Hiking School

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Universal Transverse Mercator System
HUH??
It's actually pretty simple and a great way to locate areas on any map.
I'm including a link to a video explaining it all. I hope this clears up everything about UTM and we'll do some practice in upcoming posts.

Wilderness Navigation #11 - UTM coordinates This is the clearest and most concise explanation on Youtube about the UTM coordinate system. We start with an overview of how the UTM system works, then you...

What's those numbers on the edges of the map?
There's latitude and longitude, but what are the numbers on the northing and easting lines? Stat tuned.

10 Workouts for Your Strongest Hiking Summer Ever These workouts target the muscles you'll need to crush long summer hikes and big climbs. Get strong now for your best season yet.

Lines that go from the top of the map to the bottom ( vertically) are called Eastings because they allow us to see how far east or west we are on the map.
Lines that go from left to right ( horizontally) are called Northings because they allow us to see how far north or south we are on the map.
Tomorrow we'll go into more detail.

This is pretty much self explanatory. Maps are broken into grid squares. On a 1:50000 scale map and each grid measuring 2 cm by 2 cm they would equal 1 square kilometer.

All maps have a scale. A scale measures distance on the map and can be in Metric or Imperial.

The map in the photo is Metric and it's saying that 1 cm on the map equals 50000 cm in real life.
And, because "everyone" can visualize 50000 cm it's easy right?? Sure!!

But, since we know 50000 cm is also 500 meters why don't we just remove the last two zeros. So the scale simplifies to 1 cm on the map is equal to 500 meters in real world.

What would 1: 30000 be? How about 1: 75000?

Legend.
Every map should have one and that legend will be specific to that map. Every item in the legend is somewhere on the map.

Coming up.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049252333/lost-hiker-mount-elbert-colorado-ignored-rescuers-phone-calls #:~:text=Hourly%20News-,Lost%20hiker%20on%20Mount%20Elbert%20ignored%20rescuers'%20calls%2C%20thinking%20they,'t%20recognize%20the%20number.%22

A lost hiker ignored rescuers' phone calls, thinking they were spam A search and rescue unit in Colorado says a hiker spent the night in the forest after they "ignored repeated phone calls from us because they didn't recognize the number."

Have you ever been lost in the woods? Or as I like to call it, temporarily misplaced? Tell me in the comments