Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

I just bought a Garmin Edge 200 GPS unit primarily to use while cycling. I've only used it on one ride so far but it seemed to record the route/distance/time correctly. Today i went for a short hike from the tramway to Wellman Divide via the High trail and back on the main trail. Here is the Garmin Connect route uploaded from my device ..

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/194343449

Although the route looks correct the distance is only showing as 5 miles. Should be closer to 6.5 miles. It's also showing my average moving speed as 6 MPH. No way i hike that fast. (Especially since it's showing my max speed as 5.4!?) Any suggestions how to make this device work for hikes? Like i said, the route looks correct with no sections missing. I do have the "auto pause" option set to pause recording when my speed falls below 1 MPH and that seemed to work okay for cycling. Maybe not for hiking? Altho 1 MPH would be a very slow walking speed indeed.

-Florian

My Garmin (forget the model; gpx etrex hiking one) tells me to set the frequency as high as i can....to get more accurate. I believe with lower frequency logging...it interpolates in switchbacks and thus shows a shorter distance than reality.

I think the problem was having "auto pause" enabled. I did another hike today from tramway down to Laws cabin with auto pause disabled and the distance and time looks correct now ..

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/194774566

Was a nice hike. Thanks to JFR for location info for the cabin. I'd camped at the cabin many years ago and have been looking for it recently and was always UTL but i found it today!

-Florian

Florian wrote:I think the problem was having "auto pause" enabled. I did another hike today from tramway down to Laws cabin with auto pause disabled and the distance and time looks correct now ..

Auto Pause sounds great on a bicycle, where you don't want to have the time spent sitting at a traffic light ruining your average speeds.

But hiking is another story. When my wife and I hike uphill with heavy backpacks, we typically average about 0.8 mph (yes, we're slow) but we don't stop very often; we trudge along steadily for hours. Still my Delorme GPS has a page that shows "Trip: Stopped" and "Trip: Moving" times, and it usually states that we're stopped more than 50% of the time! But, since I can't change the internal settings for that, we use the data to laugh and make jokes about what sluggards we are.

As for mileage, my GPS usually overestimates the amounts when comparing them to the published trail mileages. I think that it's due to the inherent inaccuracy of the gps unit, which, for example, turns what is in fact a straight trail into one that looks like a series of tiny zig-zags; adding up all those tiny deviations makes the trail appear longer. Of course, I tend to believe my GPS anyway, since I've been doubting those official mileage numbers for years!

Florian wrote:Was a nice hike. Thanks to JFR for location info for the cabin. I'd camped at the cabin many years ago and have been looking for it recently and was always UTL but i found it today!

Did you use your GPS to head straight for the waypoint coordinates of the old structure at Laws Camp, or did you follow my general directions?

jfr wrote:Did you use your GPS to head straight for the waypoint coordinates of the old structure at Laws Camp, or did you follow my general directions?

Found the cabin based on your directions alone. This little Garmin Edge being that it's designed as a cycling computer and not for general navigation type uses doesn't have any way to enter waypoints nor even display coordinates.

-Florian