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The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors, Second Edition | 
 enlarge | Authors: David Seidman, Paul Cleveland
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $5.99
You Save: $10.96 (65%)
New (28) from $9.20
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 173
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 0071361103
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.58
UPC: 639785801528
EAN: 9780071361101
Publication Date: December 28, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Paperback 2nd edition. Heavy wear and creasing. Text clean and binding tight. NO ONLINE CODE. Remainder mark.
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Product Description
Now with full-color topographic maps and featuring the latest on electronic navigation, The Essential Wilderness Navigator is the clearest and most up-to-date route-finding primer available. Providing readers with exercises for developing a directional ‘sixth sense,’ tips on mastering the art of map- and compass-reading, and comprehensive updates on a range of technological advances, this perennially popular guide is more indispensable than ever.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Excellent Map and Compass Instruction Book December 4, 2004
67 out of 67 found this review helpful
You want to learn how to use a map and compass? For hiking or backpacking, especially remote wilderness? This is the best comprehensive book I've found on the subject, bar none. Reasons:
1. It gets to the point quickly in teaching you map & compass fundamentals. No fluff, no wasted time on esoteric principles of magnetism or the rules of orienteering competitions (a fine sport, but one bearing little resemblance to actual wilderness navigation with its special large-scale magnetic-north maps and simplified compasses etc.) Instead, this book concentrates on one objective: accurate land navigation in a wilderness environment.
2. It teaches realistic methods, and does not emphasize the unrealistic ones (one glaring example: penciling a lot of inaccurate magnetic declination lines all over your map the night before your trip (because the author used the method once for an adventure race with a special large-scale map and thinks it's cool) instead of just buying a compass with adjustable declination or pasting a pointer indicating a true bearing on your compass baseplate! Hey, sitting atop a windblown mountain is no place to attempt to draw magnetic lines of declination with a three-inch compass baseplate when you walk off your pre-marked map or have to use a friend's copy!
3. It has large, clear, easy-to-follow illustrations. Believe me, this is a rarity in most map/compass books.
4. It teaches BOTH compass dead reckoning (compass only) AND terrain association (map priority) navigation principles and shows the advantages and weaknesses of each in a given situation. Some orienteering-biased books would have you believe the compass is only good for aligning a map to magnetic north!
5. It has nice large pages and lies flat while you refer to various sections and practice using your map & compass in the field. Don't laugh. Remember, you will learn land navigation by practicing outdoors what you're reading. One session of trying to refer to the tiny pocket paperback pages and dingy photos of competing books will make you a believer in a large-paged instruction book with clear illustrations.
6. It covers more advanced map/compass skills (resection, finding position from a baseline and landmark, etc.) as well as beginner exercises, and does so in the same clear, practical way without excessive verbiage or attempts to be clever. One competing book spent 3 entire pages on how to use a 1902 compass design!
7. It warns you of the great inaccuracies of some improvised 'navigational' methods (like telling directions from a wristwatch and the sun) while still giving you useful information on finding direction from Polaris and other methods that do work well enough for emergency navigation.
8. While it has the mandatory chapter on GPS and the development of computer-generated waypoints, it does not attempt to be a 'all-method navigation' book. Such a book does not exist. Either the GPS material will be inadequate (because no general GPS book can cover each model of GPS and their widely varying operational characteristics in different outdoor environments) or the map/compass material is too abbreviated. Learn to use a map & compass before all else - this book makes it simple.
The best resource for beginning or experienced pathfinders October 27, 1999
43 out of 43 found this review helpful
This book is the best resource on land navigation i've seen. I use it regularly in teaching land navigation in conjunction with search and rescue to area fire departments. The author makes the hard-to-explain easy to understand for beginners and experts alike.
Difficult to get lost with this one... September 5, 2005
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
An excellent book for those starting out on orienteering. Very good conversational wording. Doesn't use too much jargon. The practical exercises are easily understood. The combination of the written word and neat diagrams and pictures make the information easily digestable.
Essential to using a compass December 8, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have been using a compass for many years but I always thought there was much more than I knew. I went to using GPS for all my navigation a few years ago. I purchased 3 books on compass usage a couple years ago after my wife and I broke my GPS during a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado leaving us in a bad mess.
I quickly ran through the other 2, and although they were good they were not as complete as this one. I have carried it with me for 2 years now. I find that what I think I have learned is easily wrong when out in the field so I now carry it with me and practice the stuff I am unsure of. Some people think this book is wordy but I find it fascinating. I reread certain chapters over and over, finding I have glossed over something that is more important than I originally thought.
If you want to trust a compass this is the book for you, but plan on spending some time with it.
I am buying this book for my son-in law as he relies exclusively on a GPS.
I guess the only thing I disagree with is a statement that a compass almost never breaks, as I have several that have been retired over breakage. I carry 2-3 with me now as I guess I'm not disposed to trust any one navigational instrument.
Good Book May 12, 2007
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a excellent book if you do not have a knowledge of the wilderness. I would recommend it highly
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