How to Navigate in the Dark, According to a Military Survival Instructor

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I’ve been guilty of staying out longer than was prudent and finding myself racing to get back to a parking lot or base camp as the sun sets. On the other hand, sometimes it’s a deliberate choice to hike at night: For example, snow that was deep and wet during the day has frozen enough to walk on top of, and the moon and starlight illuminates the snowy landscape almost like day. In hot desert environments, it’s miserable to hike in the heat of the day, so I’ll plan on twilight or night hikes if I need to travel. Hunters planning to get in position early can often be seen heading to the hills well before dawn and needing to navigate in darkness. There are many reasons for hiking in low-light conditions. Here are some techniques that can make it easier.

Using Your Eyes

We have two basic types of light receptors in our eyes. Cones perceive color and are located closer to the pupil. Rods only detect black and white and are located farther away from the pupil, meaning they work more off of our peripheral and wide-angle vision. Colors on the red end of the light spectrum are the first to vanish in low light conditions, meaning red clothing will appear gray or black in low light. This is why using a red light at night is great for preventing loss of night vision. Blues and greens are the last colors to fade to black as night descends.

It can take up to 30 minutes for our pupils to fully dilate, allowing our eyes to adapt to low-light conditions. Any exposure to full-spectrum (white) light starts that process all over again.

This knowledge can inform how we use our eyes in low light conditions. You may have heard the rumor that pirates wore patches over one eye, not because they’d lost the eye, but to keep one eye always low-light ready. When they went from the bright sunlight on deck to belowdecks, they could switch the patch and have at least one eye ready to go. (Not a bad idea, but rough to live without binocular vision!)

The more you try to look directly at something at night, the less well you can see it. Because the cones are closer to the pupil, looking right at something means you’re trying to use color receptors in a colorless environment. Next time you find yourself outside at night, try looking at someone’s face, or glance up and find a faint star and then look straight at it. It will disappear.

Although it can feel awkward at first, look around what you want to see and keep your eyes moving to help the rods gather the information your brain needs to paint an accurate image. I remember doing a night hike that was all on dirt tracks and dry washes in the desert. I realized at one point that I’d been walking along for at least an hour without ever looking down at the path. I’d been gazing at the stars, drifting through thoughts, and enjoying the night sounds while my rods and brain had been finding the path the whole time.

Binocular vision doesn’t work well in the dark, so our depth perception is bupkis at night. Thankfully, there are a couple of things we can do to help. One is to walk slowly, taking smaller steps and shuffling our feet a bit. Another is to use a walking stick to help gauge what the ground is doing in front of us and feel obstacles in our path. If walking sticks are not easy to come by, I sometimes cut a “wand,” a 2- to 3-foot sturdy, reasonably straight, and flexible stick, usually no larger than thumb-size diameter at the thick end. I use this like a cat’s whisker, moving it in a figure 8 shape in front of me as I walk. I tap the ground, then feel for branches or obstacles up to just above head level, then back to the ground.

Using Artificial Light

Turn off your headlamp, or at least don’t keep it on your head. You can see much further into your surroundings without it. Once a light turns on, your pupils will contract, allowing you to only see the lit area. Everything outside of that area will disappear. If I have to move fast and the ground is very uneven or there are a lot of obstacles in my path, I hold the headlamp down by my thigh. With my headlamp on my head, the light is coming from almost the same place I perceive it (near my eyes), so there are no perceivable shadows. By holding the light low, my eyes have a much easier time seeing dips and rises in the terrain because now there are shadows I can observe. I use the lowest setting possible or a red light so I can still see distant objects and skyline without damaging my night vision as much.

This is also a useful concept when returning to a fire or brightly lit area. I block the fire or bright light with my hand or the brim of a hat and suddenly the ground becomes visible again. No more stumbling around and tripping over people and gear as you try to circumvent the fire circle!

Using Your Environment

Skylining is a technique I find particularly useful when planning ahead for night navigation. Just like in the daytime, at night the ground, mountains, and trees stand out black against a lighter sky. This silhouette can be noted during the day and recalled after dark. Say I cross a meadow during the day. On the other side, before moving back into the woods, I can look back the way I came, not at the ground, but up at the line where earth meets sky. I note where in that outline my return trip lies. When entering the meadow later that night, it’s easy to recognize where I came out of the woods by looking at the skyline I noted during the day.

Finding Direction

The north star and the southern cross can help us find the north and south poles respectively because the axis of our planet points to areas that seem stationary from our perspective. We can’t see the north star once we get a few degrees of latitude south of the equator, and we can’t see the southern cross once we get a few degrees to the north of it, and that fluctuates based on the time of year. Right near the equator, we can see both the northern and southern rotational axes in the sky at the same time.

If you can’t see most of the sky though due to clouds or vegetation, or don’t know how to find the north and south poles, you can use another technique that just takes a little longer. Get settled in a spot where you can see one fairly bright star and position yourself so that it is next to a stationary skylined object (tree trunk, mountain, boulder, or even the tip of a stick you’ve anchored firmly). Make sure you sit or lay in a position that puts the star and solid object as close together as you can get them and then anchor your head as still as possible. Observe the star for the next 10 or 15 minutes. If the star moves up, you’re looking generally east (just like the sun “rises” in the east, most stars appear to “rotate” east to west around the equator). If it goes down, you’re looking west (sun “sets” in the west). If it moves right or left, turn ninety degrees to it and pick another star. That one will move up or down.