Pace Counter Bug

This bug is all about distance. So as far as a distance as possible. Just keep on moving it around and let's have the miles or kilometers add up.

Congratulations, you have just found a hand-crafted (more or less) set of tally beads. Orienteers and the military have long used tally beads to estimate travel distances quickly and reliably.

Pace counting, or tally stepping as it is sometimes called, is an ancient technique. Legionnaires in the Roman Army used it on the battlefield just as today's elite warriors do. Ranger pacing beads were widely used in Vietnam and continue to be popular with Army Rangers, Army Special Forces units such as the Green Berets and Delta Force, Navy Seals, and the British Army's SAS (Special Air Service).

Our English statute mile is based on the Roman soldier's mile. The Latin phrases "mille passus," or "milia passuum," which meant a "thousand paces," were eventually shortened to a "mile" in English. The average soldier laid down 5,000 "foot-lengths" or "feet" in a mile. Much like the pace we use today, a Roman pace consisted of two steps equalling about 5 "foot-lengths."

While pace counting is admittedly an arcane distance determination technique that is seldom used by trail-bound hikers, it is an essential technique used by advanced-level land navigators who travel cross-country through challenging wilderness. In certain situations, a map and compass alone just aren't enough.

In his book, entitled Orienteering, John Disley aptly writes that "more mistakes are made in orienteering by wrongly estimating distance than from any other reason." While most of us can quickly learn to travel in the right direction, few of us have any idea of how far we have traveled.

To use your tally beads, first test your average pace by walking a route that’s 100 meters point to point. Count off every time your left foot hits the ground. Walk the distance three or four times to get an average. Most people have a pace count between 56 and 65 steps per hundred meters.

While walking, pull down one of the nine lower beads every time you reach your 100 meter count. When you get to the tenth, that’s a kilometer, so pull down one of the upper beads and start over with the nine lower beads.

If you’re like most Americans, and don’t know what a meter or kilometer is, or think the metric system is the work of the devil, then you can use the lower beads to represent tenths of a mile and the upper beads to represent miles. An average pace count for a tenth of a mile is between 90 and 110 paces.