Measuring Distance on the Ground

We tend to measure distance when navigating in one of two ways (although there is nothing to stop you doing both at once). On the forming a strategy page one of the 5 D's is distance / duration. On longer legs you will tend to measure the distance from the map and then work out how long it will take you to walk it based on your walking speed. If the distance is very small (probably less than 500 meters) you may wish to use the other method by counting your paces.

 

Pacing

Measuring distance by pacing is a very satisfying skill to acquire and like any worthwhile skill it will require a lot of practice to acquire and regular practice to keep up. The very basic way to find out what your pacing  is to measure out 100m some how (I use a 50m climbing rope to measure 100m). Then walk from the start to the finish only counting each time the right foot hits the floor. Most people will end up with a figure between 55 and 80 paces. This is your basic 100m.

 

That is the easy bit. 

 

Unfortunately, it you are having to resort to pacing then the ground will probably neither be flat or smooth like the pavement that you tested it out on so you have to make allowances. There are two general ways of doing this.

1. Most people practice and practice and will look at the ground in front of them and will think 'OK my normal pace is 63 steps per 100m but on this heather at this gradient I recon I will do about 85 paces per 100m.

2. The way that I do it is to have 4 different stride lengths that I can use. I call them summer (my normal summer stride on flat ground (63 paces)), winter (my normal winter stride on flat ground (75 paces)), half winter (this is a shorter winter stride (100 paces)) and pigeon (heal to toe (160 paces)). I then look at the ground I think. I recon I can walk on that surface at a winter stride so will walk for 100m at that stride. This means that sometimes I am taking strides a little short and sometimes a little long but it works very well for me (I have only met 2 other people who do this so you may want to try the other way first :-) )

 

If you hold 5 stones in your left hand then each time you pace 100m you can move a stone from one hand to the other to keep track of how far you have gone. You can also purchase beads to slide along a string for this purpose which is useful in winter when all the stones are covered in snow.

 

Timing

If you know the distance that you have to travel and the speed that you are walking then you can work out how long it will take.

Again this needs a bit of practice to work out what different speeds feel like (and it changes with the size of your pack). 

Speed Time to walk 1km 
5km/h  12 minutes
4km/h   15 minutes
3km/h   20 minutes
2km/h  30 minutes
1km/h  60 minutes

 

Those calculations are the easy ones. For shorter distances use this table

 

  5km/h 4km/h 3km/h 2km/h
100m 1.25 1.5 2 3
200m 2.5 3 4 6
300m 3.75 4.5 6 9
400m 5 6 8 12
500m 6 7.5 10 15
600m 7.5 9 12 18
700m 8.25 10.5 14 21
800m 10 12 16 24
900m 11 13.5 18 27
1km 12 15 20 30

 

We have made a PDF of lots of different sorts of these table on our Navigation aids Downloads page over on the Lupine Adventure Website.

 

Allowing for height gain and loss

Most people add between 30 seconds and one minute for every 10 meters of height gained. On many maps the contour line frequency is 10 meters so once you work out how long you have to add for every 10 meters of height gain you simply count the contours crossed and do the maths. If you are bad at maths you may wish to try and walk at 3km an hour and add an extra minute every 10 meters of height gain :-).

 

If you are working out your expected time over a whole day it is usual to ignore the downhill as on some of it you will go faster and some you will go slower. However if you are trying to accurately measure how long a short leg of steep down hill will take then you will need to add some. There is no general rule for this so I am afraid you are on your own. You will just have to measure, estimate, time it then adjust your formula if necessary.

 

Next Page - Contour Lines

 

 

 

Lupine Adventure

This site is brought to you by Lupine Adventure
Co-operative
.

 

We are a workers Co-operative of outdoor education professionals based in the north of England and North Wales. Visit our website for more infomation about us.