A Beginner’s Guide to Desert Land Navigation

If bringing your ATV to the sand is your favorite pastime, chances are you spend a significant portion of your vacation in vast open expanses of sun scorched dunes and valleys, canyons and arroyos.
If those areas you prefer happen to be without Wi-Fi or digital wireless coverage, many riders, especially those that are newer to the sport, may worry about getting lost in what can be a vast, empty, unforgiving natural environment.

It’s a legitimate concern. Some riders prefer the well known, regularly visited riding areas with enough people around to make getting lost more of an inconvenience than a serious hazard.

But for those riders who seek solitude and a feeling of “wilderness,” getting lost has the potential to be a life threatening mistake. Here are a few basic tips to ensure you can always find camp again after heading out on that awesome exploratory ATV ride.

Pre-Orient yourself BEFORE leaving camp

The same way that thinking about potential exits before attempting a big dune on your ATV can prevent you from getting stuck or getting in a wreck, thinking about how you will get home BEFORE you leave is the simplest, most effective, yet most oft overlooked way to prevent getting lost.
If this is a night ride you’re planning, make sure you leave a fire burning, or perhaps a lantern lit and placed high enough (like the top of your truck or from a tree) or some other source of light that will serve as a beacon upon your return.

In the pitch black of a desert evening you can be within a few hundred feet of a dark campsite and never see it. The desert at night tends to all look the same and can be very disorienting. For this reason, ensure that you have some sort of visual beacon in place to guide you home once you get close.

If you're really creative you could get a large helium balloon on a line to your rig and put a glow-stick or other light source that you can keep in your ATV emergency kit inside (or attached to) the balloon. This allows you to have a light beacon that can be visible from miles away. Note that this beacon also works during the day.

Use Markers

“Well I’m thinking about not getting lost before I’ve left camp, I’ve placed myself a light beacon that will be visible as I approach (if it’s a night ride), now how exactly do I orient myself?” The easiest way is to look around and key on markers that will help you orient where you are in relation to your campsite.
These must be markers you KNOW aren’t going anywhere (using the campsite a half mile to your north is never a good first option (though it CAN work in a pinch), as you don’t have any way of knowing if that campsite will still be there when you return).

In addition to being stationary, they also need to be big or prominent enough to see them from a significant distance. Using the weird looking bush near your campsite won’t do for obvious reasons. Not saying it has to be something you can see from space, but you should be able to find it from at least a few miles distant.

Some examples that may be commonly found in the desert riding areas in the southwestern United States are perhaps a prominent series of dunes, a particular mountain range, a highway, or a large radio tower/antenna.

Radio Tower/antennas are especially useful as they usually blink red or white lights and are visible even at night for miles around in all directions. Ocotillo Wells SVRA is a good example of this where there are towers with lights that can be seen from 10 or more miles away. There are countless other examples of what may constitute a marker, but hopefully this gives you the idea. Something stationary, and big enough to see; honestly it can be almost anything.

Once you’ve found yourself a suitable marker, gauge the direction and distance your camp lies from it (more follows on how to determine direction without a compass or GPS device). It isn’t always necessary that you know your camp is let’s say “150 meters northwest of the beacon tower.” It is enough to merely be able to confidently say “I know that because the dunes I will explore are beyond/behind that radio tower, when I return I should look for the tower, and once I get there I need to angle about 45% to my right for about 200 yards to find the approximate location of my camp. Side note:

To guess/estimate distances, think in terms of large measurements that you’re comfortable or familiar with. You notice my last example had yards as the measuring distance. This is because I grew up following and playing football and feel confident in my ability to estimate what 100 yard distance looks like. That’s a common one, but it can be any large measurable distance that you’re comfortable using as a general gauge.

Determining Direction without a Compass or GPS Device

You often hear people talk about navigating by the sun or the stars but what exactly does that mean? Well here are some very basic and simple means to acquire direction. Most people know that the sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. Fewer people are aware that the trajectory of the sun always passes through the southern sky if you’re in the northern hemisphere (north of the equator) and visa-versa in the southern equator.
The effect is even more pronounced in the winter time (peak desert season in the south west US) when the sunlight’s trajectory is more acute in relation to the earth. The result being that in daytime, assuming it’s not totally overcast (very rare in the so. Cal deserts) you can use the sun and your watch (or your best estimate at what time it is) to determine direction (e.g. at noon heading towards the sun is riding due south. At 3 pm riding directly towards the sun will be more or less southwest, and so on). At night everything gets trickier, as any veteran ATV rider will tell you. On a clear night (also very common in the desert and canyon landscapes in the southwest), you can use the stars to determine direction thereby helping you navigate. Now I’m not a sailor or an ex-sailor, I probably couldn’t read a star chart, and I have NO idea where the Cassiopeia Constellation is.

As with the navigational markers discussed previously, all you need is one fixed point that doesn’t move. The easiest and most readily identifiable star in the sky in this part of the world is the North Star. Once you find the North Star, you can draw a straight line from it to the ground and you have your “true north,” from which all other directional calculations can be derived.

To locate the North Star in a clear sky, the easiest point of reference is the big dipper. This is the commonly identifiable series of stars that are both bright and large in the northern sky, and they make the shape of what looks to be a giant soup ladle.

Usually the Big dipper is fairly low on the horizon. Most clear nights this is one of the easiest patterns in the sky to find and identify. Once you’ve located the Big Dipper, focus on the actual bowl of the dipper. The two stars that make up the far edge of the bowl (opposite the “handle”) are where you should direct your focus. From there, draw an imaginary line with your finger running up the far edge of the bowl in the direction this imaginary dipper opens.

That should run you smack into the last star on the handle of the little dipper, which looks similar to the big dipper, only upside down and...well…smaller (duh). This last star on the handle (4 stars from the “bowl” of the little dipper) is actually the North Star. Congratulations, you’ve found your true north, allowing you to discern all other directions.

If you can find the little dipper in the sky on your own, you don’t need to reference the big dipper obviously, but generally the little dipper (in addition to being smaller) is higher in the sky and not as bright, making it harder to discern from other stars and shapes.

Combine Your Directional Knowledge with your Marker

Now that you’re equipped with the ability to discern direction and find yourself a good point of geographical reference, combine the skill sets in your pre-planning. Now you can confidently say, “I know that because the dunes I want to explore are to the north east of camp, and that the radio antenna nearby is due east of me by maybe three football fields, when I’m ready to return I’ll want to head generally in a south-westerly direction until I can see the tower.
Once I see that tower I’ll make for it and upon reaching it turn west for about 300 yards and look for my campsite.” If you’re in a place without a lot of other campers/riders, it’s a good idea to bring a cell phone, flashlight (for night rides), and a camelback or portable water supply.

Remember, when in doubt, get to high ground. You can see more, radio and cell coverage will be stronger, and especially in the desert it will most likely give you a large radius of visibility to look for familiar land marks, signs of civilization, or even just a chance to orient yourself to the various terrain features around you.

Remember in the event you get lost to keep from panicking and to think through the problem calmly. You will have limited fuel, water, and time, so freaking out and running yourself in circles for 3 hours before attacking the problem logically will almost certainly come back to bite you.

Equipped with a level head, a problem solving mentality, and these basic tips and tricks of land navigation, you can and should be able to drive your ATV virtually anywhere, with limited equipment (and without those clunky GPS units prone to failure in extreme conditions) and be very confident in your ability to find your way home.