Did you try just walking away from your backpack, and making sure you had nothing ferrous on your person? It would have to be one heck of a speaker magnet to permanently alter your compass needle.
Its a difficult one is that Fettler, Ive been ''lost'' once or twice in the past in very misty conditions and the hardest thing to do is no matter what your head or heart tells you,,, TRUST the compass. Its never wrong unless its been sabotaged like yours. My dog had an uncanny sense of direction but I lost her on the 2 nd of Jan so Im solo-ing now. Best of luck, Jack
Yeah it was a headscratcher for sure, at least for a few minutes. I was on well marked trails, good map and I was familiar with the area having hiked there many times before. With good landmarks (remember this was long before the advent of civilian GPS and all that) it was nice being able to determine exact location using back bearings and such. I didn’t “need” the map and compass, but if I had it would have cause big problems. And at the same time, “always trust your compass” is good advice. So it wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, eventually I noticed the discrepancy between the map and terrain lined up, and realized my trusty compass was in error.
