How to Find out How Much Time Is Left Before Sunset

While this skill can be essential to your survival in the wilderness, it's also a neat trick to show your friends.

Steps   

  1. Find the location of the sun, without looking directly at it.
  2. Place your hand out
    Place your hand out
    Raise your arm and place your hand out as far as you can from your shoulder at 180 degrees (do this sideways).
  3. Count each flip up (the lines denote hand flip levels)
    Count each flip up (the lines denote hand flip levels)
    Start with your hand sitting at the level of the horizon. Count the number of times you have to flip your hand upwards before you see that your hand is sitting just beneath the sun. Each hand length represents about one hour until the sun sets.
  4. Swap to using fingers if there is less than one hour until sunset. You can use the same technique to count but use fingers in place of the hand to go from the horizon up to the sun. Each finger usually represents around 15 minutes.


Warnings   

  • Although this technique is often very accurate, it is an approximation and may be inaccurate due to a variety of factors. Take the possibility for unreliability into account when making your calculations.