Survival – Tip – DIY Ranger/Pace Counting Beads, My Current Configuration

I’ve set up a slightly unconventional configuration for my own ranger beads. Not claiming any originality here, others have done the same hardware mod and use it in very similar way, but I’ll describe here what I’ve done and why.

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First, some basic remarks about using ranger beads:

A pace is two strides, or two steps when walking.. so a pace is each time your right foot comes down, or each time your left foot comes down.

I’ve read more than once that the lowest level of beads is used to count 100 meters each, or 100 yards each or 110 yards each. IMHO this is inaccurate and confusing. The beads are not used to count distance directly, they are used to count paces, not meters or yards. What you’re counting, what you’re putting into this  system is paces. That’s all that you have. What you want to get back out of it for your effort is miles or kilometers.

As an aside, I’ve also seen instructions that have the user pulling individual beads up, not down. Please don’t do that, it misses the point, the top of the string of beads is anchored to something so that you can pull them down one at a time one-handed, without looking or stopping. You should be able to use the beads easily by feel alone, which is why purely cylindrical beads or disks of various kinds are not a great idea, those shapes make pulling a single bead down more difficult and make counting the beads by feel alone almost impossible.

A great deal of emphasis is often put on various ways to measure your stride or pace, usually repeatedly walking 100 yards or 100 meters measured out in a playing field or other level ground to get the measurement as accurate as possible. My advice: don’t bother. There’s nothing wrong with trying to get a good, fairly accurate compromise for your average stride, but I can say with good authority that measuring distances by counting paces is just not that accurate, and won’t be.

What is my basis for saying that?

Simply this, I have walked the exact same course three or four times a week for months on end, using a Fitbit exercise-tracking wristband to count the paces (which it does with an internal accelerometer) and calculate distance from that. So, the exact same course, week after week, month after month, very rarely with any variation (and I’m not figuring in those instances), no changes in vertical distance traveled (altitude), no changes in my load (other than clothing), no changes in terrain, all or almost all of it is paved, and using electronics to count paces and eliminate human error. According to the Fitbit software I’ve been averaging just over six miles.. but with routine variations in distance measured of up to a half of a mile, sometimes more. That’s a half-mile variation from one day’s walk to another, with the ONLY real variable being the length of my stride.

Now, a half-mile variation in six miles is about eight percent. That might not seem that impressive, but it’s huge in real terms. It means that doing your best to count paces, not even factoring variations in terrain, vertical distance, load and conditions, the length of your stride is likely to vary enough for your calculations to be a whole mile off in just twelve miles traveled… and a mile on the woods is a big error. Bottom line, we’re doing this to have some idea of the distance traveled, but it’s never going to be all that accurate and it’s certainly not, IMHO, worth obsessing about it. Your stride varies with load, temperature, whether you’re climbing or descending, speed (whether you’re walking briskly or just strolling) and just how you feel on that particular day. Get a decent measurement of your stride and use it, over time you may adjust it with experience, but don’t expect the calculations of distance to be very accurate.

About my configuration in particular:

Personally, I’ve never used ranger beads with kilometers much. Obviously this may be different for you depending on location and circumstances. For the use of ranger beads to make any sense at all there must be some source of information that makes knowing the distance covered valuable, maybe a map, maybe a drawing or written directions, maybe even verbal instructions- but that source of distance information will likely be in either kilometers or miles. My choice is to use either, whichever way the local information comes. For me, where I am, that’s almost always miles.

In my setup the top section of the beads and the next section down have four and nine beads each, which is by far the most typical setup for kilometers, and yet I use this setup for miles. Here’s what’s going on:

When you set up ranger beads for kilometers, it’s most usual to have four beads in the top section (each bead representing a kilometer, enabling a count of five kilometers (with a reset to original setting representing the fifth) and nine beads in the next section down, each representing one-tenth of a kilometer (100 meters, with a reset to original setting representing the tenth). So, at whatever number of paces (you hope) equals 100 meters you pull down one of the lower beads. When you pull down the last one you don’t do anything other than that. When you reach up to pull down another bead and there are none left, THEN you pull down one of the upper beads and pull all the lower beads up again. That’s why you only need nine beads to count off ten increments. You keep going that way, each time you reach for a lower bead and there are no more you pull down another of the upper beads, and when you reach to pull down an upper bead and there are no more you’ve gone five kilometers. It’s simpler to do than it is to narrate.

The most-often suggested setup for using ranger beads for miles, though, is quite a bit more complex and confusing. What they tell you to do is this: set up the beads with five beads in the upper section (to count to six, with reset) and seven beads in the lower section (to count to eight, with reset). So, right off, you have to have different strings of ranger beads for miles and kilometers, which seems like a nuisance and probably dangerous.

The lower section of seven beads each represents however many paces are in, get this- 110 yards, which happens to be one-sixteenth (1/16th) of a mile, and each bead in the upper section represents one half of a mile, so by following the usual order you can count up to six half-miles or three miles. Of course, trying to read the distance traveled at any other point is a bit of a chore involving adding fractions, so many halves of a mile (upper beads) plus so many sixteenths of a mile (lower beads).

By these common suggestions you end up with two sets of ranger beads, one for kilometers and one for miles, you are usually told to count the number of paces over measured lengths for each one, for kilometers you have to remember how many of your paces are in 100 meters and add in decimal, and for miles you have to remember how many paces are in 110 yards and add in fractions.

I just don’t bother with any of that. I respectfully suggest that you don’t either. Seriously.

When I got my Fitbit I needed a measure of my stride. I did this by the simple expedient of taking a tape measure with me on a walk, deliberately walking through a shallow rain puddle and across dry pavement, and measuring from the back of the heel of one footprint to the back of the heel of the next. I did this several times. I’m about six feet two, and the measurement seemed to usually be about 37.5 inches. I did a sanity check on that against the supposed average stride, it seemed reasonable. When I went to enter the length of the stride into the Fitbit software later it only accepted integers, so I entered 37 inches. Close enough, and I’d rather have the mileage err on the low side.

For my purposes, I have no intention of either doing continual calculations to convert miles to kilometers or vice-versa or to deal with sixteenths of a mile. Using tenths of a mile is plenty close enough for my purposes, avoids the fractional math and allows me to use the same ranger beads and the same system for either miles or kilometers, which are considerable benefits.  I set up my own ranger beads so that there is a top section of four beads (with the “reset” counting as a fifth iteration), and a lower section of nine beads (with the “reset” counting as ten).

In miles each top section bead equals one mile and each lower section bead a tenth of a mile. In kilometers each top section bead equals one kilometer and lower section bead is a tenth of a kilometer. Simple.

So, how many paces to a tenth of a mile?

This isn’t rocket science. Remember that we’re calling my stride 37 inches. How many feet in a mile? That turns out to be 5,280 (for historical reasons we don’t care about here). There are twelve inches in each foot, so 5,280 x 12 = 63,360 inches in a mile. 63,360 divided by my stride, 37 inches, which is 1712.432432432… That’s strides, of course, so to get paces we divide by 2 (yes, I could have consolidated these steps, but I’m going for clarity here) for 856.216216216… but of course we don’t really want a mile, we want a tenth of a mile, so it’s really 85.6216216216… call it 85, since, again, I’d rather calculate a little short than long and we certainly don’t need fractions of a pace. Or, with the inaccuracies a little differently distributed, call 63,360 divided by 37 1712, that divided by 10 divided by 2 is 85.6, round down to 85.

So, we’re calling it 85 of my paces to a tenth of a mile. That’s the only thing I have to remember about miles vs. metric, that the paces I count is 85 for miles.

It works almost exactly the same for kilometers, with just one difference.

Inches in a kilometer is 39370.1, that divided by 37 (the length of stride) it’s 10640.567567567… that divided by two (for paces, not strides), then by ten (for tenths of a kilometer) is 53.202837838, call it 53, and that’s all I need to remember to use the system for metric, that each of the second section of beads represents 53 paces. Miles 85, kilometers 53. That’s it.

If you’ve seen the picture below (if I remember to insert it) you’ll see that I’ve added a small third section of four beads (with “reset” counting as five). It’s optional, I don’t always include that third section.

Usually I don’t use this lowest section at all (if it exists), because in most walks, that is in casual use in relaxed circumstances,  counting 85 paces at a time is no problem and the results of losing count are just not that critical. However, things can happen in the outdoors. There may be times when you need to move very slowly and carefully, perhaps because of conditions (deep snow, bog) or perhaps to avoid undesirable encounters, or maybe there is reason to believe that you’re likely to get interrupted and lose count. In such cases counting 85 paces may take a very long time and be inconvenient. The number 85 isn’t evenly divisible by much, but it is of course divisible by 5 which gives us 17. So, if each of these lowest four beads equals 17 paces, then the five iterations that they enable me to count equals 85, or one of the beads in the section above. If I’m interrupted, well, the smaller the groups of paces that I’m counting off between recording them with the beads, the smaller the potential error. Even an unknown fraction of seventeen paces is not usually a big deal.

So, again, while the capability can be safely ignored most of the time, there are some instance when counting off just seventeen paces at a time rather than eighty-five might prevent pretty large errors, and pretty large problems in reckoning to determine location.

– Robert the Wombat

See also: Tip – Real DIY Ranger/Pace Counting Beads