How to Tell Time to Sunset with Your Hand

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

One of my favorite things about backpacking is how the concept of time always seems to change after a day or two in the wilderness – although I do wear a wrist watch in the woods, it’s mostly used for its built in altimeter function while hiking. While the exact time carries less significance when we’re backpacking, many of our activities do still revolve around the all-important and more general times of sunrise and sunset...

In our latest trail tip, we look at a wilderness trick that will allow you to predict the time to sunset without a watch - check out the tip below in Issue 40:

Trail Tip 40: Using Your Hand to Tell Time

Issue 40 Page 1

[balzaccom]

I think I learned that technique as a cub scout...

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

It's a standby for sure, and a convenient method I find myself using quite often!

[switchbackkid]

just saw this on an instragram post a few weeks ago and tried it for the first time while mountain biking the other day and was surprised how accurate it was! being that i was down in a canyon the sun sets at a different time than I am used to at home so this trick came in very handy! held up my hand and figured I had about 45 minutes of good light left and sure enough exactly 45 minutes later ( within a minute or two ) the sun dropped and it started getting dark. Very cool trick and awesome skill to have when spending time in areas where the sun set is different!

Thanks for sharing !

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

One of those tricks that I use as much as any other. I find that it can even be handier than a watch when it comes to telling “wilderness time”.