I’m lost-what to do?

One of the most important skills you needed in the mountain environment will be the navigation skill. In the summer a ”white out” can be tough to get trough. But in Winter condition it will be really tough to manage. But, here the knowledge and skill should be your partner. In your mind you shall always bear in mind how to develop this skill. Use all possibilities to train it. In the special forces, the mind set is like this: have I been in this situation before or a similar situation. Can I use my experience and knowledge from that. So this is important, the more experience you got, the easier you will be handled new or complex situations. So when it comes to a situation where you are lost, well first thin first. Do not panic, do not rush. Now its time for slow down and do a small research. If the cloud base is rising you can use the window for taking a bearing. You can now ”back track” where you are with help of the 4 D’s. Distance, duration, direction and description this together with your last known point will help you to figure out your position. You can also figure out if you have passed or observe any distinctive points, such as gully’s or river etc. You can also use the aspect of slope technique as well. So what is that then?

Using slope aspect can be a very useful tool to help you relocate. In its simplest form just use the points of the compass – north, east, south and west – to work out which direction the slope you are on is facing and then look at the map to find the slope which faces this way.

Slope aspect can be used more precisely by taking a bearing of the direction in which the slope faces. Let’s imagine we have become disorientated somewhere within the area shown here.

We know we haven’t gone far and we’re somewhere within this circle of map.

We’ve taken a bearing of the direction in which the slope we are on drops away.

There can be slopes of very different directions all located within a small area. The task is to find out which slope you are.

Let’s assume the bearing we took of the slope on the ground was 30. This would mean that you are looking roughly down the NE aspect of this small knoll. This information should help you plan which way to travel next