We are teaching the Trailmen in our Trail Life USA Troop some of the necessities of maintaining a pace count while learning land navigation or orienteering with a compass and a map. I wanted to produce some inexpensive Pacing Bead sets for them to use in this process, but most are made for doubled over paracord that has had the inner strands removed. This uses quite a bit of unnecessary cordage.

The external shape of these beads are hexagonal so that you can always find an edge on a bead while you're walking even if you can't look directly at the pacing beads. They could probably be decreased in size by 5-10% to increase resistance on the paracord, but threading them onto the paracord may become more of a task. The half-height beads are printed in a quantity of 9 for the initial pacing count, and the full-height beads are printed in a quantity of 4 to allow up to 500 meters or yards of pace count before the beads are reset.

I use a Bowline knot to start the set and allow for hanging or looping the set through itself around a belt loop etc. I place the 4 full-height pacing beads on and then tie a Double Overhand stopper knot. This is followed by the 9 half-height pacing beads and then finished off with an Ashley stopper knot. With that being said, any stopper knots that you prefer will do just fine.

I hope you enjoy your time outdoors and continue to build this valuable skill of land navigation! If you want to learn more about Trail Life USA or wish to find a troop that you can participate in, check out https://www.traillifeusa.com.