LF hikers ― is “Map & Compass” a dying art?

[r.e.]

Drew,

I'm happy to hear that you know your local stomping grounds so well, and I agree that there are people who underestimate what is involved in dressing/equipping oneself properly and who underestimate what is involved in knowing where one is and how to get from there to a destination. To that, I'd add that many people fail to ensure that they are able to establish their position, and communicate their position, in an emergency.

I would not in fact go into the back country or onto the ocean (having sailed the Pacific, the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean) without a GPS unit and a way to send position information in the event of an emergency, and I would regard anyone who thought differently as a nut case.

I'm a big fan of David Burch's Emergency Navigation, I'm certified as a Yachtmaster and have a General Radio Operator's Certificate (which means that I'm certified to run communications/Inmarsat on major commercial vessels), and I know well how to use a sextant and a compass, but rejecting GPS and position notification systems is just cracked.

[r.e.]

The difference with hiking gear is that a GPS can be a significant part of the total outfitting cost.

In my view, the cost of a GPS unit, at least in North America, is at this point so low that it is hard to explain the failure to get one on the basis of cost. They are roughly the cost of a SOLAS life jacket, and about half the cost of an inflatable jacket. They are also cheaper than a pair of Nike Air running shoes. There's a point where this becomes a question of what you think your life is worth.

With current GPS beacon technology, Aron Ralston would probably have been rescued before it was necessary for him to amputate his arm.

[r.e.]

No one should travel to High Wycombe with anyone (or on their own).


Steve.

People who aren't familiar with Redmond O'Hanlon, or James Fenton, might find it amusing to look them up, and maybe check out O'Hanlon's books.

[Drew Wiley]

Out on the ocean without visible reference points, or in a whiteout in the woods, is a very
different scenario than much of the West, where visual navigation has worked best for millennia. For me, GPS is just one more redundant gadget. When I'm out on a trip with others, it's getting almost inevitable that someone else will be carrying one anyway. On
the last long severe-weather hike we never even reference it, and only consulted a map to
identify names of distant peaks, just for curiosity. I'll invest one of these days in a rescue
beacon for old age use, no doubt. But if you want a case of ridicule I'll mention the guy
who kept bashing himself falling over rocks and stones while trying to hike looking at his
GPS. And people even populated the new world during the Ice Age crossing the waters without them. You sure would have taken a hazing from the cowboys. Emergency supplies
for them was a spare can of beans buried somewhere in the woods.

[Drew Wiley]

Wearing out my welcome, I realize, but I won't take anyone hiking with me who is wearing
a pair of Nike running shoes, or any of those glamorized tennis shoes which pass for boots
nowadays. In this day and age, I'm certain that a decent pair of mtn boots costs a lot
more than a basic GPS. First thing on the checklist - real boots, oiled and broken-in.

[r.e.]

Out on the ocean without visible reference points, or in a whiteout in the woods, is a very
different scenario than much of the West, where visual navigation has worked best for millennia. For me, GPS is just one more redundant gadget. When I'm out on a trip with others, it's getting almost inevitable that someone else will be carrying one anyway. On the last long severe-weather hike we never even reference it, and only consulted a map to identify names of distant peaks, just for curiosity. I'll invest one of these days in a rescue beacon for old age use, no doubt. But if you want a case of ridicule I'll mention the guy who kept bashing himself falling over rocks and stones while trying to hike looking at his GPS. And people even populated the new world during the Ice Age crossing the waters without them. You sure would have taken a hazing from the cowboys. Emergency supplies for them was a spare can of beans buried somewhere in the woods.

Let me get this straight. When you're an old geezer, you'll get a GPS beacon, but not before, because only old geezers get into a situation where they need to be rescued.

By the way, in coastal waters, visual navigation works the same way as it does in the "West", except, as you point out, when it doesn't (e.g. fog, whiteout, night).

And as you point out, you don't need a GPS because someone else has one anyway. What does that mean, that you are a cheapskate?

As for taking a hazing from "the cowboys" for using GPS, well that certainly sums up your macho view of navigation. God forbid somebody should use post 1800s navigation tools. Now I realise, thanks to you, that the sextant was developed for sissies.

[Struan Gray]

r.e., in the UK and Sweden GPS units are $100 and up. That's still a deal breaker for a lot of the people I've taught to hike and climb.

[Drew Wiley]

If you couldn't find your way about land without GPS, I sure wouldn't want you traveling with me. Join the cub scouts first. I'm already a geezer. Just read the other threads where
they're convinced of that. Senile, or in our Sierra teminology, half-human/half-marmot.
But marmots don't need GPS either.

[Greg Miller]

Out on the ocean without visible reference points, or in a whiteout in the woods, is a very
different scenario than much of the West, where visual navigation has worked best for millennia. For me, GPS is just one more redundant gadget. When I'm out on a trip with others, it's getting almost inevitable that someone else will be carrying one anyway. On
the last long severe-weather hike we never even reference it, and only consulted a map to
identify names of distant peaks, just for curiosity. I'll invest one of these days in a rescue
beacon for old age use, no doubt. But if you want a case of ridicule I'll mention the guy
who kept bashing himself falling over rocks and stones while trying to hike looking at his
GPS. And people even populated the new world during the Ice Age crossing the waters without them. You sure would have taken a hazing from the cowboys. Emergency supplies
for them was a spare can of beans buried somewhere in the woods.

You seem to like to build your case on the outliers, like people driving off cliffs and guy's bashing themselves on rocks when hiking and reading their GPS. Most people aren't that stupid, and those that are will die of some other unnatural cause if you take their tech away from them. Most people don't magically turn into idiots at the moment they purchase a GPS. Just because you don't need one doesn't make it stupid for everyone else to have one. Not everyone grew up playing with Geronimo as a kid and killing bears with their bare hands for dinner.

The real world is that most people don't die in the woods, do just fine with a map and compass, and might get some value out of a GPS if they have one. I personally have never found a need for a GPS to navigate by (I bought one years ago and never used it), whether on trail or not. But I do recognize my own mortality and carry a SPOT personal locator just in case I find myself unexpectedly in a unrecoverable position by myself.

[r.e.]

If you couldn't find your way about land without GPS, I sure wouldn't want you traveling with me.

Every post, you insist on this either/or dichotomy. You just flat out refuse to recognise that GPS and analogue tools can complement one another. And in your last post, you went on about cowboys navigating in the 1800s, and eating beans as emergency rations. If you are serious, I would apply to you what James Fenton said to O'Hanlon: I wouldn't go anywhere with you. And when it comes to sailing, I don't know anybody, without a major change in your attitude, who would take you on board as crew.

Meanwhile, your trashing of GPS as a tool for people driving cars is nothing short of hilarious. The genius of GPS in cars is that it frequently averts an act of homicide, involving spouses or close friends, between the driver and the navigator. And for those of us who are navigating unfamiliar places, sometimes in cities hundreds of years old with no obvious order to the streets, GPS kinda comes in handy... to put it mildly. As someone who has spent the last five weeks in Sicily, whose roads have been developed over the last thousand years or so, the absolute most entertaining part of your posts has been your slagging of drivers using GPS. You have no idea what you are talking about outside of whatever little geographic community you live in.