GPS units

The current discussions around using phones as GPSes and the various apps to be used, comes at an interesting time for me. There are extensive, forested hills and small mountains close to where I live in Canada. These are great for trail runs, afternoon walks and day hikes. For some trails there are PDF based maps and others described on various websites and forums. However, navigating in extensive forest is not easy, it gets disorienting (something we don't easily experience in South Africa because the terrain is far more open). I actually own and use a proper compass now!

And the local trail network is more extensive than what is apparent on the various maps, along with many "partial trails" and routes that involve "bush whacking". It is on these shorter day hikes and runs that I frequently found myself spending a lot of time trying to figure out the trails, and regularly just stumbling around with guesswork and taking wrong turns. I've even had to catch a ride with a stranger before, having landed up in a completely different location to my own vehicle on a casual afternoon walk. Eventually this led me to discover that Open Street Maps is pretty awesome when it comes to showing trails. The next step was getting this data onto a device to be used out there. This recently led me to the OSM And app, which interestingly came up on this forum too. I am thrilled at the amount of information I suddenly have available on my phone! No more blindly stumbling through the local forests! It seems way more detailed, and is substantially cheaper than a map I had considered buying for my Garmin GPS. It is also extremely useful for navigating through the maze of logging roads and dirt roads in the backcountry here.

As for phones vs a proper GPS unit, I've stuck to the latter for many years, and only just played around a little bit with phones. I am now using OSM And on my Android phone and must say so far I am pretty impressed. The accuracy is pretty good. For example, on one of my outings the maps showed 2 power cables cutting through the forest and the phone was accurate enough to even show under which specific cable I stood. Yesterday my phone was out with me in pretty cold and very wet weather - we started off walking in steady rain which turned to snowfall as we gained elevation. Our shells and packs got soaked. I had the phone in my jacket pocket and took it out several times to check. Everything still worked fine and the phone was easy to use even though the outside got wet (naturally I will be buying a waterproof pouch for it in future). I also find my phone easier to deal with than my GPS, so I haven't bothered plugging OSM into my Garmin yet.

I am not about to say that phones should replace GPS units. I will still be using my old Garmin on long, multi-day and more serious trips. For very rough going and for climbing I'd prefer to use my GPS anyway so that my phone doesn't get messed up and damaged. I will reserve my thoughts on the battery consumption issue until I have more of my own experience to make a comparison. I am excited about the future prospect of a multi-gadget. As it is, I typically carry a GPS, a GoPro, a SPOT and an avalanche transponder - a lot of gadgets, that don't even have compatible power sources! I don't typically carry a phone on multi-day trips because of the limited cell phone coverage in the mountains here. But phones are starting to combine these technologies. It may not totally all be there yet, and if it is, its not fully robust yet, but I look forward to the day when I can carry less gadgets!