Navigation Day

Our excellent guide, Tom, went through a lot of fundamentals of navigation with the group: pacing to measure distances, bearings, travelling over difficult ground, identifying features on the ground and navigation in poor visibility.

Navigation Day

A summary of the nav-day we ran in preperation for our Scotland trip, written by Richard.

Link to original post: https://rhorridge.com/mountaineering/2019/12/05/navigation-day.html

Huge thanks to Richard for letting us get this on our site too!


Yesterday we travelled to Pistyll Rhaeadr in Mid Wales for a day of navigation practice.

Our excellent guide, Tom, went through a lot of fundamentals of navigation with the group: pacing to measure distances, bearings, travelling over difficult ground, identifying features on the ground and navigation in poor visibility.

In 2013 I completed Mountain Leader Training with a view to becoming a Mountain Leader. At the time I was heavily involved with leading groups in the mountains. Yesterday's trip has encouraged me to update my logbook (it is over five years out of date!) and hopefully aim to finishing the qualification.

We spent nine and a half hours on the hill in excellent conditions - while cold and somewhat windy, it was dry and sunny for most of the day. We spent a good 4+ hours doing night navigation - something I haven't spent a huge amount of time doing - which is really good fun albeit a bit stressful at times!

Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience (though by the end, most of us were fairly keen to go to bed!) and we all agreed that it would be a good thing for UBMC to do more of!