley.

The second is a two person technique for using a back bearing and flaslights. Say that you want to navigate across the alluvial fan on a bearing of 320 deg. One person stays put and the second hikes 50-100 yards out. The second then turns around and moves, typically CCW, until the first person is 40 deg (320-180=40) from them. The first person then comes up to join the second. If you account for the tendency to veer off toward your dominate side, this can be fairly accurate.

I am not sure I would recommend hiking in the desert at night, at least not the Lower Sonoran. It is a very prickly landscape, and during a large part of the year,rattlesnakes are more active at night. Caution is advised.

But I rather enjoy hiking at night, and during SAR operations, night work is extremely common. I prefer a moderately powered headlamp which is readily handheld, along with a convenient bright one. I prefer to use ambient light as much as possible. In a full moon, you really don't need your headlamp much at all, especially if you are following a ridge crest.

I find that your feet can sense trail tread quite well, and will often give you the first indication that you have strayed.Like any other activity, more experience will lead to greater proficiency.

As for hiking in desserts, I have never tried that,but I would imagine that pumpkin pie would be rather slippery,especially with vanilla ice cream. Chocolate would be very hard to distinguish, but I would be willing to try.....

I would not attempt it unless it was absolutely necessary.

I have gotten turned around in the woods on my my way to my deer stand on my brothers farm...an area I have hunted and logged for years and know like the back of my hand.

Even with a light, you might not fall in a hole, but you cannot get the big picture to navigate. Although it's rarely totally dark, even in the bottomlands, things look different at night, with or without a light.

Extremely hard to do solo, almost as hard with a partner. Pace count, terrain association and known landmarks work at night, as far as you can see them. Going is slow, especially if you are trying to hit an known point. Obstacles at night can fool you. That dark shadow - is it a hole or just a shadow. You can't see poisonous plants too well at night either.

Night time Land navigation just requires a little more confidence in your own day time land navigational abilities and a little more precision such as pace step counting to confirm distance (magnitude) of the vector etc. GPS can be used to confirm your location if your feeling a little lost in the dark.

Night time orienteering can be a fun past time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHydZ1-gHZc

Thank you for all the feed back and links to other info.

I agree. You have to take a very measured approach to night time travel.

Blake

www.outdoorquest.blogspot.com

One of our little informal training exercises with the Oregon Grotto was to climb in a select lava tube cave a couple miles, then kill the lights and try to find our way out. It is almost impossible not to lose your nerve and start flinching after bumping your head a dozen times. Such a complete absence of light does enhance your hearing, in unsettling ways until you get used to it. Climbing over the breakdown was a real pain.

It was a good exercise. But not for the faint hearted. 2 miles underground in the dark took the better part of 6 hours, and that in a cave we were already familiar with. In big chambers, it is dangerously easy to get completely turned around, and start back down the way you came.

I think there is a big difference between hiking through the dark on an established trail vs doing actual land navigation in the dark.

When we do long day mountain ascents in the fall and early spring, it is not uncommon to set out in the early dark am on an established trail. However we are typically equipped with the proper lighting gear which includes headlamps and handheld flashlights when needed.

On the other hand, land navigation at night and not on any trail is not something I do as there are far too many chances of getting injured or worse.

It really helps a lot if you have been in the area previously, preferably during the day

I don't see any problems with navigating in the dark?

I do. As has been previously pointed out, you only do movement at night if you know EXACTLY what you are doing or the alternative is certain death.

Cross country navigation is hazardious enough in daylight. PARTICULARLY in broken terrain. doing the same thing at night multiplies the risks by an order of magnitude. that is why survivors are encouraged to STAY PUT.

Soldiers around the world, most especially in the U.S., do night land navigation as a matter of course. It does take practice. It can be more dangerous. It is not impossible.

I find the greatest problems with night navigation is always present when I started getting over confident in my abilities.

Lots and lots of feedback - thank you.

I wanted to learn some of the considerations the hiker/hunter must mull over before launching out at night.

The short section on www.landnavigation.org is worth looking at

Blake

www.outdoorquest.blogspot.com

There is one more point to make about night travel which pertains especially to deserts and other hot places. The relative coolness of nighttime can make that the most feasible time to travel, and this can be crucial if water is scarce. In most desert situations, you will frequently have an open sky and the amount of light available to dark adapted eyes is surprisingly bright.

Agreed. In scouts we attempted to summit Mt Whitney on an "overnight" hike to try and watch the sunrise from the summit (We didn't make it, btw).

But, it was a well marked trail, about 24-ish miles round trip. Once above the tree line, with a full moon, the place was BRIGHT. As in, we had shadows. The moon off the granite mountains was incredible. Anyway, easy trail to follow.

Land nav, eg military at night, I've never tried. Those I know that have, say they can only get a few miles in (and these are guys trying out for Special Forces billets).

Excellent point.

I have done some long distances at night, across country and using a map and compass (before GPS). Most of this was after being on a Special Forces team. I have done as much as 20 miles in one period of darkness. It is possible, but it does take practice.

Doing night navigation training is useful in that it forces the individual to plan better and practice the fundamentals without relying on daytime vision. Night land nav will show a person's problems with fundamentals very quickly.

Oregon State Hospital used that exercise as part of a way to weed out soon-to-be-released sex offenders. If they couldn't control their anger and fear, they weren't ready for release. I don't believe they used caves with breakdown tho, just the sandy bottom ones.

Before GPS, did lots of night hiking in Eastern Oregon with groups in the Steens and Hart Mountain. High desert open terrain with river bottoms, cliffs, stars and distant ranch lights for landmarks. Very rocky terrain, but even without flashlights and carrying heavy packs, everyone soon learned to feel their way with their feet. We used flashlights to look at the map and compass. It was cold weather so we didn't worry about snakes.

One night hike in Joshua Tree National Monument convinced me that there are too many snakes to be doing that without lights there when it is warm.

A few years ago, with a full moon after a nice rain a guide and a couple of us floated the Kings River in northwest Arkansas AT NIGHT. We floated 8 miles down the twisting, rapids-filled river. Was amazing how we'll we could navigate by sound and with darkness adjusted eyes.

I WOULD NOT attempt it without a full moon and someone who knows the river.

It was an awesome float.