How to Navigate on a Canoe Trip 

Excellent story. Avoiding your own confirmation bias is most of what reading a map is all about. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks so much. Comments like that really make my day!

Great tip.

I use a monocular with a built-in bearing compass, best of both worlds for me.

Cool, which brand(s) includes a compass?@@DominiqueB

Great tip. I used to carry binoculars but over the years I got away from that practice.

Hey thanks, much appreciated!

You bet, thanks for commenting.

That's pretty interesting.

Great tip Craig, much appreciated.

Awesome, glad you food turned out for you!

Thanks man! 👊

Well, I hope this helps for your next trip! Good luck.

You are welcome!

Thanks so much Stephen, I really appreciate the positive comments. Makes my day!

Thanks so much Randy, much appreciated!

Thank you!

Excellent tip. I am contemplating a similar video for a forested environment. I may add that to that video.

Very cool!

That would be an interesting topic. My best named portage so far was "Death March Portage".

Thanks for the comment Rob. Great example.

You're welcome!

Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

You are welcome!

What is OSM?

@@KevinOutdoors 0penztreetm@p

Thanks for sharing that. People think it can't happen, then it does and it takes a real reality check to understand where you are. I have heard of folks looking at their phone or GPS and not believing where they actually were. ATB!

Thanks for the thorough comment. I'm not anit-GPS or anything but batteries do run down so I try and keep it off at least on long trips. They are great to 'tie-in' if you aren't sure where you are but they aren't necessary especially on canoe trips. I consider most lake navigation 'easy' and I travel great distances with just the map an not using the GPS or a compass. I have actually started using my GPS more often to check my speed when I am paddling to answer questions like just how bad is this headwind. I spent many years working in forestry with a compass before GPS technology matured so my compass and map skills are pretty good and I rather use the GPS as a safety feature. Back in the day we used actual aerial photographs for navigation rather than a map. We would use a map to find north on the photo and draw our own north lines on it. We considered ourselves 'lost' if we were more than 10m off our desired route in a forest. Back then GPS was just coming out and the first units were backpacks with antenna that you had to raise on a series of poles you carried. And, back then the GPS signal was scrambled by the military so you had to un-scramble the data you collected back at the office by comparing it to another GPS at a fixed known point. I may do some videos on how to navigate in a straight line in a forest environment and how to incorporate GPS with map and compass. - Really appreciate your questions and comments.

That would have been a good addition to this video. Honestly it is a technique that I rarely use. Often there are plenty of landmarks and I sort of triangulate in my head. Good suggestion. Perhaps next time I am out in a boat.

Thanks, I get my maps from a local map and outdoor gear store called Chaltrek, I prefer to support them rather than an online store (Chaltrek also has an online presence). But there are several online map retailers for Canadian topographic maps that are easily found with a google search.

Thanks for the questions Cliff. First, what you are doing is just fine. In this video I tried to show a gradient of compass accuracy. In the first example I didn't even use a compass, which is probably how I travel about 60-70% of the time, the map is often enough. Then in the second example I just used the compass to generally find north, then west when I rounded the peninsula, I was just using the compass to generally orient the map as you do. In the third example I go a step further my using the arrow of direction to help me pinpoint where I was going. And, in the fourth example I used the same technique but instead it was to 'shoot' a bearing across a large lake that was lacking features. I hope that helps.

@@KevinOutdoors it was very helpful and I want to learn more about some of the more advanced things you showed and will watch it a few times. I really appreciate you making it Kevin.