Backpacking

Lesson 4: Hitting the Outdoors: On The Ground and Under the Stars

Outdoor Navigation: Essential Online Resources

As beginners of backpacking, it is advisable to avoid plunging into the outdoors alone. Having a guide, or someone who knows the landscape or how to navigate through the outdoors can be life-saving to amateur nature enthusiasts.

Sooner or later, though, you will want to move past amateur status and know how to read a compass and a topographical map yourself -- and be the one newbies can rely on for directions. Here are some online resources you can start with for the basics in outdoor navigation and orienteering:

Compass FAQs - The Compass Store is an excellent resource for everything compass-related. Their FAQs and "Learning" pages are the best ones online.

US Orienteering Foundation - Orienteering is the sport of navigation with map and compass. The site is packed with basic to advanced information on how to read compasses and maps, where to go for gear, events, and competition, and how to enjoy it all!

Finding Your Way with Map and Compass - Courtesy of the USGS, this section teaches how to take a compass bearing from a map. Go to the main USGS site for more information and lots of print and online resources about topography, map-reading, and geography. A must for the outdoor enthusiast.

Hi-Tech Backpacking - just something for the backpacker to consider in this age of tehnology.

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7