THIS is how to navigate in a forest – Forest Navigation done correctly

The hiker knows where he is, because he knows where he isn't.

My favorite forest navigation tip: Moss grows on the north side of the bodies of those who forgot their compass.

As a Welsh bog-hopper, my navigation is all about avoiding the suck, keeping to high/dry ground and often following the rivers because I’ve got no choice. I’ve done so much wading icy “streams” that have become torrents due to heavy rainfall, that I always expect the worst. Felled sections can sometimes be even harder going, unless you’re lucky enough to find the caterpillar tracks the loggers have surfaced with branches. A forest mile on the map for me is often three miles on the ground. Keep up the great work. I’m loving your videos.

One needs to keep in mind when walking in the forest that obstructions are often encountered and really must be avoided by going around. Marshes, bogs, lakes and other wet areas are the worst, but even fairly large hills will take their toll on you if you try to go straight over. Areas of thick brush or areas that have been logged with tops laying every which-way can be tough. What often looks like a straight line A-to-B on a map is often very, very different when you are out there walking it!

Your "studio" being a clearing in a forest is much more appreciated than a boring stale studio like most other content creators. I like your style very much.

I stupidly wondered off a path in a National Forest in Kentucky without a map or compass, and worse 1st time ever there. First time I had ever truly got lost. I was lost for about 20 minutes. What kept me from horribly getting in very deep dodo was I kept calm and before I walked off the path I looked up at the Sun. After about 15 minutes of a bit of wondering about I looked back up and from the position it was when I got started and at that point, I knew which way to go and when I walked back onto the path, I was about 5' away from where I first walked off it. True story.

Long-time forest roamer here from the pacific Northwest of the USA, a region where Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and Lodgepole pine (plantation species of the Keidler forest) grow natively. I agree with your take on forest navigation. It's a lot about interpreting map features and topography, and rough-and-ready bearings. And one frequently doesn't know exactly where one is. Which is not the same thing as being lost, I should note. One point I occasionally make to the trail-dependent, is that most trail-walkers don't know exactly where they are either, but they have an algorithm (following the trail) for getting to a known destination. So they're not lost, unless they lose the trail. Similarly, if I preserve general orientation in the woods and know that If I keep going in a given direction, I will eventually emerge at a known or identifiable spot, I am not lost, even if I am unsure within a kilometer of where I am. I applaud you for being invested in map and compass usage rather than a GPS device, or a mobile phone screen. It's more skill-demanding, sure, but it's much more robust. And I do believe also that over time it aids in developing terrain intuition, a "mental map", so that one does not need to consult map or compass often, or even at all in familiar terrain. And I think that's a good objective to work towards. Fiddle-faddling around with the map and compass takes time and breaks the rhythm. It's often much more satisfying to intuitively follow terrain. One should strive for efficiency, ease of movement, and that means navigating enough, but not too much. Use the heavyweight tools, such as precisely and slavishly following a compass bearing, only if you really need that precision. Most of the time, in woods or obstructed terrain, it'll just slow you down and drive you nuts. Follow the bearing sloppily, letting obstacles and terrain influence your path, and check once in a while to make sure you're not deviating too much. One thing I would note explicitly is that orientation is hardest in relatively featureless terrain with relatively poor visibility. In landscapes where the topography gives off strong signals, even if forested or with otherwise limited visibility (fog, dark) one can frequently rely just rely on topography without much reference to compass. One could say, in fact that the relative importance of compass vis-a-vis topographic map varies with terrain and visibility. Your instructional example relies on streams a lot as identifiable features. Over here in the US, even the best topographic maps we have, at 1:24000 scale, not infrequently get streams wrong, something I have learned the hard way. Mostly I think there is little field verification used on those maps, it is largely photographic interpretation, so a stream under unbroken tree cover may be missed or misplaced. Quite possibly UK ordnance survey map-making is more painstaking and better-funded. But the lesson still applies, I think, that one should learn what can be expected of one's maps. In large parts of Canada (British Columbia is what I know), the remoter and more interesting parts, naturally, the largest scale available is 1:50000, which takes a bit of getting used to. One striking and interesting and near-universal phenomenon which you do not mention is what I like to call (with apologies to Kenneth Grahame) "the terror of the wild wood". Being in trailless woods, particularly in situations of obstructed visibility (head-high brush, dark) has the capacity to really freak people out. It's built in, I think: we are visual creatures, and who knows what might be lurking out there? Bears? Tigers? Woozles? It is all very well for the rational mind to point out that there are no free-roaming bears, tigers, or woozles in the UK, the older and more primitive parts of our minds are still convinced that they are out there. The proper response to this fear is to condition it out through repeated exposure; over time one is as easy as Mr Darcy might be lounging in his deer park.

I was a Forward Observer attached to the Lite Infantry at Fr. Wainwright, AK, and so land navigation is what we did all the time. I loved it - those were the times I could go do my thing and be left alone without some overbearing jackass micromanaging or second guessing everything! As you know, when you get good at it then navigation in an unknown forest is as easy as following a highway map on a road trip. Practice practice practice!

Good video. You covered the most important stuff. These are what I know about orienteering: 1. Handrails. You covered it. 2. Aiming Off. Aiming for the left of a handrail, then turning right when you get there (or right, left). 3. Attack Points / Collecting Features. You covered that. 4. Point To Point Navigation. You covered. 5. Pacing, Estimated. I can hike 100 meters on flat smooth ground in 59 paces (118 steps). It could take a lot more for elevation and rough terrain, but never less. 6. Boxing. To go around a big obstacle, turn 90 degrees, go X paces, turn 90, go X, turn 90, X paces, turn 90. You are X paces from your starting point, and avoided the obstacle. 7. Safety Direction. When you leave your car / the road, take a bearing backwards toward the road. That's your safety direction. If all else fails, hopefully you have a working compass, and can bushwhack (off-trail) straight back to the road. One or two small button compasses are nice to have as backup, in case one of them breaks or gets lost.

My dad served in the US Air Force as a translator. He didn't particularly want to and was completely uninterested, but it was the best thing he could do to make money with his French degree and knack for language learning. In basic training he was supposed to learn to navigate in the wilderness by the stars, but he didn't pay attention in the class part. During the test, he wandered around lost for a while, stumbled upon another recruit who knew what he was doing, and followed him at a distance to the meetup point. My dad was commended for his quick navigation lol. So, if you ever need to navigate the forest, just follow someone who knows how. Easy!

TO THE PRODUCER: This is the first video I have watched from this channel, but it was so good, so helpful, and nicely illustrated, that I will subscribe to learn more. I learned orienteering many years ago, and was taught in the military, but the tips in this video (so nicely illustrated by on the location footage) was VERY helpful along with the map visuals shown to correlate the features on the map with the scenes on the ground. Very helpful tips, I won’t forget. Thanks for producing the video! I look forward to learning more from you. Also I like how the video ended with a note about the relative size of forests in different locations. In the USA (and Canada) there can be very large forested areas, where someone can get lost easily, and many do. I also like how you showed the density of the forest too. Those make it very difficult or impossible to use typical “sight a distant object” techniques that are so often mentioned in books and lessons given by instructors. Your video shows how dense a forest can be, with undergrowth that prohibits any distant viewing, and makes hiking through it very difficult.

Great principles! Over 50 years ago my father taught me to always go downhill if I didn’t know which way to go…civilization is down. If you live in the mountains you understand the value of such a simple statement.

Another useful technique when you're headed for a linear object (stream, road, shoreline or whatever) is to aim for a deliberate miss. If it's a N-S road, aim so you will clearly hit it to the south of your intended target. Then when you get there you know that you'll need to turn left.

It’s been 45 years since I trudged through the woods. Inspiring wisdom. Thank you

Brilliant video sir, one of your best. How many times have I "doubted" my map and compass in favor of the terrain? Only because I was wanting it so, or too tired or very calorie depleted etc on the given day. I've seen others do it as well and fro me the crazy thing is, when my mind gets confused and starts to lie to me...I KNOW that it's lying but still find it's very hard to change my view point. A tip from an expert in dealing with bad map reading :-)...when in doubt, take a minute, grab a quick cuppa if you can or have a bite of food or just sit down and close your eyes for acouple of minutes, it'll save you time in the long run. That I can promise you. Here is central Sweden we have lots of dense forest and very little ground or small rivers...no tricks work here only solid map reading skills. Thank you again for the great video mate and Happy Christmas and look forward to 2024 with The Map Reading Company.

I've been back packing for decades and know my way around with map and compass; however, I learned something from this video that I hadn't thought about before. Pacing. It's tough to do where I backpack because of the mountains and rocky outcroppings that can really mess with pacing (Smoky Mountains in North Carolina). But, smaller segments should work. I'll put it to the test this summer. Oh, and the bit about your mind lying to you? Spot on advice!

I was always Mr. USGS map and compass guy for whatever outdoor adventure. One of my college buddies I went on adventures with got a Garmin GPS in 2005. Over the next year, he would whip out his GPS and do instantly what took me a few minutes to sort out with my map and compass. After a year of my map and compass being all but useless backups on our adventures, I left them at home for a trip. You can probably see where this is going... We decided to do a long snowshoeing backpacking trip deep into the wilderness around the middle for of the Snoqualmie river. At the start, we had easy snowshoe tracks to follow, then it started snowing so the tracks vanished, a thick fog settled in, and about 3 miles up a very gradual valley the GPS died due to dead batteries and he didn't bring extras. In these conditions there was no real way to find the trail, but, we could follow the stream/river back. And when I say "steam", I mean the the headwaters of a river with a series of box canyons and waterfalls... Needless to says, we had to endure a very sketchy bushwhack until we found our way back. And I learned my lesson and am back to being Mr. USGS map compass guy, even if it doesn't seem necessary.

Great video. Thanks for braving the conditions to make it. I had to navigate a team through dense forestry commission land a good few years ago when we were doing an archaeological survey of land to be felled for a windfarm. It got very dark under the canopy there too. We had to walk transects to make sure we covered all the ground. Had to use the take a bearing onto a tree and walk to it method to do it accurately but it takes a huge amount of concentration to do that for 6-7 hours a day (was that the tree? No, this is the tree. Ha). We managed it though. Staying together in the dense areas was also a challenge. Definitely picked up a few extra techniques from your video that I could have used. Oh, one extra complication. We kept finding empty plastic bottles tied to trees that had a pencil, a note and a picture of a heavily tattooed guy with his top off (face obscured). The note said that he came up to this woodland to practice naked yoga and to leave your name if you were insterested in joining him! That added a tiny bit of fear to the whole proceedings! There are some strange people out there.

Hi, I'm doing a lot of forest navigation in a forest, to prepare for a course I'm doing later this year. I'm feeling confident and have walked checkpoints up to 3.5km, without using any tracks or roads and arriving pretty much on point, using my GPS to confirm my position. The techniques I implement are: - Walking on a bearing/Point to point - 'Up the guts' approach. - Aiming off - approximately 100-150m off target - terrain association - Checking for increases in elevation to confirm approximate location and direction. - Backstops - Using tracks and terrain features as a backstop to know if/when I have walked too far. The only doubt I have is that I don't use pace counting. In a forest, I have found: - my pace count to be wildly inaccurate and a waste of mental energy - Trying to following my compass bearing while counting my paces. - using the above techniques to be more effective in keeping me on track. My old orienteering club also didn't encourage pace counting due to its inaccuracy. Do you recommend I still practice it?

Thank you! A brilliant and very clear presentation of the realities and the practicalities of deep forest navigation. I spend a good amount of time in the backcountry of the Adirondack and the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York and I am constantly dismayed by the number of hikers that I encounter who do not carry a compass or a map, instead relying entirely upon a smart phone or a GPS as their lone means of finding their way home.