Youtube - Wilderness Navigation training videos

Wilderness navigation is a skill that most people find is a much better “show” than a “tell”.  A simple compass operation that can be demonstrated in under a minute might take several pages of confusing text to try to explain in words.

Enter online videos!  The Mazamas web gnomes have reviewed dozens of Youtube navigation videos, and here are the best we’ve found.  Most are under 2 minutes in length.  Watch these videos for a quick overview of some of the core map and compass skills.  Watching these can be especially useful before you take a more in depth navigation class.

Parts of a Compass 

Parts of a Map

Taking a bearing from a map so you can follow it
This is one of the four core map and compass skills.  While, it is a simple two-part process, it’s one that beginners often find challenging at first. Watch this, practice a few times on your own, and you should learn this pretty quickly. Please note that there are two common errors when doing this procedure. 1) Pointing the direction of travel arrow on your compass toward you, rather than away from you. 2) Having the South end of the orienting arrow pointing at North on your map. Both of these mistakes will result in a bearing that is 180° in the wrong direction!

Taking a bearing on a real-world object so you can plot the bearing on your map
This is one of the four core map and compass skills as well. It is probably the trickiest of the four to do and remember, most likely because it is something that most people rarely will do. The only time you would use this technique is to try to locate your position by plotting one or more lines on the map, or to try to identify a distant feature, as in: “What you think the name of that lake is?”

Navigation: Part 4 - Declination

Orienting the map and compass to north

Overview of a GPS (5 minutes)

and, if you have a whole 9 minutes to spare, this is a good overview that wraps it all up: