[pct-l] Follow-up to the earlier GPS discussion

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

On May 20, 2010, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>
>
> In terms of accuracy, GPS locations are several orders of magnitude  
> better
> than compass-based locations.  When I hear someone criticize GPS  
> accuracy
> I?m led to believe that they?ve never tried to locate their  
> position on a
> topo? map by triangulating from the peaks of surrounding mountains --
> assuming they can actually see peaks; assuming they know for sure  
> which
> peaks they?re looking at; and assuming they can identify which of  
> the many
> bumps on the ridge is actually the peak.  It?s particularly  
> difficult in the
> Sierras where there are many peaks all strung together on ridges,  
> but it?s a
> bit easier in the Pacific NW where the tall volcanoes usually stand
> prominent and alone.  There the problem is the peaks are mostly in a
> north-south line and it?s hard to get something at 90 degs. to form a
> triangle.

Right you are. It's especially difficult to identify anything at all  
in the nearly featureless, viewless forest in Oregon. A GPS can help  
you find your location under so many more conditions than a compass can.

But I didn't have or know how to use a GPS. So instead I relied on my  
watch. After a few weeks I knew what my average pace was. With the  
data book and guide book and my watch, I could pass a point of  
interest, check the time, check for the next point of interest and  
then calculate the time it would take to get there. At the appointed  
time, I could look around me for the point of interest. I could be  
within 5 minutes accuracy on a regular basis this way. I came to rely  
upon this means of navigation almost entirely.

By looking around, I mean really looking. I met a many people who  
missed things because they didn't look. I would find sticks that  
perhaps had once been aligned as arrows but now were scattered, very  
faint tracks in the dirt, signs facing the wrong way on trees that  
had fallen over, rocks that appeared out of place to me. With my  
watch, I'd know it was time to start looking and I'd look very  
carefully.

I am reminded of the book Clan of the Cave Bear. It's fiction, but I  
always remember how in this book when the people needed a map, it  
would not be a diagram of a bird's eye view of the land but of the  
points of interest you'd see as you went along. I read the book a  
long time ago and thought if this was how things had been done at any  
time in our human history, it certainly makes a lot of sense to me  
because it is how I make sense of my landscape on a daily basis all  
the time. I am also reminded of the trees they have found throughout  
the eastern US that had once been purposefully bent so that they  
would form a directional pointer to the way to go to get somewhere.

Navigating by such ground-level means has been with us a long time.  
They are good skills to have and seem to be dying as much as compass- 
reading due to our overly distracted, non-introspective, non- 
observant culture.

Diane

Books I've written:
~ Piper's Flight
~ Adventure and Magic
~ Santa Barbara Hikes
http://stores.lulu.com/dianesoini