[pct-l] Lightest slimest altimeter watch? (NOT the Helix)

[m_factor at hotmail.com (Mara Factor)]

Yet one more thing to consider when wearing altimeter watches (from my web 
site):

"The trick with barometer based altimeters is to pay attention to your known 
elevation points. Even if you do not recalibrate at every known point 
(boring - yawn), just paying attention to the relative direction the real 
elevation is going in relation to the elevation displayed on your watch is 
enough to tell you a bit about what's happening with the weather. Also, you 
know that if you calibrated the altimeter in the morning and it's reading 
too high an elevation a couple of hours later, it's likely to continue to 
read high as the day goes on. This, of course, means that low pressure is 
moving in - something that you really can't tell just by looking at the 
barometric pressure unless you aren't moving anywhere over time.

Then again, if you wake up lower than when you went to sleep, high pressure 
is moving in and perhaps some good weather with it."

Of course, this is true for all barometer based altimeters.  Sometimes, 
people's perceptions of the accuracy of their altimeters can also depend on 
the variability of the weather around them.

Living on the east coast, I found the weather much more variable here than 
when hiking in the southwest.  The altimeter function was as useful a 
weather indicator as an elevation indicator.

My Casio Altimeter/Barometer watch finally gave it up in Australia a couple 
of years ago.  It had the smallest (or one of the smallest) profiles I had 
ever seen in an altimeter watch (good for my tiny wrists), but being an 
"early" watch, the functions were somewhat more limited, too.

I miss my watch.

Mara

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visit my Travels and Trails web site at:

http://friends.backcountry.net/m_factor
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>From: "Monty Tam" <metam01@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: metam01@earthlink.net
>To: "pct-l" <pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net>
>Subject: Re: [pct-l] Lightest slimest altimeter watch?  (NOT the Helix)
>Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 20:56:59 -0800
>
>
>This is perfect.  Advise I heard earlier today is recalibrate often
>especially with barometric changes.  The Data Book is full of altitudes of
>landmarks etc..
>This entry has even more info along the same lines.
>Thank You Redwood
>
>Warner Springs Monty
>
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Randy Forsland <randy_forsland@hotmail.com>
> > To: pct-l <pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net>
> > Date: 12/26/2004 5:08:33 PM
> > Subject: Re: [pct-l] Lightest slimest altimeter watch?  (NOT the Helix)
> >
> > One thing to think about is that most wristwatch/altimeters rely on the
> > barometric pressure reading to calculate elevation. The only way to get
>true
> > altitude is with a GPS system which is immune to barometric 
>fluctuations.
> > That being said, you will find that all of the wristwatch altimeters 
>will
> > tend to drift throughout the day. Barometric readings are a measure of
>the
> > air density and cold air is denser than warm. So I found that if I 
>waited
> > until the sun has been up for at leat four hours before calibrating the
> > altimeter, it would stay calibrated and reflect more accurately the
> > elevations than if I tried calibrating it early in the am or later in 
>the
> > evening.
> >
> > I had on a couple of occassions, noticed that a column of very dense air
> > would sometimes be present on the southern sides of the passes and would
> > cause large fluctuations in the altitude reading as we climbed, 
>sometimes
> > dropping 1000 ft or so. I saw this same affect with 3 different 
>altimeter
> > watches including the Helix.
> >
> > The altimeter watch is still a great navigational tool. Yogi's PCT
>Handbook
> > has a writeup that I submitted in the "Favorite piece of Gear" section.
>It
> > saved my butt on a couple of occassions. You don't need to be spot
>on...plus
> > or minus a couple hundred feet is fine when trying to locate your
>position
> > on the topo maps...
> >
> > The 3 altimeters that were present in the group that I huked with were
>the
> > Helix, Casio and the Highgear (which I thought was the best looking)..I
>had
> > no problem waking up to the Helix alarm...but I usually sleep pretty
>light
> > on the trail.
> >
> > here is a link for the highgear watch
> >
> > http://www.freshtracksmaps.com/altimeters.htm
> >
> > Redwood