Mountain Navigation course

This course is designed to teach you how to navigate with map and compass in mountainous terrain. It should increase your confidence if you have only basic navigational knowledge or have mountain walking experience but little formal navigation training.

The course is centred around the mountains of Fort William on the West Coast of Scotland. The course starts and finishes near the Roshven area, with a wild camp in the mountains in the middle of the course.

We will meet at our base in Roshven at 18.00 on the Friday and return on Sunday evening around 16.00. If you are travelling by public transport and need a pick up and return to/from Fort William let us know.

Learning Outcomes

On the course you will learn the following navigation skills:

• Basic use of map and compass
• Use of bearings
• Relocation (if unsure of your location)
• Grid references
• Navigation using contour features (micro and macro)
• Route finding strategies (e.g. attack points, aiming off, dead reckoning, dog legs, hand rails, re-section)
• Navigation in poor visibility and featureless terrain (including night navigation)
• Distance estimation using pacing and timings
• Route Planning

This course is very much hands-on with a great deal of practice in a real mountain environment. For this reason we will camp out in the mountains to enable a session of night navigation and to maximise the time in the mountains during the weekend.

By the end of the course you should be able to confidently relate landscape features to the map and vice versa and be able to navigate in poor visibility.

Client quote:

"You teach in a very friendly and informal way, openly invite questions and allow mistakes to happen (within the bounds of safety), thereby allowing the student to learn from them rather than just correcting them. You were very flexible and were able to tailor the course to the varied abilities of the group. The course was everything I was expecting and so much more. I have come away not only with the skills I need to navigate, but the confidence to do it. No more blindly following the rest of the group. Tuition was put across in a friendly and fun way, with good banter between staff and attendees. The weather helped too! ... scenery was fantastic and I will be looking at other courses in the future." - W. Frost

Price

The course costs £140 per person. We provide accommodation in our 17 ft tipi on the first night or you can camp on site. The course is self-catering but we can provide food on the first night for an extra £10. Please let us know your camping and food preferences.