Day 5: Navigation Day.

This is the day where you have to swap the previous 4 days of living in the vertical for a day in the horizontal. To aid this switch over, on my assessment 5 out of the 6 of us got up at 05:00 and went and did two hours of morning navigation. This was really good as it just helped get the mind free of ropes and back into maps and contours.

Our day was logistically quite simple; 1 assessor and 3 assesses. One of you is given a location to get to and this is kept secret from the other two. You have a few minutes to work out a plan to find the location, explain to the assessor your plan and then go find the point. The points are 'hard ml standard'. Once you get to your point you tell the assessor and the other two have to relocate and tell assessor where they think they are. This carries on for about six legs but could be more. You have to be 100% accurate, don't allow for second chances. You might also get asked to explain how you would teach one of the legs.

On my assessment the weather was really good. I didn't get my compass out all day just relied on the contours of the maps. I think the assessor just wants you to find the point, not show all the different methods you could use. It's not an easy day if you haven't practiced your nav. It's day five and you are quite mentally tired so don't get complacent and think this is just a Summer ML assessment day. It's a bit more intense than that.

At some point the assessor will call it a day and you will head back to PYB. You wait in the bar and you'll be called in to discuss your full week with the course director. You'll be told if you pass, defer or fail.