compass vs GPS comparison test

Never mind, every one already has their mind made up.

I always know general bearing from the road to take me out, and
either backtrack the way I got in, or take the side roads in the direction (bearing) of the road that will get me out. I'm
honestly in a 4x4'ing situation likely to just backtrack - since even with a magic map and GPS, I don't necessarily know
if the type of bush trails where I am will actually be passable - my "shortest" route back might end up being stopped up by 10 feet of water behind a beaverdam over the road - floating muskeg, or just giant crudhole that will require winching and other such fun


The flip side of course being.. I don't go into such places with a gallon of gas left in the 4x4 - I make sure I have enough to get back the way I came in. Up here I'm usually going into such places with a couple of cans in the back.. or the buddy tank of diesel... or it's on propane and I'm running with a 350 litre propane tank in the bed!

Y'all can get a *long* way from a gas station 4x4'ing in northern alberta

Yes, a GPS and good roads would afford me the "luxury" of being able to run the car down to very little juice, and still be confident of a good way out.

Neat looking place. but looking reminds me of another thing I have *frequently* done all through my misspent youth..

You have cutblocks and forestry activity there.

My favorite "maps" in such areas are cutblock maps or air photos. - and google earth at least in your area has enough to let me distinguish forest type from the pics (it does a lot of the places I go to..)

I can (and still freqently do) navigate on such a map by the type, size, shape and orientation of the cutblocks, or of the forest cover. (how big, and what type of trees) You'd be surprised how well you can do looking at the likes of an air photo or the like - once you get a little experience doing it.

So there you pretty much have how *I* navigate in such situations with a good map/photo and compass.

Ok, lets add a couple steps. Your gas gauge is wacko and your gallon of gas disappears, truck dies, it gets cold. You've also killed the battery trying to start a cold, dead, truck that should still have a gallon of gas in it. Because you were so well prepared, you decide to stay the night in the outside chance someone drives by. Your barely usable cell signal allowed you to call 911, report your predicament, and "dispatch" triangulates on your signal to pinpoint your position. You tell them you're well prepared (except for gas) and adventurous, and will hike out in the morning. And now comes my point.....
1) your turn on the GPS, just long enough to identify the right road and write down the bearing to where it leads, then turn it off. You've kept it warm, so the batteries don't freeze and die (happened to me!!).
2) you use your trusty compass to keep you on that bearing, turning on the GPS only long enough to update your position.
3) oops....you forgot to put fresh batteries in the GPS....dang.
4) But you did remember to print off a map of the area just in case, and were able to triangulate as the view allowed. You're on a road. You only need to see one reference point.

Your compass and map are to back up the GPS. That little low-tech needle on your dashboard was to remind you to buy more gas before venturing out. Needles can be life savers!

I'll be buying a new mobile GPS today! But I still rely on the built in compass on my 4Runner and my $2 cheapo in the glove box, just in case....and I've used it, especially inside big buildings. Texas Road Atlas is under the seat. Survival bag in the back.

Jim, you're blessed to live in such a beautiful area!

Jim, Jim, Jim, you are so funny. All your map and compass challenges always start out with "you don't know where you are". Why do you get into those situations? Oh yeah, you don't have a map and compass. If you have a good map (I print mine off the internet for free) of your area, and you know where you start from, and then STOP every 5 minutes to see where you are, you ALWAYS know where you are. 90% of the time, a compass isn't necessary (well, in the mountains). I do this with my scouts all the time. We stop, I hand them a map and say "show me where we are". It takes them a bit, but they are learning. I have never not known where I was on a map when I do this. Especially in the mountains where it is really easy to match terrain features.

Jim, I think it is time for you to get a map and compass and stop getting lost.

Amen. You hardly ever need to use a compass in mountains or terrain with prominent features. (Three times in 25 years).

Get in featureless, flat terrain or on the water in fog and it is an entirely different ball game. The compass becomes crucial. I used the compass on my kayak more times in a short afternoon paddle when the fog rolled in than I ever did in the hills. (At least 20 serious references)

Reminds me of the time I was hiking in France and ran into a bunch of French Boy Scouts who were really puzzled about where they were. I managed to show them on my map, but I sure discovered the limitations of my French language skills in the process!

I agree that is important to know where you are at all times, before you take the wrong fork in the trail at an unmarked intersection.

I'd far rather rely on topo map and compass than on a gadget that relies on batteries and that I haven't the foggiest idea how to use!

I try to always have a map, compass, and GPS with me when I'm out wandering around. But to use any of the three I need reading glasses. That is the real weak link

Now I bring a spare in a case. More weight...

Okay, I love my GPS, but I can't make the weight of the batteries and unit worth the use. You ever try to track your path for 7-10 days? My unit will show me real time where I'm at, on the topo map etc. But at a cost... like a color screen that eats batteries, and all so I can look at this track when I get home on my computer! (using a Triton 400 with NatGeo Topo) I also find the smaller screen very limiting with regards to seeing the overview of the surrounding area. I can scroll, but on a 2" screen, seems kinda pointless!
I've climbed all over, and its always been my altimeter on my watch, and the maps that were ultimatley the final word. The altimeter works even when you cant see the peak or feature. It can be a life saver knowing what contour line on the map you are at!
As an aside, who has done a long hike with their GPS, and what was the total weight involved for the trip? I did get a GPS download from Bob and his 10+ day trip in the winds... wondered what was his "total weight cost"?

xxx

If it comes right down to it, I would go with a map, and neither compass nor GPS - in mountainous terrain. I can think of just one occasion where I used my compass in the mountains in good weather - that was forty years ago. My compass tags along because my compass is also my signal mirror when I am in recreational mode.

Realistically, if you are hiking in familiar terrain, you might be able to go without anything, but I really like to have a map - a good map - appropriate scale with accurate contours.

OR!!!! you could pull a Bear Grills and climb to the top of a tree, get your bearings, and start running in some random direction.
Seriously though this is all good advice. On hunting trips I often walk from a road straight into the middle of the woods. With no discernible land marks, I would be lost in no time at all. Without a compass it would be impossible to know which direction to go a couple hours later to get back to the road.
A compass and a good map are always on my list for any trip.

We probably ought to talk about finding your way without a compass..

Is the sun out? You ought to be able to get your bearings from that. Is the wind blowing? What about the planes flying over head or the geese flying south? There are ways....

These are all better than anything Bear Grylls would do.

With a match stick or thin twig and the face of your watch as a sort of sundial, you can find the direction of the sun even when the clouds are really thick. With the shadow and the time, you can get a pretty good idea of the direction of the sun (you have to allow for Daylight Saving Time).

Moss on trees is not much help in western Oregon because it grows on all sides, lol! Also, geese stay here year-around, so the direction they fly depends on the nearest green lawn or freshly planted field.

It's a good idea to learn the constellations that revolve around the North Star so you can find north at night when the Big Dipper is behind clouds or below the horizon. If you don't know about the Big Dipper's pointers (the two stars opposite the handle), learn that as well.

My most interesting navigation problems were not without a compass but when the little zipper-pull compass I took to Europe reversed polarity on Switzerland's electric trains. I realized what had happened when I noticed the sun setting in the east! I normally have a pretty good sense of direction, but it got completely fouled up in European subways--I used the compass most in the big cities!

We were making an early, predawn start on a climb of Orizaba and my companion and I had a disagreement about the direction in which we were heading. I was looking at the North Star, and he was looking at his compass. Turns out the local variation was on the order of 47 degrees!- (highly magnetic basalt rock - Orizaba is a volcano, after all)

Yes, it can happen, however I bristle anytime someone suggests "compass not working" - I've never spent all night searching for someone whose compass broke. I've done it three times looking for someone whot *thought* his compass broke. (The last time I promptly relieved them of their compass when I found them and walked them out with it..)

Your compass always works, you're not on a swiss train in the boonies.. Know the local declination.

Buy more gas!
http://www.amazon.com/Blitz-31710-compliant-metal-Jerry/dp/B0007M42QE

Yesterday I bought my second GPS in 10 years, a Garmin Nuvi 265W, at Costco. This thing couples with my cell phone via bluetooth as a hands free device, receives traffic info via FM receiver, finds home at the touch of a button, and speaks the directions. Shows police, fire, hospitals, food, gas, closest to me...at the touch of a button. Wow! Liked it so well I've ordered two more for my girls. Still, the compass, Mapscos, and detailed road atlas will remain in the car, along with my trusty Magellan Map 330 and a couple spare batteries. It's got topos on it for hiking, plus I use it in my yaks/sailboat (which also have compasses).

A few weeks ago a friend and I took my little Suzuki Samurai on some off-road trails in the Mark Twain NF. I wanted to find a spring that was marked on the Quad maps for the area. We used my GPS to get as close as the trail would get us and then used it to hike to the spring.

The GPS is an old Garmin eMap and it tends to lose it's bearings in thick forest so we wandered quite a bit on the way there trying to follow the pointer on the GPS.

Before heading back to the car I used my GPS to locate the car and a map and compass to get an accurate heading. Then, using the compass, we stood facing the direction we needed to go. At my buddies suggestion we then checked the direction the shadows laid.

We put the compass, map, and GPS away and started hiking back using only shadows as a pointer figuring as long they laid the same direction we should be heading the right way. It was only about a 20 minute off-trail hike back over rolling hills and across a couple small creeks in thick forest, and we hit the mark dead-on. It took us twice as long to hike in, but I tend to wonder and stop a lot on the way in so that doesn't really mean much.

Anyway, in all my years of bushwhacking around I've never tried that before. Don't know why I never thought of it. Obviously you'd want to stop and recheck your heading if you were hiking longer than we had to, but it is nice to use this method when bushwhacking short distances and all you need is a quick check of the compass to re-calibrate your shadow.

Not to be difficult but in Michigan upper peninsula iron ore country your compass can be pretty unreliable but if you are in that area you should be aware of that fact. Usually a short walk will make your compass point the right direction again.

That's why it's good to know how to tell the approximate direction without a compass. If you have a pretty good idea of your approximate direction by natural means (like checking position of the sun), you'll notice right away if your compass is doing something funny.

I've been told that the same problem--rocks with their own magnetism--can happen in the Pueblo Mountains of SE Oregon, where there is no constructed trail. Navigation is between widely-spaced cairns found by compass bearings. It's strongly suggested that you spot the next cairn visually rather than trusting entirely to your compass.

x

Man, I love carbide lamps! A brass Justrite is now a collector's item.

They have real advantages, providing light as well as heat and a dependable firestarter. They are finicky, if not well maintained, but you can almost always get them to light - there just isn't that much to go wrong with them. Oh, yes, you do have to be careful when technical climbing or caving

I have walked quie a few miles at night holding my carbide in my hands, enjoying both its gentle warmth as well as its high quality light.

Carbide doesn't keep well at all where I now live (unlike SE AZ where I first used carbides), and it is harder and harder to get. My carbides are now wall decoration, but they can glow again, if given the opportunity. (Funny, you could say the same about me, I suppose).

x

I only use a map. I do not even take a compass. I am however in mountains that I know very well and with easy to find features. Last year I even walked in an area that I did not bring a map (unplanned detour) and although I felt a bit anxious, I was exactly where I was supposed to be all the time (off-trail travel). I navigated by memory of looking at the maps a lot in town. I also knew the area VERY well.

My partner is a GPS user. The GPS for him has been very good. He really cannot read a map and never was particularly interested since I pretty much did all the navigating. But he loves gagets, and now is really getting into figuring out where he is. We go out for 10-11 day trips.

We often have "contests" - him with the GPS and me without - who can get back to camp the quickest. I always win. Getting from Point A to Point B is a LOT more than going the right direction. Micro-route finding is really important!

Bottom line, for me a GPS is not needed, too heavy and too unreliable. I too dislike the little screen. And because of old eyes, I cannot even see what is on the screen without taking out my reading glasses! A regular map is so much better.

I have spent sometime wandering around on the Channel Islands in the fog (sometimes I was in the fog even when the weather was clear, but that's another story). On a clear day the map would stay in my pocket, but let the fog roll in, and it was quite a different ball game. That is where GPS came in very handy. I got in the habit of taking a waypoint when I left the car at the beginning of a day, because you just never knew when the fog would come creeping in....

Knowing the country cold is the best way to go - no batteries required. I once had an early model GPS which gave me the display - "Change batteries within two minutes or lose data." I had a spare battery carrier, popped it in, only to find that those batteries were dead as well. I was very glad I had recorded waypoints already. Never forget Murphy's Law.

A few weeks ago, I went hiking in the Vosges (north-east, near the german border). I had a very detailed map, and compass (never used GPS yet, not too keen on this stuff!)

This area is cris-crossed with trails of any kind, mostly well marked...but in this place, forest covered slope, not much of a view, tiny hamlets spotted down in the valley, everything looking the same, and no less than 9 trails going vaguely in the same direction! An altimeter could have be useful.

I got completely lost save for the direction, never found the specific hut I was looking for, hacked part of my way through fallen timber (thanks to the '99 storm, some parts have been devastated and look like something out of "The Road" movie) to some kind of logging road. I was getting ready to sleep in the woods somewhere (hardly more than a micro tarp...) when I found another hut (old decrepit, creepy...and cold)

This one, I could NEVER locate on the map, I have no idea of where exactly I spent the night, but I found my way miraculously the next morning

x

If you had a GPS you could have "Waypointed" the spot and found it easily the next time you went out.



I don't agree that a GPS is unreliable. I might agree that I would not want to "Have to" rely on one, but I have many times. Mostly when boating. I have navigated the old "White River" channel on Bull Shoals Lake many times in pitch black darkness and very dense fog using my Garmin eMap GPS and it's been as solid as a rock for me.

I've had it turned on for at least 1000 hours and probably closer to 2-3 times that.

One night I got a big lag bolt in the tire of my car when I was driving up Hwy 55 in Illinois. No repair stations open anywhere, and nothing but small towns for miles. I checked the GPS and it told me there were two gas stations between me and a Wal-Mart about 20 miles away. The GPS led me to their front doors. I stopped twice for air, and then I got a can of "Fix-a-Flat" and a tire repair kit for under $10.00, fixed the tire and made my destination without a problem. I would have never found the gas stations or the Wal-Mart without the GPS and my wife and I would've been stuck all night on the side of the road next to corn fields with a totally flat tire in the morning. So, while I didn't really rely on it then, it did make the trip much easier and saved me a lot of time and hassle.

I have never had to rely on my GPS while hiking though. But I have used it a lot to find places I've waypointed on maps and it works incredibly cool for that.

There is a local guidebook by Tim Ernst called " The Arkansas Waterfalls Guidebook". Tim provides lat/longs for all the falls in his book and descriptions on how to find them. But some would be really tough to find without a GPS to guide you there.

Once you're deep inside the "hills and hollers" of the Ozarks you may have a general idea of your location, but knowing exactly which hollow you're in or looking into isn't likely until you've spent a lot of time in that area.

I've stumbled upon some cool spots here while bushwhacking, many of them unknown by ol'timers that have always lived here, and more than a few I'd have had a pretty tough time finding again without a GPS waypoint.

So, while it's certainly a personal preference, I do think the function to weight ratio makes it worth carrying when hiking.

BTW, the main reason I still use that old Garmin eMap is because the screen is much easier to see than the "eTrex" models. Well, that, and because it still works

Jim, I don't need an instruction manual and many hours of learning time to use my headlamp. That comparison really limps!

I'm still trying to learn the intricacies of my camera (the other battery-dependent item I take with me). It went haywire on a trip last summer, and I didn't find out until I got home and spent two hours with the manual that the picture-taking mode dial had been bumped off automatic! I doubt that I'd ever be able to master a GPS, nor do I even want to try!

Oregon Mouse
I am sorry I hurt your feelings, I apologize. My reference was to your comment about relying on anything that uses batteries.
Jim

You didn't hurt anything; I was laughing at your comment about the lamp! Interesting gadget, by the way--looks a lot more complicated than a modern headlamp!

I've experienced enough failure of gadgets with batteries--at home as well as out in the woods--to eye them with great skepticism. That includes the headlamp, for which I take a backup. I don't take a backup for my camera, although I'd sure like to have had one last summer!