Land Navigation (I'm bored, so its long)

So, last Friday the MS III's (Juniors in our ROTC program) had to go to Colorado Springs to do some land navigation. Now, I will admit that I am not as good as some of the other guys in my class, so I was looking forward to honing in my skills. To help people not accustomed to the Army's land navigation course, I will lay out the ground rules:

1) You are given a map of the area, a protractor, a compass, your LBE (light belt equipment, which basically has two canteens and a bunch of pockets), a pencil, notepad and a sheet with 8 points for the day course and 5 points for the night course in grid coordinates.

2) You plot your points onto the map and figure out a course of action to find all 8 or 5 points within a 3 hour time limit.

3) Your points are these white and orange patterned kites that have a number and a clacker attached. (See below)

The Holy Grail in all land navigation

4) You cannot talk to anyone while on the course (a simple hello is fine, but you really can't discuss the course).

5) At night, you can only use a red flashlight to help you in seeing the points or your map. No white light available. It is a very bad thing if you use your white light and you are not injured.

6) To pass, you need to get a 5/8 for the day and 3/5 for the night. Its very bad if you do not pass. I know what this feels like. You do not want to disappoint your cadre and it also make for a bad morale booster when you realize you hiked around 3 hours for nothing.

So, pretty easy, right?

Well, it is...sorta. See I am an engineer and naturally, I tend to make things a lot harder than they usually are. In this case, I never am able to find the right strategy that works for me. Normally, I plot out all my points and then decide to figure out my plan of attack by figuring out which known points I will go for and then do my azimuth (direction) and distance from that point. By the time I am finished doing that for all 8 points, I have used up about 25 minutes of time.

So since I have already wasted so much time, I try and go find these points by dead reckoning (basically using your 100 meter pace count and a straight line direction to get to your point). The only problem with this method is that its tedious and woods are filled with a bunch of obstacles and if you are not careful about what is straight in front of you, you can drift to the left or right of your point, especially if you are going over 500 meters to your next point.

If you are unfamiliar with the area, like we were since we were on Boy Scouts land, you can get very confused, very easily. I usually fall under the horrible conflict of wasting a lot of time trying to find one point instead of just moving on to the next and coming back for it later. This is exactly what happened the first course we went out on that morning.

I found my first point easily enough, but the second, third and fourth points were driving me nuts. I figured after spending 30 minutes looking for them that it would be best if I moved on to the fifth and hopefully would find it and get the others later. I found my checkpoint and then proceeded to dead reckon to the point through woods. After nearly killing myself by tripping over a log hidden under brush, I scrambled back up to my feet and found my point sitting where it should. This elated me and I quickly gave my thanks to the Lord as I was one step closer to passing this task.

Ok, so I have one hour left to figure out three other points for a pass and get to the finish point. I could have gone for the three points in an area that I had never been before or I could have gone back to the first three I missed and try to find those now that I had a better sense of the area. I decided to go with the latter and went back to the checkpoint I had encountered before. I quickly whipped out my map and protractor and shot a new azimuth and direction to the third point.

After walking the right paces, I found myself in a lot of brush and wood. I did not see white and orange. Uh oh...this is not good. At this point you start to panic a little and go into Army mode. I figure I could use the clover technique (pretty much how it sounds, you walk a clover in your area and hope to see something). Two minutes later, I spotted it in a tree. SUCCESS! Get the number and I am off.

The next two points were pretty easy to find and I was not happy with myself, since they were in the area I was first in, but my pace was off and I ended up further than where I should have been. Oh well, I got my 5 and thats all I needed to pass. I just had to get back and pray that they were right.

They were, but my pass was not met with the same excitement from my sergeant. It's true that you should strive for excellence and get 8/8 on every land nav, which is exactly what he believes. I do too and I was very upset that I didn't get all of them. I vowed on my next course, it would be done.

Next course goes and I am off; determined and willing to find all of my points. No stupid mistakes this time...

If only that were true. I decided not to waste my time with plotting all the distance and direction for each point cause I did not know if I would even get to that point and I needed all the time that I could get. I figured I would look at the terrain and map and go from there. With my first point plotted, I knew the checkpoint I needed to get to. The only problem was that I thought I knew how to get there.

Apparently this map was not updated and so the trails and roads we were using were not all on the map. This created a big problem because when I took off running to my checkpoint, I soon realized that the trail I was on ended and went to a cliff.

I stumbled down the cliff to another trail, walked past some random point, and tried to get my bearings straight. After looking at the terrain and the map I knew where I kinda was but not really. I decided it would be best to head back to the start point and then use a magnetic direction to try to get to my checkpoint.

(start inner monologue)
Run back to start point, whip out compass, find distance and direction and GO!


I am thirty minutes behind and have not even found a point yet...this is embarrassing...


Doot de doo...


AHA! THERE IS THE CHECKPOINT! Allright, I know the point is in this direction, must hurry.
(end inner monologue)

So I run past the log I tripped down the first time and run up to the point. You have got to be kidding me...

You know that random point I was talking about earlier? Yeah, that was the point I was looking for the entire time. I just didn't realize it. I wanted to bang my head against the tree until I saw red cause that is how angry I was with myself. Anyway, I was 40 minutes behind schedule and needed to catch up fast. Quickly plotted my point and direction, this one doesn't seem to bad.

That was before I reached the 50 degree incline with jagged rocks that looked as if they were waiting for an unsuspecting cadet to get impaled on. Well, personal courage is one of the Army values. Now is a good as time as any to face up to my fear...of rocks...wait, this doesn't make any sense. Rocks love me!

Pictured: What I climbed up... 

After facing what seemed like Mt. Doom, I quickly found my point and was off in the woods to the next.  Looking at the map, it was in some kind of a depression and in little vegetation. Shouldn't be too difficult. For once, it was right there for me to easily nab. 3 down, 5 to go.

Luckily there was a trail next to this point that lead to the next checkpoint. I had only eaten up and hour and fifteen minutes of my time and was nearly half way there. Walking down the trail, I realized I had not seen this checkpoint and was a lot further than I thought I was, especially when I got to the bend. Oops. Guess I'll have to go back if time permits.

There comes a point when you are doing land nav that you have to think about what you can physically do with the time you have left. This is crucial, because while you would like to get all the points, if you don't get back in time, none of them count. I found three more, but with only 20 minutes left, I knew I didn't have a shot in the world to get them and back on time. This is where the kicking yourself commences. If only I hadn't wasted my time looking for that stupid checkpoint...

Still I passed with 6/8, but I knew the sergeant wasn't going to be happy. I was right...

Now that I had an extensive knowledge of the area, I felt like nothing was going to keep me from getting all 5 of my night land nav points. The only kicker was that our cadre knew we had been to most of the points out there, so this time we needed to get 4 out of 7.

I started off well and knew the most of the area of where I needed to go. I had already been to three of them before, so I wanted to start there and be confident in my mapping skills.

At this time though, your body starts to hurt. Blisters on feet, knees and ankles hurt, your mind starts messing with you and by messing with you, I mean, it seems like you are going to have a panic attack at any moment...

In the dark...in the woods...alone...

Let me paint you a portrait of what this looks like. You are walking and your eyes are kind of adjusted to the dark. All features are hazy and you just hope you are going in the right direction. Trees are all around you and you hear twigs break and brush move around you. You think its just coming from you, but no...it is off in the distance too. When your mind starts to imagine things, thats when it starts to get bad.

My mind usual resorts to things in horror films...some of you already know my problem with this. If you don't, view the video below.



That mask will haunt me forever.

As I went and found the first four points in an hour, I knew I was golden as long as I found the trail that lead to the checkpoint I passed the first time. There is a difference though in finding a trail in daylight and with no light. It is also terrifying when you can't find said trail and don't have any clue where you are on the map. And you hear things. And all you can think about is:



Long story short: I found all 7 of my points in an hour and fifty three minutes. Problem was that I mixed up two of my points in my scared state...

Did I mention I don't like land nav?