Pathfinder Basics Estimating Distance and Pace Count Lecture

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Video Transcription

what we're going to do today is we're going to talk to you first about how to figure your pace count and whites useful we're going to take you out there and have you figured your pace counts and write it down because you're gonna need it's not we're going to talk to you about estimating distance and then we're going to go out and have you do it and show you how to do it and the same thing with circumnavigation of a danger area so let's start off by talking about pace counter pace counting is the only way that you can do what's called dead reckoning dead reckoning is really one of the most crucial skills that you can have for nighttime navigation because it combines an exact compass bearing with a distance same things one things me to tell you that you need to travel 270 degrees for how long right okay so the ranger station is 270° Marymount far away is how do I know that I made it there didn't pass it where I went far enough without a distance-r associated with that

that's called dead record okay so that's what we're going to teach you guys how to do now face counting is most useful if you use some kind of accounting device and it can either be a set of beads it can be rocks in your pocket we knots tied into paracord really doesn't matter what it is but the way we've set you can do this in miles or you can do it in meters I prefer meters because it's all in increments of 10 I'm a fan of the metric system a lot of people aren't but I am because it's easy and I'm stupid everything's intense so I can't screw it up so what you're going to do with pace County is you're going to figure out how many normal pace that takes you to walk a hundred meters if you're doing it to try to use it often what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to mark out take 100-meter piece of rope or something like that you're going to lay it out on different types of terrain uphill downhill rough terrain soft term smooth terrain muddy wet nasty terrain so that you can take an average for a distance travel because your pace count will change obviously uphill or downhill and a different types of terrain compared to just walking you know down the street your pace car is going to be different okay you're going to be given a pace count tonight and it may be off by two or three steps because the instructors face down may be different in your pace camera but if you're all if you walk you know 100 or 200 steps too far you know you probably want way too far okay off your tour steps to light you'll know you ain't there yet okay so the way parents accounting works is like I said you figure out how many paces it takes you to walk 100 meters on average and then what you can do is with these beads is you have one set of beads or rocks or not solar the case may be that you have nine of the other one you have four that gives you a five kilometer distance counting device because what you'll do is you will take these nine beads that move up to the top you'll take these four beads you'll move them up to the top like just and then you'll start walking and let's say that my average pace count is sixty eight paces for 100 meters and that doesn't mean that means one

- I count my pace on the same foot not both feet okay when I get to 68 I move a bead down and now I've walked 100 meters so I start counting so I count to a million

I'll let count 68 same thing again when I get to the next 68 I move a beat down when I've moved all 9 of these beads down the next bead means I walk out far one kilometer so when I do that four times on the fifth one I've walked five kilometers okay so that gives you a five kilometer pace count you're not gonna have to walk that far not really going to be walking you for they did today all right all right but I want you to understand your pace count because at night things are completely different than they are during the day you might be able to see that orange tag from here one hundred yards away through the woods during the day you're not going to see it at night because your groups only going to have one headlight there's a lot of little twists that come in tonight gets tonight's basically the final exam it's going to be a culmination of everything you've learned since you've been here all rolled into one exercise tonight we'll talk about that later so to figure out your pace count what we're going to do is we're going to take the outside we have 100 meter K played out on the ground and then we've taken stakes driving stakes and marked off 100 meter lanes for you guys to walk off your pace count I recommend that you walk up and back at least to check yourself because the first time it might be 68 the next time might be 70 the average would be 69 an average of like that okay and just worry about flat terrain for now don't worry about uphill downhill my last up just keep your clattering pace count and it'll be fairly close within a few steps tonight out here in the rough terrain okay

so that's the first thing the second thing we want to talk about is we're going to talk about crossing a danger or circumnavigating a danger area so let's say that this table for sake of purpose is something that I cannot go through and let's just say it's a lot bigger than it is okay I'm walking on my bearing I got my purpose out and I'm following my Barre and I'm going ahead and I come up to my obstacle maybe it's a rock face you know a sheer rock face maybe it is a pond or a lake or something like that okay what I need to do is I need to look across that area if I can see the other side and I need to mark that in my head visually it's on the same bearing so it doesn't really matter okay if I can't see the other side that's okay too what's important is this what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn all the way to one side direct 90 degrees and then I'm going to walk and I'm going to count my pace okay 1 2 3 4 5 whatever it is when I get to the other side now I'm clear my danger area maybe it was 20 steps okay if I'm taste county this is not these kind it is but it's not okay if I'm actually pace coming from distance I have to count my steps going this way too if I'm not pace counting this trying to get back on the same bearing then this doesn't matter now I'm going to walk till I pass the danger area and do it 90 the other direction and count the same amount of paces back then I took this way and then I should be exactly the same spot on my bearing again divided a visual object I can see that makes it pretty easy if I see a big giant black oak tree black walnut tree on the other side I'm just going to go around and go to that black one tree as long as it was in the same line sight okay if not then I have to count it off good let's circumnavigating a dangerous now let's talk about how we figure out an approximate distance across something and why is that important well if it's a creek or a river or something I've gotta cross it maybe I want to know if I got enough rope to double it around a tree get to the other side still hang on to that rope in case I slip and fall and then retrieve my rope back I don't want to get 3/4 away across and it's like oh I'm at the end of my rope now what do I do

I still got a quart of the way to go or maybe it's something where I say there's a tree right here I'm going to drop this tree with my axe across the creek and try to use that to get across the creek so there's no way I'm going to get washed down slipped water okay then I've got to know the hiking at 32 and you can use the same method for both estimating height and estimating distance across and you do that by triangulation and this is a little bit difficult to map on this is difficult to explain so I'm just going to tell you and you just have to trust me but a 45 degree angle from any two points gives you a 90 degree okay and you can look at that and understand that if I take if this is my compass let's just say this is north south east west okay those four triangles are of equal size right

these triangles are of all equal size the smallest this is 90 degrees right here to here half of that is 45 so that's our smallest common denominator that we can use to get a triangle that's equal in size it's 45 degrees remember that 45 degrees that's what you want to remember oh gosh so what we're going to do is we're going to you guys are going to exercise in this don't bother

if this is my Creek and there's a tree over here then I can see on the other side of that Creek I'm going to stand right here and I'm going to shoot a compass bearing to that tree then I'm either going to walk this direction or this direction and I'm going to keep checking myself along the way I think I got this drawing operator okay I'm going to keep checking myself along the way because I want to get to a point where when I shoot my bearing from here to here it's exactly 45 degrees difference than it was from here to here so if this started out 360 and I'm going this direction at 45 degrees less than that equals what

315

3:58 I guess so if I shoot a bearing from here to here is 315 I know I'm exactly the same distance this direction as it is this direction now I'll have to do is count I paced back here if my steps are 3 feet basically right however many steps it is times 3 equals the distance across that thing now I know how far it is across that river okay but it has to be 45 degrees if you want to double-check yourself you can go the other direction 45 degrees take your angle this way and averages it too in case you were off and you'll be pretty close okay and you can do the same thing with the tree so let's say I'm standing right here and I say okay now I know it's 35 feet across this thing I need a 35 foot tree that's really close suck just drop it over now I got to figure out the height of the tree same thing okay same exact thing as long as I get that this is if this is the tree that I'm measuring if I walk back and my compass has an inclinometer on it does everybody know what a clinometer is there's a thing inside your compass that measures degrees an angle okay if I psych this up at a 45 degree angle to the top of that tree and I just keep walking back and tell I'm looking in this mirror I got a 45 degree angle then like I just count the faces to the tree and I'm the same distance away from it as it is tall okay within about five feet because you've got that differential of your eye height to the ground so within about five feet you're going to be close okay does everybody understand this because this is going to be a deliverable for you guys to say your instructor is going to take out what they're going to do is they're going to put a black barrel off in the distance they're going to tell you okay how far are you away from that black barrel right now just simulate how far would be across an object and you guys are gonna have to tell them how far you are moving that barrel within ten feet that's 10 feets a pretty big margin of error okay so that's what you got first you gonna do your face count then you're going to do this exercise and we'll deal with those two exercises we're going to run the second compass course when we're done with the second compass course and you get that right because a delay right readings we're going to take a long break before tonight's exercise whatever time you got it done with that we're done and duck dark

okay dark is going to be your final exercise for the your final deliverable exercise for the class after that there'll be no more deliverables so you're all caught up and you pass the exercise tonight you've got a certificate the patch coming tomorrow is just discussion and lecture in the morning for a couple hours certificates pictures how do you do here's your patch thank you very much have a nice day tomorrow is the easy money all right tonight is going to be there's going to be the rough way out okay so we've got to get some of this stuff down now especially to pace County there look forward to getting down now because it'll come into play tonight okay all right guys so good we meet instructors out there you should have some lanes set up for you base camp let me show you right down you