A ‘whiteout’ in the mountains is a chilling prospect – but with the right techniques you can make your way safely in even the worst conditions. Ross Creber, senior instructor at Glenmore Lodge, walks us through them
NAVIGATING in winter follows a lot of the same principles as navigating in summer, but the environment and the hazards in winter conditions are far greater and the consequences of a mistake can be much more serious. Veering off a bearing could quickly land us in avalanche terrain. Miscounting paces or incorrect timings could take you over a corniced edge. Underestimating a slope angle or not spotting a steepening could be the difference between triggering an avalanche and getting home safely. A study found that 23% of Scottish mountaineering incidents resulted from navigational errors. Fortunately, there are techniques we can learn and use to cope with challenging navigation conditions in winter. Using these can be very liberating as a hillwalker as it gives you a skillset to deal with even the most formidable conditions.
It may sound simple, but in summer we mostly have the luxury of seeing before us the same picture as is represented on the map. The beauty of this is we have loads of features we can tick off, ‘handrail’ or use as attack points or catching features. However, in winter, when snow combines with poor visibility, it can drastically reduce the amount of information we can use to navigate. We can often say farewell to features such as small rivers, marsh land, footpaths, cairns and marked boulders. At worst, the world can become a box of white like the inside of a ping-pong ball – the dreaded ‘whiteout’ – where we are forced to be reliant on much more basic information and techniques such slope aspect, pacing and compass bearings. This is why lots of mountain users in summer prefer to navigate with an Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 scale map because there’s so much information to use to help us navigate efficiently. In winter it is more common to use a Harvey’s 1:40,000 or Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 scale because it de-clutters the map and removes lots of the now snow-covered features rendered useless to aid our navigation.
Let’s look at a few key techniques to keep in your winter navigation toolbox and explore where and when we might use them on the mountain.
1 ATTACK POINTS
Attack points are extremely useful when navigating across what feels like featureless terrain. It is not a nice feeling to walk for over a kilometre in poor visibility before you reach a point of confirmation. Better to break it into smaller chunks, navigating between features that can seem small on the map, but are obvious on the mountain.
For example, when aiming to navigate off the Braeriach plateau you may wish to descend to ‘The Escalator’, a reliab
