68 | AG Outdoor
Left to right It’s possible to follow a compass
bearing to navigate through a complete white-
out, such as this one in Scotland; an orienteer-
ing instructor explains the basics.SKILLS | MAP READING
L
ITTLE MAGNETIC NEEDLES HAVE been
pointing the way for explorers and adven-
turers for centuries. Despite the constant
advance of technology, and many premature
predictions about the demise of the classic com-
pass, this brilliantly simple instrument, which
harnesses one of the universe’s fundamental
forces, is still the weapon of choice for outdoors
people who want to know where they’re going.
ORIENTAL ORIENTEERING & BJÖRN AGAIN
GENIUS
The Chinese invented the technology that
underpins the magnetic compass as long ago as
200 BC, although back then it was used as a way
of divining godly direction, rather than a tool for
travelling. It took another thousand years before
they began employing magnetism in geographi-
cal navigation, and it wasn’t until the 13th cen-
tury that compasses first appeared in the West.
Various designs have come and gone since
then, but the most enduring incarnation of the
modern magnetic compass was invented in
Sweden. In 1932, Björn Kjellström, along with his
two brothers Alvar and Alvid, and a machinist
called Gunnar Tillander, developed the protrac-
tor-style compass set onto a transparent base-
plate that’s instantly familiar to bushwalkers, ori-
enteers and scouts today.
After WWII, Kjellström moved to the US,
founded the company Silva around his compass,
published a book (Be Expert With Map and Com-
pass) and launched an empire. Silva still produces
the most popular orienteering compasses,
although companies such as Suunto are also
hugely popular.
But, in an age when even smartphones and
fancy-pants wristwatches come armed with GPS
tracking capability and digital compasses, is it
really still necessary to pack an old-school mag-
netic compass? For its lack of dependence on
battery power and signal reception, the answer is
emphatic: yes.
GPS is a great tool, and excellent for recording
routes, but when you need something failsafe to
get out of strife, a magnetic compass is your best
mate. It’s also the lightest and cheapest option
for basic navigation, and there’s simply no substi-
tute for using a map and compass to gain a good
appreciation of where you are, and where you’re
heading, while out in the wilds.LEARNING THE HARD WAY
As I write, a report has just been released by the
Maine Game Warden Service in the US, which
tells a truly tragic tale of a trekker on the Appala-
chian Trail. In 2013, 66-year-old walker Geraldine
Largay went missing while doing the 3541km
long-distance walk. Over two years later, when
her remains were eventually discovered along
with heartrending handwritten notes about her
experience, it transpired that she’d briefly left the
path to go to the toilet and, unable to find her
way back to the track, spent 26 days hopelesslylost and alone before dying of starvation and
exposure.
The case file built during Largay’s disappear-
ance revealed that she’d left her SPOT GPS device
behind in a motel, and she “has compass but
does not or won’t use it.”
Even rudimentary knowledge of how to oper-
ate one simple piece of kit could have averted
that awful scenario, shades of which will be all
too familiar to many – me included. I once nearly
died while doing Australia’s most popular multi-
day walk. Outside of winter, it’s hard to go wrong
on Tasmania’s busy Overland Track between
Cradle Valley and Lake St Clair. Once you stray off
the path, though, things can go pear-shaped in
dramatic – and occasionally deadly – fashion.
Hiking the Overland on my own, I decided to
spend a day doing a side trip into a place called
the Labyrinth (spot the clue in the name sug-
gesting it might not be the easiest place to navi-
gate), and wandered off without map or com-
pass. By dusk, when I’d already spent five hours
utterly lost and completely unable to find the
path that had brought me into the Minotaur’s
den, things were looking grim. Water and food all
gone, I was ridiculously underdressed for a night
out in the bush, and hadn’t seen sight nor sound
of another human all day.
Eventually I clumsily free-climbed down a rock
face, spied a peak that looked like it could be the
Acropolis (a mountain I’d previously noted on a
map as being near the hut) and followed a