I'm with Bearpaw on this one. If I had to choose one way to navigate, I would always choose a map and compass. Fortunately, I don't have to choose. I will always have a map and compass with me; I will occasionally take a GPS along although I seldom feel the need for it. I may be a Luddite but I don't think so. I am just a lot more comfortable with a map than I am with a GPS.

I learned to use a map and compass a long time ago as a working forester and as a working soldier and am a pretty fair hand at finding my way around with a map. Do I (did I) get lost? Sure, but so far I have always been able to get unlost by myself.

When I was a faculty member in forestry at Colorado State University, I used to teach map and compass techniques at our forestry summer camp; in later years the course started including use of GPS. This was when the average GPS unit was about the size of a brick and they were still dithering the satellite signal as a security measure.

We used to have teams of students regularly get lost during field exercises. They were mostly able to find their way home once they thought things over. The worst a group got lost was a group that had a GPS unit; the person carrying it fell into a creek while holding it and the thing quit. While the students had a map and several compasses, none of them were able to find their way back to the camp headquarters. They finally crossed a road with some traffic and hitched a ride back to camp around midnight; we had just started the search process and were able to call it off. The map they had was wet but still usable. Frankly, I don't think they would have gotten lost if they had been primarily relying on the map rather than the GPS.