Finding the Trailhead with GPS

Navigating to a trailhead with GPS is not as simple as it sounds because most street GPS receivers don't have trailheads in their points-of-interest (POI) databases, unless the trailhead is located at a park or other general attraction. And street GPS mapping, while remarkably good for highways, county roads, and city streets is often poor for back roads, especially in the western U.S. And finally, when street mapping does show back roads, it often doesn't distinguish between maintained, gravel dirt roads that are passable to most cars and unmaintained roads that often need a high-clearance or four-wheel drive vehicle to travel. Trail GPS units don't do road navigation unless you buy optional street maps, and then you still have the limitations of street mapping.

The solution to this problem involves a bit of planning at home before trying to find a backcountry trailhead at the start of your wilderness adventure. Just look at it as an extension of the planning for the wilderness part of the trip, where you're traveling on foot, by paddle, or other self-propelled means. The secret is to use a variety of resources to solve the problems:

• Locating the coordinates of the trailhead
• Finding the best route to the trailhead
• Setting up your GPS receiver to navigate the route to the trailhead
• Determining if you need a four-wheel-drive vehicle

Unless you're planning to depart cross-country from an unusual starting point, these days you can find descriptions of trailheads and driving directions in guidebooks. Newer guidebooks often publish the GPS coordinates, so all you have to do is type them into your GPS receiver and save the trailhead as a named waypoint. If the coordinates aren't published, use the guidebook description and an online or computer topo map or Google Earth to locate the trailhead and get the coordinates.

If you have a guidebook description of the route, you can follow along on a topo map and mark GPS waypoints at critical intersections. With a trail GPS, you can create a route and download that to your receiver before the trip. It is very helpful to have detailed topo maps of the approach route in your GPS, and you probably already have such maps loaded for the wilderness part of the trip. The guidebook should also tell you if you need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to reach the trailhead.

You can use a street GPS receiver to create waypoints and a route to the trailhead, but most street units won't download waypoints and routes directly from a computer mapping application. You may be able to save the route as a GPX file and transfer that to the street GPS via USB cable. This is worth the effort because of the road routing capability of street GPS receivers.

 If you don't have a guidebook description of the trailhead, then you'll have to work a little harder. You'll need to locate the trailhead on a topo map and then work out the best roads to reach that trailhead. Use caution with U.\SGS topo maps- they are often out of date and don't show changes to roads (although they are the most accurate maps for natural features such as terrain.) Often, you can get a road map from the land management agency in charge of the area that is much more up-to-date on the road system. Privately-produced printed recreation maps and online or computer-based maps are often the most current road maps. And Google Earth is a valuable resource, especially in desert areas where you can often get a good look at roads. Even in forested areas, you can at least tell if a road is likely to be maintained- if the road shows in a cut through the forest, it is wider and therefor more likely to be paved or at least graveled.

Whatever you do, don't blindly charge off onto backcountry roads trusting your street GPS receiver. That's a good way to find yourself at a dead end, or worse, with a broken or stuck vehicle.

One GPS to Rule Them All

A natural question for GPS users is, "Why can't I use one receiver for both trail and street navigation?" The short answer- you can. The long answer- you shouldn't, mostly.

There are more and more trail receivers that can be used for road navigation by buying optional street mapping. And many street GPS units can be used with optional topographic mapping. (By trail, I mean all backcountry uses, including hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, paddling, etc. By street, I'm referring to navigation in cities and on highways and roads.)

The problem is that the the two uses are completely different. On the road, a touchscreen GPS works best, preferably one that accepts voice commands. You need loud spoken directions including street names. You also need a large, bright screen. On the other hand, battery life is not important, because the unit will be powered from the vehicle except for short periods.

On the trail, you need a unit that can be operated easily with gloves. Rubberized buttons work much better than touchscreens in the field. With a little practice, you can operate the buttons by feel and location without looking at them. Though touchscreens do work with gloves, accuracy suffers and even without gloves you have to constantly look at the screen to operate it.

You also need long battery life and batteries that can be replaced in the field. Trail GPS units have replaceable batteries that last 12 to 25 hours, as opposed to 30 minutes to 4 hours for street receivers. And nearly all street receivers have internal, rechargeable batteries that can't be swapped out for a fresh set.

Few trail units have speakers, so they don't give spoken directions. (A few units have headphone jacks and can be connected to the AUX input on your car audio system or to a mount with a speaker.) Trail units have much smaller screens than street units. Trail receivers usually have screens measuring about 2.7 inches diagonally, while street receivers have 3.5 to 7-inch screens.

Many street GPS units come with lifetime map updates and free, ad-supported, lifetime traffic. Traffic information alone is a good reason to buy a street GPS because no trail units give traffic information. Street maps are usually an extra-cost option on trail GPS receivers and you will have to buy updated maps to keep your unit current.

That said, the best two choices for combined trail and street use are currently the DeLorme PN-60 series and the Garmin Montana series.

If you primary use is trail, check out the DeLorme PN-60 series. The PN-60 has a small screen but is light and compact, weighing 7.6 ounces with NiMH batteries. The unit comes with DeLorme Topo North America, which covers the US and Canada with vector topographic and street mapping at 1:24000 scale. Both trails and roads are routable, which means the unit will not only give you directions to the trailhead but also turn-by-turn trail directions to your favorite fishing lake. There is no headphone jack so you will have to look at the small screen while driving, although it does beep to warn you of upcoming turns. With this unit it is safest if a passenger does the navigating.

The Garmin Montana series is one of the heaviest and bulkiest receivers on the market at 10.2 ounces but it has a 4 inch touchscreen that automatically orients to to horizontal and vertical positions. A headphone jack allows to you connect it to your car stereo or an optional vehicle mount with speaker. For street use, you'll have to buy street maps for the area of interest, and then pay to update them. Traffic service is not available.

Here's the clincher- for the price of the Montana 600 you can buy an advanced street receiver such as the Garmin nuvi 2595LMT with lifetime maps and traffic, as well as a mapping trail receiver such as the Garmin Etrex 20 which accepts Garmin topo maps as well as custom maps and weighs just 5 ounces. And if you want, you can load topo maps on the nuvi and street maps on the Etrex.

Why Hike in the Grand Canyon?

The average visitor to Grand Canyon National Park spends two hours. In contrast, Professor Harvey Butchart spent 1,500 days hiking about 12,000 miles in the Canyon during his 40-year Arizona hiking career. Why? This piece says it pretty well- http://www.montrealgazette.com/travel/lure+grand+Canyon/6281454/story.html

More on the Kindle Touch Battery Life

Now that I've had time to put some more miles on my Kindle Touch 3G as a backcountry reading device, I've noticed that the battery sometimes gets depleted pretty quickly, even when I'm not using it. There are a couple of possible reasons for that.

One is leaving the Kindle on and closing the cover. That's a real no-no if you then stuff it in a bag, as I learned with the Kindle Keyboard. Until the device goes into sleep mode, any pressure on the cover could press keys and cause it to stay on and possibly do page turns. I know that happened with the Kindle Keyboard because I'd turn it on and find it was on a different page than where I left it.

Accidental key presses can happen with the Touch also, because of the Home button on the front. Every it gets pressed, the Home screen is refreshed, even if you're already on the Home screen. Of course, the solution is to manually turn the Kindle off with the power button when you're done reading. It's become a habit and now I turn the Kindle's off even when I'm just going to set it down.

The other cause of battery drain appears to be the 3G connectivity. I've noticed that when wireless is on and I'm in an area with little or no 3G service (and no Wi-Fi), the battery often loses half it's charge in about eight hours without ever being turned on. The answer is to make sure wireless is off if you'll be out of 3G and Wi-Fi range for long periods of time and don't have an easy way to charge the Kindle.  On a long wilderness trip, you'll do this to extend the battery life to weeks, but you may not think to turn off wireless for the drive to the trailhead.

By the way, I haven't noticed such quick battery drain on the Kindle Fire. This is probably because there are no buttons on the bezel to be pressed by the cover, and also that the current Fire only has Wi-Fi, not 3G.

"Everyone is Entitled to Enter National Forests Without Paying a Cent."

So says one of the three judges who just shot down the illegal US Forest Service fee program on the Santa Catalina Mountains on the Coronado National Forest near Tucson, Arizona. The case is the result of four Tucson residents filing suit against the Coronado National Forest for requiring an entrance fee on the Catalina Highway, which imposes a fee for backcountry access that is clearly illegal under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA).

The three judges soundly rejected the Forest Service argument that since the amenities required by FLREA are present within the Mount Lemmon area, everyone entering the area has to pay for them, even though they don't plan to use the amenities and intend only to park, travel through the forest, visit scenic overlooks, camp in undeveloped areas, or hike into the backcountry. The judge further wrote, "The statute is abundantly clear that a standard amenity recreation fee cannot, under any circumstances, be charged for those activities."


Have a look at the Appeals Court decision- it contains such gems as "The Forest Service fails to distinguish—as the statute does—between someone who glides into a paved parking space and sits at a picnic table enjoying a feast of caviar and champagne, and someone who parks on the side of the highway, sits on a pile of gravel, and eats an old baloney sandwich while the cars whizz by."


http://www.westernslopenofee.org/pdfuploads/2012_02_09_Mt_Lemmon_Decision_Reversed_and_Remanded.pdf

For more information on the fight to restore free access to the public lands which YOU own, see http://www.westernslopenofee.org

Forest Service Recommends Eliminating Many Fees

The US Forest Service has sent memos to its regional offices recommending that fee areas be greatly reduced or eliminated in order to comply with the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA): http://www.kvsun.com/articles/2012/01/24/news/doc4f1f237de8cae097339429.txt. It's up to the individual National Forests whether they comply with the recommendations.

FLREA is the law that replaced the original Fee Demo program. For background information, see http://westernslopenofee.org/.

Kindle Battery Life with Wireless On

Just a quick update to say that I finished testing the Kindle Touch 3G with wireless on continuously. The Touch had a strong Wi-Fi connection the entire time, and I used the reading light once for about an hour. To my surprise, the Touch lasted at total of 10.57 hours before the low battery warning came on the screen, which is almost exactly what Amazon claims.

Keep in mind that the Touch will use more power in areas of weak W-Fi or 3G coverage, partly because the data rate slows down and the wireless transceiver stays on longer to transfer books and other items. If you don't have access to a charger at least every few days, it's best to leave wireless off, turning it on for a few minutes at a time to sync and check for new items.