Home
Become a Survivor
Basic rules
Basic concepts
Prepare your trip
Gear
Survival kit
Survival knife
Shelter
Make a fire
Finding water
Survival food
Signaling for help
Navigation
First Aid
Predict weather
Quiz
Submit your tips
Survival courses
Submit your story
Survival Blog
Photo Gallery
SiteSearch
Privacy Notice
Contact me
About this site
 

Know your distance

by Alex
(Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

Some sound advice before venturing out in the bush is to know how many paces it takes for you to walk a hundred meters. That way when you are navigating you can keep track of the distance covered in relation to your map.





The average grown man will take between 65 and 75 'right footed' paces in a hundred meters or between 130 and 150 paces. Just count every left or right step and when you reach 65 or so start over. Each consecutive recount should be 100 meters.

Its an excellent and quick way of calculating distances traveled. Also important is to keep track of how many consecutive recounts you do.


Comments for
Know your distance

Average Rating starstarstar

Click here to add your own comments

Jun 21, 2008
Rating
starstarstar 		pace beads and terrain
by: Brian

Good advice on pacing but too keep track of your pacing the tool to use is pace beads. Pace beads are beads on a string with 4 to 5 beads on top then a knot and 9 beads on the bottom of the strand. Every time you reach the 100 meter mark push up one bead from the bottom when all 9 beads are up push all 9 back down and push up 1 of the top beads, so if you have 3 top beads up and 2 bottom beads up you can say you walked 3.2 kilometers. Easy way to keep track.

Also remember that you take longer strides going down hill and shorter strides going up hill so you have to take that into consideration when pacing.

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How?
Simply click here to return to Wilderness navigation tips


footer for wilderness survival page