Ranger 2.0 Compass

A baseplate compass is the one navigation tool with no battery, no firmware, and no failure mode you cannot see. The Ranger 2.0 handles the fundamentals well: a needle that settles quickly, clear map scales on the baseplate, luminous markings for pre-dawn starts, and a DryFlex grip that does not squirt out of cold hands. At 31 grams there is no real reason to leave it home. Two things to weigh before buying. The declination scale sits inside the capsule and is not tool-adjustable, so you read against it every time rather than setting it once, which is more error-prone in the field than a screw-adjusted compass and matters if you work in bearings regularly. There is also no sighting mirror, so precise long bearings and emergency signalling are off the table. At its list price it costs noticeably more than compasses that orient a map just as well, which is all many hikers ever do.