Over the last ten years, the development of GPS has revolutionized surveying in desert and other open areas. However, despite the continuing advances in GPS technology, it does not operate reliably in jungle, forest, urban areas, and other locations with restricted visibility of the sky. Although there have also been major advances in the electronic theodolite and distance measuring technology still used in these areas, the method is slow and expensive. Conventional traverses using total stations require a horizontal line of sight to be cut between adjacent instrument stations. Cutting the necessary vegetation is labor intensive, time consuming, expensive and leaves a larger than necessary footprint on the environment. In order to improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of survey operations in difficult areas, Geco-Prakla have developed Navpac; a man-portable, inertial navigation system, employing strap-down, ring laser gyro technology. This paper describes the system, discusses its performance and explains how its use can eliminate many of the current limitations of surveying in these areas.