Well, with all due respect, what in the world do you need a GPS for? When you get on the trail, you’ll start at Point A and can clearly see Points B (the bottom) and C (the opposite rim). I can sort of see needing altimeter/barometric info, but a simple watch that doesn’t eat batteries every eight hours can offer all of that聴plus wake you up.
Oregon 200I mean, isn’t it time we all got lost? Wouldn聮t that make life better somehow? Speaking personally, I’d love to be lost for a day or three. Maybe more. I mean, why not? We used to stumble around the woods on weekend hikes without GPS devices and cell phones and altimeter watches and we somehow always managed to come out. Well, almost always. But now, there’s this rising sense of panic if we don’t know where we are within five minutes and seven degrees of whatever our exact longitude and latitude.
Besides, being “los”” is not an absence of information about whereabouts. Hell, Lewis and Clark were lost their whole damned trip. It聮s an emotional reaction to a situation. And it sounds like, “My GOD聴we are LOST…we are all going to DIE!!!” And then people start running over ridges (“The car must be right there!”), backtracking over trails they’ve already covered (“I KNOW the trail was over here!!”), thrashing down brush-choked drainages (“Follow the river!”), and doing just plain dumb stuff until they are dead. GPS really won聮t fix that.
So, people, relax!!! Nobody really gets lost! They just get temporarily disoriented, and then they freak out!! And it聮s usually on a very small scale. Getting a few hundred yards off route, getting stuck on the wrong side of a ridge, finding a cliff band聟and the rest is history.
There聮s my rant.
As for a GPS, sure, whatever. I like the Oregon 200 (retail $425; street price more like $300) just fine. A lot, in fact. It has a lovely color display, an easy-to-use touch screen, all kinds of SD slots you can plug into it with precise mapping, etc. It costs too much for what you need, in my view. Garmin’s eTrex Venture HC ($170) keeps track of where you are, lets you map your waypoints, and so on.
So, yeah, buy one. Stock market needs us to shop, so shop.