Wilderness Navigation Tools

If you own a Garmin GPS receiver, you can save yourself a chunk of change by downloading and installing the free user contributed maps available at GPSFileDepot.com which has an excellent collection of US topographic maps, as well as maps from all over the world. The site also provides an excellent set …

Every year, I like to recognize a piece of gear that has the biggest transformational impact on my hiking and backpacking experience by giving it the Section Hiker Gear of the Year Award. This year’s winner is the Casio PAG240-1CR Pathfinder Triple Sensor Multi-Function Sport Watch whose built-in barometric altimeter helped transform my …

The first thing I do when I evaluate digital mapping software is to look at the accuracy of the maps provided or available with the software. You can have the best user interface or software features in the world, but if the maps you provide are inaccurate or out of date, I’m …

Gmap4 is the free online mapping tool that I use for planning hike, backpacking, and bushwhacking trips. I like it because it has some of the most accurate digital maps available online and lets me rapidly compare different maps from several different sources. That is probably the most important feature …

Mountains Make their own Weather Have you ever planned a hiking trip in the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, or the Catskills, and tried to figure out what the weather is going to be like or what gear you need to bring along? It can be real frustrating, because mountains make …

I switched from a simple Suunto A10 base plate compass to a Brunton 15TDCL Sighting Compass last year because I wanted a compass that was more robust for bushwhacking, backpacking in open country across Scotland, and for avalanche prediction in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. While the A10 has been an …

Photos Courtesy of Martin Rye Walter Underwood left a great comment last week on my book review of the NOLs Wilderness Guide, where he was critical about the book’s lack of time control plan (TCP) examples. A TCP or Route Plan, as they are called in the UK, is a …

I love maps but the thought of replacing them with a GPS makes me uneasy. The fact is, I very rarely get lost because I know how to read a map, I’m an expert with a  compass, and I carefully chart my progress during the day by frequently referring to …

I do a lot of solo backpacking in some out of the way places and my wife, understandably, worries about my safety. This year she asked me to bring along a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) on my more remote trips where a serious injury, like a broken femur or a …

The Fox 40 Safety Whistle weighs just 0.1 oz, but it is one of the most important pieces of safety gear that I own. Every one of my backpacks has a whistle attached to it. If you need to be found or alert someone, a blast on a whistle can …

In my last post, I wrote that you need a New York Gazetteer in order to find the trail heads in the Catskills. It dawned on me today that many people don’t have a clue what a Gazetteer is anymore. So let me explain. A Gazetteer is a set of …