No photo
Suunto M-3 Baseplate Compass
Suunto
46 g with adjustable declination and six map scales on the baseplate, so bearings and distances need no arithmetic.
How to Navigate Without a Phone: Two Skills Cover Almost Everything
You do not need to become a navigator. You need two techniques that take an afternoon to learn and about ten minutes a year to keep.
Trail & Tarp earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure.
What to carry
The short answer
A paper map of the area at a useful scale, a baseplate compass with adjustable declination, and the knowledge of two techniques. That is the whole kit, it weighs about three ounces, and none of it has a battery. Keep the phone as the primary tool if you like — it is a good one — and treat this as what still works when the phone does not.
Put the map in a waterproof case or a zip bag, because a paper map in rain becomes pulp in about ten minutes. And set the compass declination before you leave home rather than in the field — a Brunton TruArc 3 adjusts tool-free, and a Suunto M-3 uses a small built-in key.
Skill one: set the map to the ground
This is the technique that does the most work, and it takes thirty seconds. Orienting the map means turning it so that what is drawn on the paper lines up with what is in front of you.
- Lay the compass on the map with the edge along a north–south grid line, direction-of-travel arrow toward the top of the map.
- Turn the map and compass together until the magnetic needle sits inside the orienting arrow in the capsule.
- The map is now aligned with the world. The ridge drawn to the left of your position is the ridge on your left.
Once the map is set, navigation becomes recognition rather than calculation. You look at a landform, find it on the paper, and you know where you are. Most of the time this is all you need, and it is why reading contour lines is worth an afternoon — how to read a topographic map.
Skill two: take a bearing and walk it
For when there is nothing to recognize: fog, forest, featureless moor, or dark.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Put the compass edge on the map, from where you are to where you want to go, direction-of-travel arrow pointing the way you want to travel |
| 2 | Turn the compass housing until the orienting lines inside align with the map's north-south grid lines, north on the housing toward map north |
| 3 | Read the bearing at the index line. That number is your bearing |
| 4 | Take the compass off the map, hold it flat at waist height in front of you, and turn your whole body until the needle sits inside the orienting arrow |
| 5 | The direction-of-travel arrow now points where you are going. Pick a visible object on that line, walk to it, and repeat |
Step five is the one people skip and the one that makes it work. Walking with your eyes on a compass produces a curve; walking to a tree you identified on the bearing produces a straight line. On open ground pick something far away; in forest pick something close and repeat often.
Keep metal away from the needle
Vehicles, power lines, rebar, ice axes, camera batteries and the phone in your other hand all deflect a compass needle. Step several paces away from anything metal or electronic before taking a bearing, and hold the compass away from your body. A bearing taken while leaning on a car bonnet can be wildly wrong and will look completely normal.
The techniques that make bearings forgiving
Handrails. Follow a linear feature — a stream, a wall, a track, a forest edge — instead of a bearing wherever one runs your way. It is faster, it needs no attention, and you cannot drift off it.
Catching features. Pick something you cannot miss beyond your target: a road, a river, a ridge line. If you reach it, you know you have gone too far, which converts an anxious walk into a bounded one.
Aiming off. When heading for a point on a linear feature — a bridge on a stream — deliberately aim to one side. Then when you hit the stream you know which way to turn, instead of standing there guessing.
These three are what experienced navigators actually use, and they are far more robust than precise bearings, because they tolerate the errors everyone makes.
Estimating distance
Two rough methods, both worth knowing. Timing: most adults walk about 3 miles per hour on easy ground, considerably less with a pack or on rough terrain, so twenty minutes is roughly a mile. Pacing: count double-paces over a measured 100 m at home to find your personal number, then count them in the field.
Neither is precise and both are enough. Knowing you have walked roughly 800 m of a 1 km leg tells you to start looking for the feature you are expecting, which is the whole purpose.
When you are not sure where you are
Stop. This is the actual technique, and it is the one that gets ignored. Walking on while unsure turns a small uncertainty into a large one, and every minute of it makes the problem harder to unpick.
- Stop and sit down. Eat something. The urge to keep moving is the enemy.
- Establish the last point you were certain of and roughly how long ago that was.
- Orient the map and look around. What can you see? Which way does the ground slope? Where is the water going?
- If you can identify your position, continue. If you cannot, go back to the last known point rather than pressing on to a guess.
- If you cannot do either and it is getting dark, stopping and staying put is a legitimate decision, and it is why a headlamp and a spare layer live in a day pack.
Practice where it does not matter
Set a bearing across a park you know and walk it. Orient a map at a campsite. Pace out 100 m in a field. Twenty minutes somewhere familiar embeds this better than reading about it three times, and the skills fade without use.
Keep the phone too. Download offline maps before losing signal, and use the phone freely — the point is not purity, it is that a compass and a paper map still work when a phone is flat, wet or broken. What none of this does is call for help, which is a different category entirely — see satellite messenger vs PLB vs two-way radio.
The gear this page points to
No photo
Brunton TruArc 3 Baseplate Compass
Brunton
1.1 oz with tool-free declination adjustment. The one that stays in a pack lid permanently because it weighs nothing.
No photo
Silva Ranger 2.0 Sighting Compass
Silva
Mirror sighting with luminous points, usable for up to 4 hours after being charged by light. Precision, and night capability.
No photo
Black Diamond Spot 400 Headlamp
Black Diamond
400 lm high, 200 hours at low. If the answer is to stop and wait, a headlamp and a spare layer are what make that safe.
Questions people actually ask
QHow do you orient a map with a compass?
Lay the compass on the map with its edge along a north-south grid line and the direction-of-travel arrow toward the top of the map, then turn the map and compass together until the magnetic needle sits inside the orienting arrow. The map now matches the ground.
QHow do you take a bearing from a map?
Put the compass edge on the map from your position to your destination, turn the housing until its orienting lines match the map's north-south grid lines, read the bearing at the index line, then hold the compass flat and turn your body until the needle sits in the orienting arrow.
QWhat should you do if you get lost while hiking?
Stop, sit down and eat something. Establish the last point you were certain of, orient the map and look around for identifiable features. If you can fix your position, continue; if not, return to the last known point rather than pressing on toward a guess.
QHow accurate is walking a compass bearing?
Accurate enough if you sight on visible objects along the bearing and walk to them rather than watching the compass. Use handrails, catching features and aiming off to make legs forgiving - those techniques tolerate the errors everyone makes.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from a published source. We have not tested this gear, so the numbers are the manufacturer's or the standard body's, not ours. How we research.