Article – How To Read A Map

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The next idiot that has to get hauled out of the woods horizontally because he blindly trusted his GPS, or worse, his celphone, will not be the last. Natural selection in action. There’s plenty of good books on the subject, but here’s some basics.

“Once you’re outdoors, you can’t rely on technology anymore,” says Christiaan Adams, developer advocate for Google Earth. Being able to read a good old-fashioned paper map is one of the most fundamental outdoor skills. In case you never learned or need a refresher, here are the basics.

9 thoughts on “Article – How To Read A Map”

  1. Give me a topographical map, a good compass (mine’s a Silva ranger), a protractor/romer, plus a set of pacing beads and I can get you to any destination you want. .

  2. I grew up with MGRS in the Army and was still in when the Plugger came out. I was both amazed and disgusted at the technology and what it could possibly mean to map reading skills. I refuse to solely rely on the electronics and the closest thing to MGRS is TOPO so I am good there. I am a big proponent on map reading, navigation, and terrain association to those that will listen and hopefully learn something new that could literally save their lives. The push back comes from the youngest ones when they tout their electronics robustness and reliability. I say to that your system will lose power, my map won’t. Your system can be hacked, my map can’t. Your system could be susceptible to water, I can seal my map cheaper than you can your system. Your system must have a good signal to be the most accurate, my map requires no signal only my personal skill.
    Do yourself and your family a big favor and learn new skills. Like I said, they can literally save your lives.

  3. Great article, thanks for sharing. Despite some former training in orientation, I’ll admit that I’ve become depressingly reliant on technology.

    Do you have a favorite compass? What would you consider the gold standard of compasses to be, if you only had one to rely on for the rest of your life?

    • The classic Silva Ranger seems to be just fine. Whatever compass you get, try to get one that has some UTM grid scale built into it…makes things a lot easier.

      • I would add to this, a compass that has an adjustment for the Magnetic declination since magnetic north isn’t stationary, verses true north.

  4. Commander:
    Shame on you!
    Telling the truth to technophiles will get you banned from the internet –
    Unless they can find a way to charge a fortune for paper maps…
    Or am I being paranoid…

  5. Tru-Nord makes a good ‘thataway’ compass and you can have declination automatically factory set to your specifications if you want. Small enough for an EDC kit, much like those old Vietname aviators brass kit compasses they used to have. I loved those little compasses – you could keep them on a necklace all the time.

  6. I don’t have a GPS unit. A Suunto compass with declination adjustment and maps get me where I have to go. At 72 YO I don’t need to waste money on something that really can’t do my thinking for me.

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