I am going to take a different approach to this, and ask you what is your intention with pacing?
The reason I ask that, is that I practiced pacing for quite a long time, and am decently efficient at it, but I use it for very, very specific conditions, which are not required often. I will get to those in a moment, but I want to comment about a few other things too.
Pacing and Terrain
As it has been mentioned here, your pace per given distance will change with altitude changes. What further complicates things is that if you are measuring on a map, you are measuring “as the crow flies” and need to take your elevation change into account as well. You can do this a couple different ways:
1) Determine your pace based on different grades. You are going to have to estimate the grade you are on, and your overall distance in going to be more of an estimate here than on flat ground. You can then figure out actual ground distance by map distance and elevation change and try to get an overall position estimate from both.
2) Forget about the elevation change and try, through experience to figure out how much 2D (map distance) you cover over various terrain. This takes lots of practice and there are tons of variables than can really only be minimized through tons of experience.
I used to teach a “Basic” land nav for a couple years. Even though it was “Basic” it consisted of 3 evenings in a class room, and 2 ½ days at a cabin in the woods doing field learning. Even after covering all that information, Pacing wasn’t covered in great detail. Here is why:
If you consider how much work either of the above two scenarios are, you have to realize most people are not going to put that much effort into it. Why? In general, most folks go to the woods, to enjoy the views, get some fresh air, see some bugs, plants or wildlife. Make it too much like work, and it is like work : ) Here is my take on the above situation.
If I am going up or down a hill, that means I actually have some terrain to work with, and that is contour lines. If I am going up and down a hill, why should I worry about pacing that out? Seriously, if you have enough terrain to “read” I am not going to bother counting and calculating and estimating. Terrain recognition is the most under-utilized skill in Land nav, IMO. The more you practice it, the better you get, the faster you get, the less inclined you are to want to pace count.
As I mentioned, I still pace count. But it is for very specific conditions, like:
1) No terrain to “read.” There are parts in the upper penisula of my state that are just large flat swamp
Not a single contour line
In those conditions, I would use dead reckoning or pace counting to estimate location, but then I would correct myself with the actual terrain once I finally encountered some
2) Navigating at night. I know you are supposed to tell people they shouldn’t navigate during darkness, but if you hunt, you almost have to do it. I have used pacing to get in and out of hunting blinds before and after light very often.
3) Finding something very specific. Me and my buddies were scouting some land, and we wanted to find an old logging road that was still on the map, but so overgrown it was unrecognizable. We knew from others that it was there, but had never been there ourselves. I measured the distance and bearing on the map, and was able to find it within a double pace of it. That was cool! : )
4) Navigating around object. If you go 90 degrees off course to get around an object, you can pace it to make sure you come back that same amount to get back on your original bearing. Even so, I rarely do this, as terrain nav will tell me where I am at. Usually if there is a feature you are needing to get around, it is easy to “read” that on the map.
So, that is my little theory on land nav and pace counting. Just as a little FYI, here is some other info that I personally do, which somewhat relates to pace counting.
- I create all my own topo maps for the areas I am in. There are a lot of reasons for doing that I have covered elsewhere, but one big advantage is putting your own grid on the maps.
- I put UTM grids on my topos. UTM allows you to really easily communicate your coordinates to others. But, it also has the benefit of being a direct measurement. Your grid is basically in meters. Because of that, you can quickly estimate distance by using the scales, and not taking a bunch of measurements off the map. VERY FAST! I am not talking about exact measurements. Just double checks and estimates to make sure everyhting makes sense.
- Because of UTM grids, I work in the metric system. I know my pacing in meters, not yards, feet or miles. The reason is it is easily scaleable and correlates directly to the UTM grids. I can look at the grid, estimate distance, and pace in that same measurement system. Do you know how many feet are in a degree? Feet in a mile? Feet per yards, and pace per yard and what that means to your “coordinate?” That is a lot of thinking and math
Just some things to think about.
Oh yeah....for the gentleman who practices pace counting and distance estimation every day, good for you!! :thumbup: I am seriously jealous. That is an awesome skill to have and one that requires a lot of dedication, and far more motivation that I have
B
