Following A Bearing Across Open Ground
Okay. Last lesson we shot a bearing to something we could see. A tree, a peak, a water tower, whatever. That's the easy version, because the landmark stays in view the whole time and you just walk toward it.
This lesson is the harder version. What happens when the thing you're walking toward disappears behind a hill, or a stand of trees, or just because the ground rolls and you lose sight of it. This is where a lot of people quietly give up on the compass and go back to guessing. I don't want that to be you.
The problem with open ground
Here's the thing about a bearing. It gives you a direction, not a landmark. If you can see your target the whole way, you barely need the compass, your eyes are doing the work. The compass earns its keep when the target goes out of view and you have to trust the number instead of your eyes.
So the skill isn't "walk toward the thing." The skill is "walk the bearing even when the thing is gone."
Picking a middle point
Here's the trick I actually use, and it's not fancy. Once you've got your bearing set and you're facing the right direction, look down that line and pick something closer. Not your final landmark. Something in between. A specific rock. A weird-shaped bush. A dead tree. Something you can walk to without needing the compass out the whole time.
Walk to that thing. Once you're there, take the bearing again, sight down the line, and pick your next middle point. Repeat. You're basically hopping from checkpoint to checkpoint instead of trying to stare at a compass needle for a half mile straight, which nobody can actually do well.
This is Low Key the whole trick. People think following a bearing means walking with the compass held out in front of you the entire time like a divining rod. It doesn't. You check it, you pick a point, you put the compass away, you walk, you check again.
Steps to actually do this
- Set your bearing on the housing. Check declination. Every time, out loud, like I've been nagging you about.
- Hold the compass flat and steady, like we practiced. Turn your whole body until the needle lines up in the housing.
- Look down the direction-of-travel arrow and pick something specific in the distance you can walk to.
- Put the compass away or let it hang. Walk to that point.
- When you get there, take the compass back out and repeat from step 2.
That's the whole loop. It's boring. Boring is good here. Boring means it's working.
Where the needle gets weird on you
I want to bring up something that trips people up constantly, because I learned it the hard way teaching my sibling Amber. We were out on a hike and I handed her the compass to try a bearing, and she held it flat right next to her water bottle, one of those big steel ones. The needle just spun. Wouldn't settle. I thought the compass was broken. Took me a solid ten minutes standing there before it clicked. It wasn't the compass. It was the bottle.
Metal messes with the needle and nobody warns you about it going into open ground work either. Belt buckle, trekking pole, your phone, keys in your pocket, another compass if you're teaching a group. Get some distance from metal before you trust the reading, especially when you're stopping mid-walk to check yourself. It's an easy thing to forget because you're focused on the terrain and not on what's in your pockets.
Practice this somewhere boring first
I still stand by teaching this in a flat parking lot before anyone takes it up a canyon. It feels silly, walking bearings across asphalt between parked cars. But if you can't do the checkpoint-hopping thing calmly in a boring flat lot, you're not going to do it well when you're tired, the light's going, and the ground actually has terrain in it. Practice where nothing can go wrong. Then take it outside.
A real caution here
If you're doing this off-trail in terrain you don't know, watch your footing more than your compass. People get so locked into the numbers that they walk right off a drop-off or into a wash they didn't see coming because their eyes were on the housing instead of the ground. Check the bearing, then look up and actually watch where you're stepping. The compass tells you which way. It doesn't tell you what's under your feet.
Before next time
Find a stretch of open ground, a park, a field, even your own backyard if it's big enough, and practice picking a bearing and hopping checkpoints without staring at the compass the whole way. See if you can go three checkpoints without getting turned around.
Thanks, Jason