GPS Navigation

Will you consider having a GPS navigation system while hiking? I know that sometimes you can get lost while hiking through the jungle. With a GPS navigation system you can record your tracks and follow them whenever you get lost. You don't need to buy an expensive system, you can use your smartphone if it is GPS enabled. You will just need to download relevant maps and get going.

 

The issue for me is that we tend to rely far to much on the technical gizmos and gadgets with disastrous results.

It's okay provided ONE - you know how to use technology properly (and a lot of people don't) and TWO - you better have a concrete plan B.

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I practice using map and compass not just for fun, but incase I happen to get out and my GPS thing dies or gets misplaced somehow. After I got my first GPS unit, my wife and I went hiking on a 6 mile loop trail in the smokeys. The trail use rarely used, so sometimes we wondered if we were still on it. My wife tired of me playing with it as we hiked. Compasses look way cooler, and maybe you can impress a girl when you pull out map and compass. You know like driving around with a canoe on top of your vehicle. Women fall for that stuff. I think someone should create a lightweight fake canoe and rack for the top of vehicles. May not be functional, but would look COOL.

 

...right on. Luv your comments.

And I do not drive around with my canoe on the roof - well then again...maybe - just some times in early spring - to get practiced up don't you know?

Somewhere in all this stuff there needs to be balance. There are far to many unskilled people who get caught up with the now things and forget that a little bit of wisdom and knowledge will get them out of situations a lot faster.

We now have the texting tots generation
who are more mesmerized
by a tiny screen than a marijuana buzz.
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Using a GPS system is okay but for me I still prefer the use of a compass, a physical map, a whole lot of alertness and being very observant on your surroundings and the important details that will help you find your way back. I don't really rely much on GPS because in my side of the world, this system is not really working well when you're in the mountains or somewhere very far from civilization. This is a very old-fashioned way of making sure you won't get lost but being a bit paranoid about the idea of getting lost in the middle of nowhere, I usually take a roll of ribbon with me together with some already prepared shorter pieces of them and I would tie them on tree branches or plants along the way so we would have guides when we would be heading back.

 

...it's not an old fashion way it is a method.
There are different methods for different applications. I was invited to a friends place in another city to have a day out. My car wasn't working well and I called him to cancel out. He said to me, "Have you ever heard of a bus?" Oh, right - there is a bus, a train, I could walk, hitch hike etc. etc.
It's always a good idea to have more than one method. And if you are in the wilderness you safety could rely on it.

 

Lol! I couldn't help but laugh at your story. Talk about common sense right? Lol! Anyway, having a variety of alternatives in managing a situation is indeed very useful especially if one is out there in the mountains or in the wilderness. It's always an advantage to carry a survivalist attitude when one decides to embark on the great outdoors because he/she will never know what can happen. As you said in your first post, a Plan B always come in handy.

 

...we call all this stuff WILDERNESS SKILLS. The things that enable us to enjoy adventures in the interior wilderness were we are free as the rivers and streams that chart their way to the sea.

 

@Northern Dancer Another good learning I got from you today - "wilderness skills". It's like learning to go with the flow and natural characteristics of the wilderness right? If we learn to adjust ourselves with our immediate environment, I think the chances of us surviving in it is good. Learning to maximize what we have in hand and being resourceful enough to improvise things when we are in the outdoors I think are some of the essentials in wilderness skills.

 

...in wilderness survival it is the will of the mind. A man crashed his plane in the wilderness in British Columbia and after thirty five days he ended up on a highway to be picked up by a trucker who took him to the hospital. A lad of 14 got separated from his family in the east coast and three days later the rescue crew found him dead. Why? One had the will to live and the other gave up. Interesting stories.

As a result, in this country, the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] sponsor a program called, "Hug a Tree". Look it up - the suggestions and ideas are not just for children. I instruct the program at camp.

 

Nice that's what I'm going to teach my kids.

Sent from my LGLS996 using Tapatalk

 

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I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't look up the book and possibly the video online. There is similiar program in the States as well but I don't know who sponsors it.

 

There is a survival training organization that I know of here in the the states. It is called Outward Bound. It's supposed to be a Non-profit educational organization. There is one near me in Asheville NC, maybe 2 hrs drive from my house. Their in office is in Colorado. I realy don't know much about it, but some of their outings do cost.

 

Outward Bound (OB) is an international, non-profit, independent outdoor-education organization with approximately 40 schools around the world and 200,000 participants per year. Outward Bound programs aim to foster the personal growth and social skills of participants by using challenging expeditions in the outdoors.

Outward Bound World Logo​

 

The Blue Peter nautical flag indicates that a vessel is "outward bound".
Outward Bound schools use and raise this flag to symbolize the
ourney starting for OB students at the start of a programme.​

Outward Bound motto, "To Serve, To Strive and not To Yield,"
from the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

... Come, my friends.
Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
we are not now that strength which in old days
moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are --
one equal temper of heroic hearts,
made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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This is such a wonderful program. I looked it up and I liked how simple the instructions are especially for children who get lost. At least they can have something to hold on to for comfort and some sense of protection while they wait for someone to rescue them. This is indeed a good survival strategy for everyone. Thank you for sharing about it.

 

I think the cellphone is part of the gear of campers and hikers now. Most of those smart phones have a GPS function and it will serve you good when you get lost in the woods. I had experienced a hike where we lost the trail and we went to another trail that made us go like a roundabout. The distance of 2 kilometers became 6 kilometers because of that mistake in direction. One thing I have learned from that is to use the sun for navigating. But the problem is when the sun does not shine, you wouldn’t know the east from the west or the north from the south.

 

I have and do use my GPS on my cell phone, but I don't depend on it because I could loose the signal. I was fishing on my local lake one morning, and while running down the lake I went into a fog bank. I thought it was realy cool how the fog looked like a solid wall as I got to it, I might have been going 30 mph. As soon as I got into the fog my visibility dropped to about 30 feet, so I slowed down and turned right toward the closest bank that i shouldve been near. The lake might have been a half mile wide in that area. After several minutes I couldn't find the bank, and the water depth stayed the same, so I figured I was still in the main channel. I turned on my Google map on my phone to find my location. I was idling in a circle the whole time and didn't know it. That pulled my fat out of the fire that time cause there are lots of fast bass boats on that lake, and have known some people to run hard in fog or dark and rely only on their GPS units. Been several people killed for stupid stuff like that, so I stay near the bank when low visibility.
Don't rely on your cell phone to much. If it looses signal you may be in trouble.

 

LOL.

GPS is fine, it's usually on the phone, when we do have signal, not more than that. If not, I simply stick with local directions or the old plain map. The wife loves the map, so she is my walking GPS when everything else fails.