UKC

Good afternoon all.

When out walking in the hills what do people consider the best 3 or 4 best re locating techniques in difficult navigational terrain.

Something similar to the 3 or 4 D’s when planning a walking leg. Direction, Distance, Duration and description, or have I answered my own question?
 

Thanks

Last known good location and work the story on from that. 

Aspect of slope for ball park.

Additional tech (altimeter).

Fifth D: Don't get lost... It's much easier to track your position than it is to relocate.

Your 4Ds are a means to not get lost; a means to follow route between decision points.

I teach that there are four key skills in following a route between decision points:

1. Identify the next microleg between two decision points

2. Take the correct route at the first decision point

3. Stay on the correct route for that microleg

4. Identify when you have arrived at the destination decision point of that microleg.

I use 6Ds:

Destination - what is the next decision point you are aiming for?

Direction, Distance, Duration, Description are conventional 4Ds

Decision - how will I know I have arrived at my microleg Destination (or, indeed, that I have overshot/gone wrong).

There's a seventh D that is part of the Description - are there any Dangers along this microleg?

Relocation techniques are based on last known good/story (as above), feature matching (point, line, area, shape), and technical compass work using resection on known, identifiable landmarks. You can do it with one landmark if you can walk a known vector from your current position. 

I always look back frequently so that I can retrace my steps, if necessary.

Navigate before you get lost!

Recognising that the terrain has become difficult is a worthwhile skill in itself. Once aware of the risk, you can get the map out and keep tabs on how the terrain matches the map as you go. Look for "handrails" and waymarks and build expectations of what you will see -to help maintain positional awareness and act as a 'reality check" of sorts.

My other favourites have been mentioned already,  -Aspect of slope; frequent backward looks.

And carry a GPS :ox

Head back to last known point. Map orientation and you'll possibly solve it before you get there. 

Detecting and remembering Direction of wind and whether it is steady before you need to make use of it is useful.

I have used this information a number of times in poor visibility and therefore am in the habit of taking the trouble to make a mental note and noticing changes in wind direction through the day

Yup; that's in my lesson plan, too.

Microlegs, decision points, 6Ds!? Sounds like she horrendous management theory.

Yes, I've used the wind as a very compass several times when the cloud has come down and I have been without a compass. Get's one moving in roughly the right direction, although the wind direction does get fairly distorted by topography. Generally, though, it is a very good idea to keep an old-fashioned compass in ones sack - takes up hardly any spaces and weighs virtually nothing. It's amazing how often the correct direction is nowhere near where you intuitively thought it was!

It’s amazing how easy it is to convince yourself that your compass lies as well. I orienteer/run mountain marathons and have a tasty Moscow thumb compass but I still have times when I think I know better! 

Sadly my technique involves heading down the nearest valley, then identifying it by the first pub I get to.

Some of these have doubtless been mentioned but...

0) Don't get lost! Somehow I knew there would be lots of posts saying that, but personally I think relocation is an important skill. I often let other (known competent!) people navigate for a few hours then try to accurately locate myself - it's good practice.

1) Technology! Bit of a copout, but GPS or phone app. Bonus points if it's left off most of the time so it will actually have some battery when you need it, and an app which doesn't need phone signal.

2) Recognising features. In decent visibility, looking around and recognising large features goes a long way.  i.e. I know we're on this mountain, so that river fork should be visible down to our left - there it is - we're about 2km short of it so there should be a hanging corrie - there it is - and we're just below it. Here we are, by this stream, 50m up from where it starts to cut a re-entrant. It helps a lot to get a good feeling for things like breaks in slope and small ring contours which will remain visible in winter.

3) Remembering where you have been is useful for two reasons: working out where you could have gotten to in the time since you last knew where you were, and remembering recent things (just passed a crag for example) which will let you verify or discount candidate locations. Often you can look at the map and work out e.g. I missed that ridge, so I'm probably on that one instead, now, how far along it am I?

4) Resection. Take bearings from nearby objects.  Two is enough to get your position or just one if you know you're on a feature like a path.  Either way an extra one is also useful as a check.  Funnily enough I've never used this as I have never failed #2 in good enough visibility. I have used it to settle disputes about where we are though.

5) Direction of ridge/path/river etc.  If you're following a line feature, you can find where you are or narrow down the options by taking a bearing along it and comparing it to the candidate locations. You have to be careful to make sure your bearing is representative of a long enough section of ridge to match the map though.

6) Aspect of slope. Take a bearing downhill and compare to contour lines. You can also look at the gradient and compare to the contour line spacing, but that takes more practice. You can also look for concavity or convexity in both the up/down and cross-slope directions.

7) Walk to somewhere you will know where you are. Can be backtracking, but could also be walking to the top of something, or due west until you hit the river, then north to find the bridge. You can also search for a recognisable feature, though that only really works if you want to turn a pretty good position into a very accurate one.  E.g. we should be on the top, lets search for the trigpoint.

8) Testable hypotheses: I think we're on this knoll, so there should be a small lochan 100m to the NW.  If we can't find it we were probably on that knoll instead.

1.  Like several other posters - don't get lost  keep track of where you 

2.  If 1. doesn't work, stop, keep calm look at map/compass and work out where you now are.

3.  If 1 has happened and 2, didn't work, try 4.

4.  https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&...

Its saved me some trouble over the few years I've had it on my phone & and/.or Ipad.

When you have to teach navigation to direct entry gold DofE participants in a couple of hours, from scratch, you have to distill it to essential techniques they can grasp. It clarifies the mind... Just to add to the management speak, I use a graph-theoretic approach to planning the route. I don't tell them that, though... A satnav's instructions are also an excellent way to remind them how to combine the basic navigation approaches into a whole, to increase their route following confidence.

Thankyou for all the great advice. Will have to get out and practice it.