Northern Ireland Outdoors Forum - Hiking, camping and more

General => Meets, places, trips and reviews => Topic started by: Mourneman on December 21, 2011

Title: Learning by our mistake's
Post by: Mourneman on December 21, 2011

I've never be worried about admitting when i wrong,it should be used as a learning curve to correct & inhance any skills we have,as everyone has strenghts & weaknesses alike.Navigational skills is something i'am always trying to improve on,following a recent mis-navigation in the Western Mourne's i thought about what i could do to prevent this happening again,basically after setting off from Piere's Castle i crossed Castle bog before climbing Eagle's Southern slope,hill fog was very dense & after crossing Batt's wall several times trying to locate a geocache I mistakenly carried on without taking  a bearing.
(http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6219/6350717537_dc1f21bab5_b.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/69203213@N03/6350717537/)
DSCN8554 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/69203213@N03/6350717537/) by surginor (http://www.flickr.com/people/69203213@N03/), on Flickr
I spent at least an extra hour trying to find my way bay to Hen car park,as the Western Mournes are pretty much featureless.So what have i  done  to prevent this mistake,i marked Hen carpark as a waypoint on my G.P.S as ( Esc hen) Escape Hen with it's co-ordernates,also done the same for other starting points. ( Esc Tra ) Trassey
                        (Esc Lit  ) Little
                        (Esc Ice ) Ice
                        (Esc ott ) Ott
                        (Esc blo ) Bloody
These are all marked as waypoints now,also i should have concentrated more on getting my bearning's & not the geocache.But i do think it's a good thing to mark these waypoints,they could come in useful in an emergency.
(http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6109/6350727185_a99b6d019f_b.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/69203213@N03/6350727185/)
DSCN8558 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/69203213@N03/6350727185/) by surginor (http://www.flickr.com/people/69203213@N03/), on Flickr

Title: Re: Learning by our mistake's
Post by: LandyLiam on December 21, 2011

before i got my garmin etrex with all the maps on it i used the tomtom from the car for geocaching and planning exits routes in fog, of course it has none of the mourne tracks on it so i marked every car park, geocache. stile and summit on it (the summits were easy to do in advance as the co-ords are available online), if you at least have the summits you'll be able to work out what direction you are travelling fairly easily (in conjunction with a map), a lot of the car parks have geocaches so you can also get the co-ords for them (ott, spelga, trassey rd bridge, sandbank rd?, leitrim lodge, bloody bridge) my tomtom display was starting  to get a little crowded on the mournes  ;D