[pct-l] GPS for distance

[Brian Watt]

Shon,

I carried two GPS devices this year on my thru-hike: an iPhone 5, and a 
SPOT messenger. IMHO, there is no need to carry another separate GPS 
unit, such as those made by Garmin.

On the iPhone I installed several apps including: Halfmile app, all five 
GutHooks apps, PCTHYOH app, and Wordpress app. The free Halfmile app 
tells you where you are on the trail in both GPS coordinates and in 
miles. Given the miles it's then easy to figure out how much you've 
hiked by knowing what mile you started at. Similarly Guthooks does the 
same, but is a paid for app. However, in Oregon and Washington I found 
that Guthooks didn't exactly match Halfmile so I'd recommend Halfmile 
app for mileage calculations. I would recommend Guthooks for campsite 
and water locations. Note: I did not save those GPS coordinates since I 
was also carrying the SPOT (see next paragraph), and also I didn't know 
how to do that with those apps. Had I to do it over again, I might save 
them. BTW, PCTHYOH and Wordpress were used for other things.

Separately I carried a SPOT messenger which I used each day to send an 
e-mail to family and friends containing a short "I'm OK" message and my 
GPS coordinates. My family would then use those coordinates to plot my 
location on a map (see next paragraph). However, during my thru-hike 
which took 144 days w/ 7 zeroes it failed to send a GPS coordinates on 
16 occasions. Sometimes I might be in dense forest, in a rain storm, in 
a narrow canyon, or I just might forget. As time went on and I got 
nearer to the end I became more lazy and tended to send my message even 
though I was in a forest. It is those emails that I now have as a record 
of where I was on trail each day (or nearly each day).

BTW, my son, who is technical, wrote two special web programs for me. 
The first converts a GPS coordinate pair to the nearest half-mile on the 
trail. See: http://1fifoto.com/pct-search. The second creates a Google 
map which plots the track of the PCT (based upon Halfmile's information) 
and overlays it with markers of my daily position. This was used by my 
family to follow my progress and to plan to meet me at three different 
locations: Tuolumne Meadows CA, Sisters OR, and the norther terminus 
near Manning Park BC. See: http://1fifoto.com/pct.

If any of this interests you and you want to know more, I'd be more than 
willing to discuss it in further detail.

Sincerely,
Bri/Tartan

On 1/30/15 11:30 AM, shon mcganty wrote:
> I don't like gadgets and thought I'd never want a GPS, but I really want a good way to determine how many miles I hiked for my trail journals.
> I'm worried that I might drop several hundred dollars on a GPS unit and find that they don't correctly calculate you're distance.  I went down to REI but the employee I asked was not helpful (he admitted to not knowing much).
> So I wanted to ask anyone on this list who is knowledgeable about using GPS for distance calculation.  Does it work well?  I live/hike in a heavily forested environment.  Is it common for GPS to loose contact with satellites in forest cover?
> I was wondering if a hand held GPS would be more powerful and accurate over a wrist watch GPS.  The REI guy said a hand held unit would be better in the forest only if it was held correctly, with the antenna pointed up at the satellites.  In no way will I be hiking while holding onto a GPS, so it's got to work while stored either on a pack's side pouch or strapped to the top.
> Any information would be helpful.  Thank you.
>
>
>
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