When I hiked backcountry, an altimeter with a topo map was as useful as a compass(the altimeter had a compass in it). With both that you could pretty well pin point yourself to GPS accuracy.
I just use my phone now, mostly.
Hey I know where you are.
Bill "try that Chinese restaurant just across the street from the airport - ask for lobster" Burk
This August I was on top of a mountain in Scandinavia, stuck in deep snow, heavy storm, freezing temperatures and literally almost zero sight: You could not see your own traces in the snow, although they were two feet deep or deeper.
Without my compass, which was the most precise instrument we had to find the route down, I could probably not type this text now. Remember, too close to the cliffs edge, and you just go down with all the snow.
GPS is great for taking people right over cliffs, onto abandoned roads, or into bullet-ridden
inner city neighborhoods. I have a good compass in my backpack, but never use it. A good
reason to would be a whiteout.
Maybe it's because of my training is in marine navigation, but I don't understand all the GPS bashing in this thread. It reminds me of 15 years ago when old salts kept going on about the need to learn how to use a sextant because the satellites could all go down (both systems at once) or the GPS unit could fail. The former argument was desperate. As for the latter, the obvious solution is to have a backup.
The key objective in an emergency, whether on land or water, is to be able to establish one's position and communicate that position to search and rescue authorities. GPS is unquestionably the fastest and most accurate way to accomplish the former. As for communicating one's position, on land, if out of cell phone range, GPS SPOT could save one's life, as it did for two men some months ago in Newfoundland, where I have my summer home. I'm kind of surprised, in a three page thread on navigation, that there does not seem to be a single reference to portable, cheap GPS technology that can communicate one's position in an emergency.
I don't spend a lot of time hiking in the backwoods, but for navigation on the ocean, in and out of sight of land, I use GPS with electronic charts, hard copy charts and a compass. Eschewing any of these tools, whether on land or water, on the basis of some analogue vs digital philosophy strikes me as hairbrained. Anyone who has had to navigate a boat in fog, or in the middle of the night across the English Channel via the Channel Islands, knows how valuable GPS and digital charts are, not to mention that they are indispensable the minute one is out of sight of land.
There are even people in this thread dumping on the use of GPS for driving. Right now, I am in Italy, a country chock full of local back roads. The GPS map functionality on my iPad has saved me hours of driving time and no end of frustration.
Last edited by r.e.; 4-Dec-2012 at 14:36. Reason: Spelling corrections
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Well it's pretty darn obvious you haven't been around the mtns or woods much. Point A to
B via GPS is no substitute for knowing the lay of the land. And there are plenty of cases
here in the West where someone died by using a navigation aid on an automobile which
took them to some deadend destination (literally). My nephew had GPS gear fail completely
in the Karakorum and elsewhere. I often do contests with a friend taking crosscountry shortcuts, him with GPS and me just hillbilly skills. I always win. But the first few times he
tried getting off trail with one of those things, I had to accompany him or he wouldn't still
be around to tell about it. And they're all based on maps with certain inherent flaws. Just
another tool, but no substitute for experience - not even close. The accident rate to hikers in the high Sierra has actually gone up since those things got popular.
who needs a compass just use the sun or look at what side of the tree the moss is growing
Zak Baker
zakbaker.photo
"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
Ansel Adams
Yeah ... I was recently coaching a fellow who did get lost once and was contemplating a
GPS, but still didn't know about moss, simple observations about where the sun rises and
sets (everybody knows it, but doesn't stop to consider it in a panic situation), or how to
read a basic map yet. Took him on another trip, along with another highly experienced
outdoorsman who just called me a few minutes ago, and taught him all kinds of tricks for
reading the woods, including navigation in the dark, basic rock scrambling. Think he'll be
ready for his first solo hike next yr. GPS certainly has its place, but John Muir, the
sheepherders, and native Americans for millenia certainly got along without one.
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