ClubTread Community - View Single Post - GPS usefulness on the mountain?

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post #13 of (permalink) Old 03-19-2015, 12:34 AM
Rachelo
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Andorra.
Interest: hiking, backpacking, scrambling, climbing
Posts: 4,437
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If your issue is large-scale, it will help, assuming you use it as an assist to other navigation methods and not as a "do everything for me now". It will give you your position on the map, so you can confirm that you are on the correct ridge or in the right cirque, or whatnot.
It can mark a position so you remind yourself about when to turn right off the ridge when coming down to get into the correct descent gully.

As others have said, if it's replacing your brain, it's a problem, but if you are using it to check up on yourself and confirm you are where you think you are and want to be, and get an early warning if you turn out to be not where you wanted to be or thought you were, it's a good additional asset.

However, if your struggles, particularly with scrambling, are small-scale - you're not good at routefinding and picking a good line to get up a rockband, and you tend to stray into more technical terrain, and things like that, then no, the GPS will not be able to help you out. That just requires practice and work.


So for your use, the second-guessing, it could be good, if you just want to confirm that you are about where you think you are. On an open mountain ridge, you can generally rely on accuracy of about 5m either way, which is enough to be not quite on the good line up the rockband, but small enough to be pretty confident this is indeed the rockband in question.
A GPS will not come with pre-loaded routes, but if someone else has been where you want to go, you can get a file to load on your GPS to show a track, which can be helpful.
If you want to give it a shot, the UofC outdoor centre will be renting GPS units this summer - you could try renting one and taking it out for a day and seeing if you find it to be helpful or not. That would be a good way to give it a shot for your use before sinking your money into it,

Last edited by Rachelo; 03-19-2015 at 12:39 AM.
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