NORTH?!

Recently I read an outdoor book which gave some interesting hints how to find North in the wild if you loose direction. Of course it’s easy if you have a watch at hand. But if not and if you have at least a little sun, there is an easy way to achieve North direction. First of all you could estimate that by knowing the way of the sun. If you need to know this more accurately you could try that: take a stick or something straight and put it rectangular into the ground. Look at the shadow it gives and mark the end of it. Repeat that from time to time and you’ll get an ellipse which is approximately a straight line. By drawing a rectangular line to it you’ll get the North direction. On the northern hemisphere the starting point of the line is east, the end west, the end of the rectangular line that points away from the sun shows North. I tried it (find pictures below), it worked pretty well. If you are in a hurry and as a first shot it would be enough to take two reading points approx. 30 minutes apart. If you do that around noon it would work out pretty well.