|
Staying found - What is it? |
|
|
avigation is no more and no less than the art of knowing where you are and how to get to where you want to go. The basic skills of map reading and using physical information to pinpoint a location are familiar to anyone who has ever driven a car in a strange city, been hillwalking, or even just tried to follow a set of directions to the local pub.
Most of the techniques of alpine winter navigation will be familiar to anyone who has spent time hillwaking with map and compass. There are, however, three important ways in which alpine winter navigation (and in particular navigation on skis) can catch out the unwary traveller. These are: - Compass bearings: the time honoured technique of following a compass bearing can be difficult to use effectively off-piste. The need to avoid steep slopes, potential crevasse areas, or even just the optimal track up a ridge mean that it is rarely possible to set a fixed bearing and just follow it. The compass is still an essential tool, but much more reliance needs to be placed on other techniques of location and route planning.
- Measuring pace: in hillwalking - especially in conditions of poor visibility - great store is set by the ability to measure pace though careful step counting in order to get a precise sense of the distance travelled. On skis, this is hopeless. It is almost impossible to gauge speed and distance accurately when descending on skis. It just doesn't work and we have to rely on other techniques to work out where we are.
- Whiteout: conditions of poor visibility can exist almost anywhere, but nothing quite matches the disorienting challenge of a whiteout on snow. A whiteout can move in at phenomenal speed and can be a very frightening experience. You don't know which way is up or down. Slope angles are impossible to read. You can't tell how fast you are moving or even (on skis) if you are moving at all. It can be a dizzying, disorienting experience and very good techniques is needed to navigate accurately in such conditions.
The principles of staying found off-piste are in essence no different from staying found anywhere else: collecting the available information and being able to make an objective and accurate use of the information you collect. You may just need to collect some of the information in a different way!
|
