I've never owned a GPS. A year ago I started shopping for one but decided it wouldn't be worth it for me.
-- There didn't seem to be any such thing as an all-around GPS. Everything I looked at was designed either for car travel
or for everything else.
-- Even in $400-and-up models, the maps were less detailed than regular topo maps. In some locales, they were terrible. When I checked the maps for places like Point Reyes where I've spent a lot of time, they showed "roads" going through that had actually reverted to brush years ago and other roads apparently blocked that were actually in regular use.
-- I've been unofficially mapping the Four Mile Trail and I thought a GPS might help with that. Unfortunately that particular area seems to get marginal satellite reception due to cliffs and tree cover, so I wouldn't be able to count on much accuracy. I've found lots of GPS tracks from the Four Mile posted online, no two alike. Where a track shows both the "going" and the "coming" routes, the two often appear to be 200 or 300 feet apart. The best track I've seen so far was posted at a Trimble site -- made with a high-end GPS, I'd guess. It's quite good compared to the others but it, too, contains some obvious errors. According to the GPS track, someone walked from the Glacier Point parking lot to Glacier Point, jumped 500 feet down the cliff, jumped back up, then started down the Four Mile Trail.
![spinning smiley sticking its tongue out spinning smiley sticking its tongue out](https://yosemitenews.info/forum/mods/smileys/images/smiley25.gif)
-- On the trail (or in the backcountry) It sounds as if I'd have two choices: leave the GPS on, record a track, and run down the battery quickly; or leave the GPS off except when I actually wanted to know my location, and have to wait perhaps several minutes for it to boot up and acquire enough satellite data.
-- One manufacturer offers a "find the way home" GPS that does only one thing. You record the location of your campsite or car and go wandering in the woods. When you want to go home, the GPS shows you the direct route. OK, say I stay at Curry Village and record that as "home". I hike up to Glacier Point and ask the GPS for the way home. I assume it directs me to Curry Village by the line-of-sight route rather by the Four Mile Trail.
![grinning smiley grinning smiley](https://yosemitenews.info/forum/mods/smileys/images/smilie5.gif)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 10:35AM by gophersnake.