Land Navigation Baby!

Last week we spent Saturday at Vivian Park, a vast tract of pristine wilderness nestled deep within the Provo Canyon. It's a popular destination for campers and backpackers...and it's also the site of the an Army land navigation course.

Here's how land navigation (or "land nav") works: first, they give you a map and a sheet with coordinates. You have to use your compass to find the points. On each point, there's a sign with a "code" that you have to enter in your sheet, showing that you've found the point. Simple enough? Here two of my fellow cadets are plotting their points and determining where they should go:



Once that's done, we're off:



Perhaps the biggest challenge of landnav is keeping track of how far you've walked.

We only managed to find one of our points (though I'm sure we were close for several others!) But, the scenery of the park itself was breahtaking!



Isn't that lovely?