Let’s face it…we’ve all forgotten to bring one or more essential items on a hiking or backpacking trip. I, for one, pretty much always forget my compass. Call it overconfidence, forgetfulness, (extremely) early-onset Alzheimer’s…whatever you want. The fact is, I know I’m not the only one. So, what do you do if you find yourself lost on the trail without your compass?

Unless you forgot to bring your watch, too, you can use it to help you figure out which direction is which.  Here’s how:

Turn your watch into a compass

If you’re in the northern hemisphere, simply point the hour hand of your watch at the sun. The point midway between the hour hand and the “12″ on your watch is roughly South. Simply turn around to identify North, right for West, left for South…you get gist. Reverse the technique if you’re hiking in the southern hemisphere.

Ok, let’s say you’re wearing a digital watch, or no watch at all…what do you do?

Make a dirt compass

Here’s a good tip I saw on Man Vs. Wild. It’s not the quickest method, but it’s accurate (note — start this technique in the AM):

• Find a level piece of ground with good sun exposure, like a meadow or flat ridge top.
• Drive a 3-4 foot stick straight into the ground.
• Mark the tip of the stick’s shadow with a pebble.
• Using this marker, draw an arc around the stick, making sure to keep your original marker in place.
• As the sun moves across the sky the shadow will shorten and pivot to the other side of the stick. When the shadow meets the other side of the arc, mark this spot with another pebble.
• Draw a straight line between your two markers. This line represents West (1st marker) to East (2nd marker).
• Draw a perpendicular line across the E/W line to complete your “dirt compass”.

Do as the Wise Men did

If you’re lost at night, stay put. Seriously. Make camp and wait ’til morning. If the sky’s clear and you MUST try to navigate at night, the best bet is to use the North star (it’s named that for a reason).  Contrary to popular belief, the North star — called Polaris — is not the brightest in the sky (which is Sirius, btw). Here’s how to find it:

• Locate the Big Dipper
• Draw an imaginary line between the bottom-outside star in the cup through the top-outside star and beyond. The medium-bright star in the line’s path is Polaris.

These are the most popular tried-and-true methods to find North without a compass, but there’s bound to be others. Please comment if you know a different and/or better way!

As any frustrated GPS-toting hiker can attest, we’ve come a long way in the location-aware department. But there’s plenty of room for improvement, both with hardware and GPS software.

One of the most common annoyances is losing signal in steep valleys and dense vegetation — just ask the US military operating in Afghanistan.

To help solve this problem, the US Strategic Command is expanding the number of GPS satelites from 24 to 27 over the next two years (the first of which is already en route to its orbiting position). The increase in satellites won’t just help the military, though…hikers, drivers and anything else that relies on global positioning will also benefit.

So, the US Military is stepping it up on the hardware end of things…let’s just hope the Trimbles & Garmins of the world can get their act together and provide more user-friendly, cross-platform software and maps to its hungry users down here on Earth. I mean, it’s not rocket science.

(via NYTimes.com)

285 million visitors made their way to US National Parks in 2009, representing a nearly 4% year-over-year increase and nearly eclipsing 1987′s record attendance.

According to Ken Salazar, the economic downturn helped drive tourists to locations closer to home, and there’s simply no better value in terms of culture, beauty and fun than our country’s National Parks. In contrast, European tourists were lured to the US by the relative strength of the Euro to the dollar, making trips to this side of the pond quite appealing.

Of course, the parks got some help from good ol’ publicity, too. There was Ken Burns’ National Parks tv series and President Obama’s family trips to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. In addition, the National Park Service waived admission fees three weekends last summer, a move that particularly helped Blue Ridge Parkway area parks Shenandoah in VA and Great Smoky Mountain along the TN/NC border.

(via MSNBC/AP)

image: flickr / James Gordon

Trimming the world’s best hikes down to 10 is incredibly difficult, just ask the folks at Gadling.com. Conceding that it’s almost impossible to account for everyone’s style or favorite type of hike, I think they did a pretty nice job of cobbling together a diverse list of must-hikes across the globe.

Follow this link to learn more about the list-maker’s thought process, as well as to learn a little more about each trek.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the 10 lucky winners:

• Mt. Whitney, California
• Salkantay Trek, Peru
• Timberline Trail, Oregon
• Everest Base Camp, Nepal
• Appalachian Trail, North Carolina
• Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
• Zion Narrows, Utah
• Haute Route, France/Switzerland
• John Muir Trail, California
• Cinque Terre, Italy

Ever wonder what major gear review sites such as Backpacker do with the gear after they’re done putting it the test? This year, the editors of Backpacker’s April 2010 Gear Guide have managed to convince most of the manufacturers to allow them to give their wares away. Good news for us!

This week’s giveaway is Kelty’s new Lakota pack. Read the review and enter to win the pack here.

A benefit of paid membership sites like BackpackingLight.com is they keep most of the spammy riff raff away, leaving room for only highly-enthusiastic, and (mostly) intelligent discourse.

Fortunately for us, there’s portion of BPL that’s both FREE of charge AND riff raff: The Community Section.

There you will find over 100 PDF-downloadable ultalight backpacking lists compiled by members of the community. Then, through the magic of crowdsourcing, the lists are ranked and discussed on the forums so that you can easily identify which lists are credible enough to assist in your own pack planning.

Head on over to BackpackingLight to check them out!

Feels like I have mono (though I could just be really bored), a major snowstorm is beginning to take shape outside, and I have nothing particularly interesting to say today. Therefore, I’m in full blog-reading catch-up mode. Here’s a few posts from my favorite bloggers that I think you’ll enjoy:

– 501 Places — a cool travel blog — hits the proverbial nail on the head with 6 Tips For Successful Complaining.

– National Geographic Adventure folded last month, but as they promised, they’re back with some web content, which is cool.

– Wend Magazine’s blog tells you how to get free condoms from Climb Addict so you can “keep climbing, not parenting.”

Anybody else camping out on the couch with the laptop today? If you see anything interesting for me to read/watch, feel free to add it in the comments. Thanks!