[Closed] How good are your navigation skills when mountain biking?

You shouldn't be on the hill full stop unles you can use map, compass now how to triangulate etc. Not sure if there is a mtb 'naismiths' rule though.

I managed to get around the wall at afan.

but is there a mountain biking equivalent of pacing and timing to calculate distance?

Yep it's called a GPS 😉

Seriously I always take a map with me just in case but I also run 'My Tracks' on my phone which shows my position Lat & Long.

Hey Sue, I have been lost plenty of times as a walker in Snowdonia. MTB navigation is a piece of pish compared to walking.

For 1 you are usually following a linear path.
and 2 you have the chance to use a cycle computer to give you an idea of the distance travelled which has got to be so much better than pacing. Most bike leader courses require you to turn up to training with a computer.

James

Generally very good, I'm a bit of a map geek and I have a good sense of direction.

Most embarrassing one recently was a slight miscalculation on High Street in bad weather which lead to an unorthodox but actually quite fun descent. Certainly wasn't the route that I'd planned though!

Mine are crap, only been riding wyre forest for 6 years and still can't find my way round 😳

being able to triangulate is a bit OTT, but certainly being able to take a bearing, map read and quickly interpret map to ground is pretty important

Mine are pretty good do alot of walking and riding by map and compass.

I don't think many mountain bikers think much about it. We offer mtb navigation courses and those who attend are often surprised how bad their nav' skills are and actually just how easy it is to get 'displaced from your map' 😉

I do wonder if the increase in trail centres may have meant a decrease in navigation skills, I don't think the reliance on satnav in cars has helped much either ... there was something on radio 4 that said 'they' expect the general populace to lose the ability to read a map (even a basic road map) within the next 2 generations.

^ wot still_sandagetbigusernameaboveme said.

Most mtb'ers have v poor nav skills, and things like sat nav and trail centres mean that there are fewer times that we need to break out any form of navigation skilz these days.

(and a good computer + GPS can help bike nav a LOT)

mine are very good.
30 years of biking/walking have helped.

Have always arrived home after a ride, so I guess my nav skills are OK.

🙂

Always carry a compass and map of where I'm riding though, just in case, but also for exploring new areas/tracks. (usually Exmoor)

Never ever got lost, but i'm never really sure where i am...

Ah, that's interesting, I didn't realise there were navigation courses for mtb'ers. What do they cover?

Re the use of computers / GPS etc - I can understand how they are more useful when biking than when on foot (as it's not that easy to hold a map in front of you when on a bike). But there's obviously the possibility of technology failure, so carrying map / compass as back-up makes sense (which many of you seem to do). However, unless practised regularly, do you think map based navigation skills could be lost?

Absolute shite. I haven't used a map in years. GPS will be my next purchase.

Mine are 100%.I can get lost every time I ride.

I carry Satmap, relevant OS:50000 and compass (and I used the compass until about a year ago when the Satmap took over).

In unknown areas I tend to read a little bit ahead (map or satmap) and work by feature - stream, end of forest, low point, crossing/footpath etc etc etc - ie turn R after 3 paths and a stream sort of carry on, so you are sort of mentally following the route, and do a map check every so often to confirm it's not gone hideously wrong, you usually have a followable path, so you have something that you can 'assume' you can follow.

As for distance don't know of naismiths for MTB but I know my normal flat speed so can approximate at uphill and downhill - but I can't see it being that close)

I suspect I wouldn't do a new to me 'wilderness route' if I thought the weather would close in, and I also try to plot routes in sort of circle/oval round a middle car park so your bailout is pretty easy (obviously this depends on available tracks)

Not really needed for the kind of riding most folk do, despite some who will claim to venture into the far off wilds. As above, bikes use pre existing trails, so if you get lost, you can always go back.
Maps and compasses? More extraneous stuff to carry in your already voluminous back pack...

Fell runners tend not to carry all that stuff, with much higher chance of being proper lost...

I have done walking group leader course with a number of night nav So can find my way about ok and in the past done a number of trail quests involving less accurate navigation
For me the gps is another tool used along with map and compass not instead of
Trail quests got a bit boring after gps was allowed it removed some of skill for me

"Lost" is a relative term! I've been briefly miss-located on a few occasions in the hills but have developed a strong sense of location and direction.

My rule-of-thumb is that the further from the car and the nearer to dangerous terrain you are, the better your location estimate needs to be. You have to pay close attention to your location at all times in places like Cairngorm and The Cuillin for this reason. Having some sort of "escape plan" for which you reserve enough energy to execute is a good idea. Even then I've had the odd unexpected "mini epic" [remembers exhaustion from a failed attempt to escape a wicked Easter snow storm on the Gleshiel Ridge]

I don't really ride my bike anywhere that needs much nav (it's all pretty, twee hills and woods around here) except following unfamiliar country lanes. Often lanes are very old, sunken and twisty so the vital views you needs to work out where you are are absent. That's when the map comes out. Most of my nav effort is spent trying to locate all the sneaky trails that aren't on any map.

I have Kenny Wilson to thank for navigational skills. Anyone who's followed more than a handful of his routes will surely have experienced not following a path of any sort, and had to resort to triangulation techniques in the general direction intended.

I came to mountain biking from hillwalking so being orientated in the landscape is just what you do.

I carry a map in areas I ain't familiar with and consult it but the key thing is to remain oriented. Be aware of direction and the lie of the land

my skills are probably above average for mtbers.

some of my mates wouldn't have the faintest idea about reading contours - or even id a bridleway/ foot path.

What TJ said.

Sue, you might find trailquests a good way to learn and practice the skills. And have fun, of course.

As a marshal, I have rescued people off the KIMM with hypothermia in thick clag, so I'd like to think know a thing or two about navigation. However, when cycling, I would much rather follow the gps around. In unfamiliar remoteish terrain I alway have the OS map in the bag with a compass incase of technology failure though.

When fell running in the lakes, I have just set off in a random direction without a map or gps before though. I did get lost in clag, but I didn't die.

Re the use of computers / GPS etc - I can understand how they are more useful when biking than when on foot (as it's not that easy to hold a map in front of you when on a bike). But there's obviously the possibility of technology failure, so carrying map / compass as back-up makes sense (which many of you seem to do). However, unless practised regularly, do you think map based navigation skills could be lost?

Just to add, far from being a chore or boring, today's navigation training was really good fun. Most of us were already pretty experienced in the mountains, so today was more of a refresher, with more and more difficult challenges being set - cue 'find small boulder in featureless but quite complex terrain off the side of tryfan' 🙂

A lot of the skills I'll keep in mind when mountain biking, especially as most of my riding is over the upland expanse of the carneddi mountains with it's maze of sheep tracks. Just glad that I've got about 20 years experince of trotting round the mountains!

mine are a bit shit tbh but i always ride with someone who knows where they are going, problem solved!!

Local trails, I just take my gps, more to record stats than anything else.
Anywhere I don't know I take gps, map and compass.
As a past Outdoor Pursuits instructor I know how to use them 🙂
I have never heard of a Naismiths for bikes.... I just estimate, but then I don't really use Naismiths whilst walking either.

I often come off course on the bike.
The map is in my camelbak, which means stopping, taking it off, unfolding map, finding compass if necessary, etc. it's a right faff !

Also, you can cover 1km in what, a few minutes ? When walking I wouldn't normally take a bearing over much longer than that so you'd have to be stopping all the time !
On the other hand, 20 minutes off course is a long way off course on a bike !

I have to say that I find a visible GPS a lot more useful while cycling than I do when walking, mostly because of the speed differential. Shoot past a turn-off when zipping down a hill and you can travel some distance before realising it, meaning you might have a big climb just to get back on to your route.

I do occasionally practice my micro-navigation skills - just in case the technology fails.

As for an equivalent of Naismiths Rule for bikes - I can't imagine there's anything too useful. I've managed to develop my own formula for longer trips based on a few years worth of data, but even then it needs tweaked according to terrain etc. and it's pretty much useless for shorter distances.

I did a day's training with a guy I know from Langdale mountain rescue testing out his navigational skills training on me before setting it up as a business. He seemed to think I was reasonably good. 🙂

http://www.mountainsplus.co.uk/

Grew up around lots of hill-walking and map reading though - it's generally me that navigates if I go out in the Lakes with other people, and we very rarely get lost (I've got lost-ish on my own a few times though). Do agree that GPS is very handy for biking though - even just knowing a rough altitude can be v useful.

A lot better/worse now that I've got my old Touch Pro II with massive battery and memory map working nicely :). Five and a half hours and only down to half battery used, with GPS and screen on all the time!

I do have some 'skills', but out of practice in actually using them, so end up floundering around an OS map or print out a bit more than I should when not using the GPS. (To be fair, same before I got the GPS system sorted - I like it more because it means that I can just keep riding without having to stop and work out which turning I'm supposed to be taking every few hundred meters.)

I'm a bit of a map geek, in that, before I travel a route it's pretty much memorised before I set off. I usually only use paper maps when out and I study them alot beforehand, and I generally study satelite imagery too, so I've usually got a fair idea what to expect when out, I pretty much visualise a route in my head. Though i've got a new phone these days, so GPS is a bit of a novelty for me recently.

At the end up though, on a bike, you need to be really lost before you're ****ed. As it's quite easy just to track back the way you came. Which is something that is more difficult as say a walker.. For example walk 15 miles, get lost, it's a bit harder to track back than cycling 30 miles and getting lost.

On naismiths for bikes - there is this tool someone off here developed. Useful for estimating how long a route will take but I wouldn't trust it to work out how far I had gone.
http://www.mtb-routes.co.uk/northyorkmoors/routes/Esk-Valley-Railway/timeanddistance.aspx

Never seen the point in a gps myself. Been out with a few folk with them and they blindly followed the gps the wrong way because the path on the ground was not quite where it was on the map. Nice toy, wouldn't rely on one

In theory I know the skills, but I can't remember the last time I had to take a bearing and the last couple of times I've used a compass it's simply been to get an accurate north fix.(maybe twice in the last couple of years). The last time I got seriously lost was up on High Street in thick fog - missed a LH turning that went back at about 45° behind me on a rocky DH run. I realised about 10 minutes later and found it again, maybe 10 mins after that. As others have said - backtracking is pretty efficeient on the bike (if you have to)

Part of it is a lot of riding in areas I have reasonable knowledge of. I might not know exactly where I am, but I know where I've come from and I want to end up and its "thataway". The other thing, especially in poor weather is not to get lost in the first place - taking it a bit slower and *not* missing the turning is better than getting lost at great speed and then having to backtrack.

Also - mtber spend a lot of time in the woods - maps are far less useful here when you have next to no visibility anyway.

But yes, my wilderness skills could do with some work.

pretty ok at navigating in mountains in white out / dark - been doing it for years, though i did find some time spent orienteering improved my skills a lot - nowadays find a gps speeds things up as don't have to "head off" or spend time picking up features just to cross check location - can't remember ever being off route even

been lost on bike quite a bit mainly because not bothering to look at map too often plus in forest areas the mapping often doesn't compare too well with what you actually find on the ground (tracks/paths rather than contours and features)and as you blast along you just hope its all going to sort out in end

My map reading/navigation etc is pretty spot on (if I may say so myself!).

Done a lot of walking and sailing so used to plotting positions on a map although I rarely get a compas out in good visibility on dry land as it's fairly pointless.

The problem with MTB'ing is the speed and lack of desire to stop. Who want's to stop every 30 seconds on a decent to take a bearing and check they're still on the correct path? Whereas a walker that would be every 5 minutes for the same distance.

"but is there a mountain biking equivalent of pacing and timing to calculate distance?"
Yep it's called a [s]GPS[/s] bike computer

yeah but only in and around chamonix finding and recording trails 🙂

been lost on bike quite a bit mainly because not bothering to look at map too often plus in forest areas the mapping often doesn't compare too well with what you actually find on the ground (tracks/paths rather than contours and features)and as you blast along you just hope its all going to sort out in end

antigee sums it up reasonably for me.
My map and compass navigation is very good (a good few years in MR before the advent of GPS, and some orienteering experience before that).... but on a bike the issue is that I/we all usually fail to navigate.
Yes, I can pick up the map and figure out where I am... but that's not navigating. Navigation is a continuous process.

[Edit] tinas too [/Edit]

People laugh at me for riding with a map board on my bike, but I normally have one on if I'm racing so might as well get used to it, and it means I can navigate my way round without having to stop to dig the map out all the time.

The thing is, as others have mentioned, nav on a bike is different as you're following tracks and paths (usually marked on the map 😉 ). Having competed lots in events involving navigating both on foot and on a bike (and been fairly successful), I'd suggest it's not necessarily easier, just different. Whilst you don't have the issue of following a route through trackless terrain, you do get the challenge of making high speed decisions in what can be a maze of tracks, where you can sometimes be making lots of direction changes.

People laugh at me for riding with a map board on my bike

Interesting that many people seem to have got their map-based naviagation skills from hillwalking / mountaineering / running / orienteering etc. Is that related to a different culture / approach to the outdoors in those activities? For example, my mountaineering club has many training sessions covering things like navigation skills, first aid etc, whereas the mountain biking club doesn't (even though the two activities oftern use the same terrain).

Personally, if I'm out mountain biking I take a map and compass for naviagtion if needed, and have usually reccied the route in advance (often on foot).

My concern is that in the event of an accident, I would need to provide the rescue services with an accurate location. That's probably the main reason why I wouldn't want to rely exclusively on technology (which can mis-function), someone else (they could have had the accident!), or just knowing my 'general location'.

I was lost but now I'm found.

Sue_W - Member
Ah, that's interesting, I didn't realise there were navigation courses for mtb'ers. What do they cover?

The MBL I did covered the following
Map standards / scale
Orientating the map.
Compass use and adjusting for declination.
Plotting and analysing routes on a map, map distance error.
Evaluating terrain and topography (map to eye).
Sighting/triangulation.
Identifying features on maps, symbols etc.
Using bearings from maps and distant land features.
Using deviation courses.
Lost protocols and back tracking.
Finding coordinates, Map and Latlong.
Using the sun, wind, stars, natural features to determine north.

In terms of pace we were told to average 12 to 15mph across an entire route and adjust to personal/group pace and terrain. Pacing sections on a bike can some times be tricky because of the speeds involved so we were taught to look for stop points or overshoot points on the maps than to rely on pacing.

It was all map and compass based with a bit here and there about GPS use.

Is that related to a different culture / approach to the outdoors in those activities? For example, my mountaineering club has many training sessions covering things like navigation skills, first aid etc,

Often being quite limited on time, I'd prefer to spend the time I have actually riding, than taking a while planning a trip or even pre-walking the route.
I did tend to memorise the route as much as I could - still found it was a chunk quicker just with the GPS-phone in a pocket. With it bar mounted it meant there was a lot less stopping and back tracking, with more time enjoying the ride - which is what it's all about for me :).

I can follow all the little red arrows at Glentress, does that count?

In terms of pace we were told to average 12 to 15mph across an entire route and adjust to personal/group pace

think i would need to adjust that to my personal pace by a pretty substantial figure - assuming a negative adjustment can be substantial

think i would need to adjust that to my personal pace by a pretty substantial figure - assuming a negative adjustment can be substantial

Me too, in the Lakes I would usually be lucky to manage half that!

10kph would be a much more realistic average speed over a full day on BW, Rupps, tracks, etc. The two fastest people to finish this years Bear Bones 200 had an average speed of around 12kph. That was over 210km of very mixed terrain, they are both very fit / fast and weren't hanging around 😉

Never seen the point in a gps myself. Been out with a few folk with them and they blindly followed the gps the wrong way because the path on the ground was not quite where it was on the map. Nice toy, wouldn't rely on one

Dont we just follow these?

[img] [/img]

Places I ride tend to be woodlands and forests and issues with visibility are uncommon round my way. My navigation in such areas are typically by memory and I find I have a reasonable mental track of the direction. I usually know roughly where I am and in what direction is the nearest point of reference. Often get it right, but sometimes I get confused by areas that look similar to each other. Pine forests in particular where one area of trees looks the same as another. I keep track of the fireroads that cross them but do sometimes get mixed up when one looks the same as another.

Locally, Tunnel Hill is a good example of an area that gives me problems. An essentially small area of MOD pine woodland land with a lot crammed in, and frequently find parts look the same, and nearby Porridgepot I find is so similar in parts. I sometimes think I'm on the wrong hill. I'll navigate by the trails I'm looking for when I find them. Compass or GPS is fine to know which way I'm facing, but the maps, even detail OS maps, show little other than I'm in a patch of woodlands. Can easily find my way out, but not always the trails I'm looking for.

I can navigate with map and compass though if necessary. Growing up in Devon it's essential to learn, especially if you venture onto Dartmoor where you really can get seriously lost in good or bad visibility.

If I go somewhere with a large area that's utterly unknown to me I'll make a copy of an OS map section, pop in a plastic pocket and keep it in the bag. Always have a compass in there anyway, despite all the phone GPS stuff. Battery can easily crap out on me, or the phone crashes, GPS signal lost, etc.

Dont we just follow these?

I love maps me 🙂 and would take one (plus compass) on an unfamiliar route or one where I could get exposed should the weather turn nasty.

Map reading for me is a good skill to have as you can plan\work out new routes. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy on a bike a while ago, he asked me how I found the route I was taking him around as the path in the woods was particularly good. I said I'd found path on a map and planned a route from there. He then asked me how I knew it would be any good, I said I didn't, he asked what if it turned out to be cack, I said I wouldn't ride it again.....

I'd hate to be limited by not being able to read a map or navigate, there's so much to explore.....

Sorry I meant 12 to 15kph not mph. They base it on a non technical XC type of ride with no significant climbs.

That's the idea though, you adjust it up or down for group and terrain. In the mountains its usually about half plus one or two kph. If I go for an XC ride with the local Spanish MTB club its more in the region of 20kph.

I do most of the navigating for our group. How any of us would survive if I got into trouble...

As mentioned before, I do a lot of ground work before going out (aerial, maps etc) so that I can keep an eye out for direction changes etc. I sometimes record the route through MyTracks app/GPS but it's not often necessary. I have a compass in my backpack if my battery fails.