by climbant » Thu Nov 07, 2013 1:45 pm
Jim, I don't know if he sees as punishable by death, but reading through his blogs he seems to really not like them. I carry a GPS for the reasons you list and to get a UTM to supplement map and compass. It's funny that I made a nav mistake this morning hiking out to Carey's Castle in JT, a hike I have never done before. Usually I would pre plan an off trail hike with a map making notes on where to go, geographical features, bearings, etc. This time I made waypoints and imported them into my GPS. So as I'm hiking I come to a fork where I'm sure I need to go right, but glancing at my GPS the waypoint was further up the left fork. OK maybe I'm getting the forks messed up, continue on. Go maybe a 100 meters and realize I'm definitely not in the right canyon. Take out map, compass, and UTM ruler and do a check and yup I screwed up. I almost made the double mistake of not trusting the map but slapped myself back to reality. Back track to the other canyon and off I go. This was a human error based on me screwing up a waypoint, but the map was right so I got on the right canyon easily. Had I not had the paper map my day would have been much longer.