Planning for the Hiking and Mountain Biking Expedition:

A week before initially starting the expedition, we split into five different groups with five to seven people in each. Each group were given a task to decide on what we were going to eat on the two days. This required quick decisions as we only had a short period of time to complete this task. Our lecturer gave each group a route to hike, and showed us a start and finish point on a geological map. We were informed that we had to plan two different hikes, starting from a given start point, and finishing at the finish point that we were given.

 

With regards to planning the two hiking expeditions, we had two choices of grid references to choose from, four and six figure references. Each one has different positives and negatives. 

 

4 Figure grid references: 

Positives:

• Simplist form of navigation to use and learn. This is because it requires learners to concentrate figuring out what their location is, and the correct square they are located in

• Quick and efficient form of navigating. 

• Easy to remember

• Accurate to 1000 square metres

Negatives:

• Difficult to locate participants to emergency services once given the references 

• Not very accurate

• Communication error may occur

 

6 Figure grid references:

Positives:

• Very accurate if worked out correctly

• Beneficial to emergency services with reguards to rescuing 

Negatives:

• Easy to get the coordinates the wrong way around

• Not easy to learn quickly

 

Once we had gathered all of our information, we decided to choose the 6 figure grid reference because this type of referencing if so much more accurate, compared to the 4 figure reference. I believe the 6 figure grid reference would benefit us if one of our teammates were seriously injured as we could be able to provide our precise location.