I have greatly benefited from the collective knowledge contained in this forum. It's been a bit of a parasitic relationship frankly in that I've gotten much more out of it than I've put in. I think it's time that I try to contribute a bit more on things that have made my camping/teardropping more enjoyable. I will start with an app that I recently bought which has definitely been worth the cost.
The GAIA app is available for iOS and Android. I've only used the iOS version. It has 3 levels of "membership", the free version is limited (no offline maps); the $9.99/year is the version that I bought and there are around 30 or so base maps that are available for downloading. There is also a $30/year version which includes Nat Geo trail maps and one other proprietary map system which I gather has costly licensing fees. I prefer "OpenhikingMapHD" as my base map for hiking. It has most of the hiking trails built in to the topographic maps in the areas where I've hiked and want to hike.
On a recent trip (the week prior to Christmas) to Laguna Beach, CA, I made it a point to hike each morning to start the day off right. I wanted to hike 5-7 miles daily. Using the Gaia website, I could scout out potential hikes in the area and then plan the routes. This would give me the planned distance but more importantly the elevation changes for the intended route. With this tool, I mapped out 5 separate hikes that were fantastic and were all new even to our host who has had the house in her family for generations. It is fairly straight forward to place the waypoints of a route on the laptop and then save it to a folder which makes it available on the phone app.
Another fun feature is to record one's track. It is kind of like an electronic bread crumb however with much more information - distance, speed and elevation changes. The tracks will then be saved on the map and viewable afterwards. In terms of battery life, it does a pretty amazing job of battery conservation - the gps will work in airplane mode and the app will use about 2% of the battery per hour of use tracking. For day hikes, battery use is a non-issue. If I were doing an extended multi-day hike, I would not track this way though.
With the basic $9.99, one can download the topographic maps of the area of interest to the most zoomed in scale. It's best to do this with a wifi connection as the maps can be pretty large. Once the maps are downloaded, the phone can be used without any cell service. Many of the places I like to camp and hike don't have cell coverage (even here on the East Coast!). For those Old Schoolers who always want a paper map, these can also be printed beforehand.
Here is a link to a more formal review which also has pics: Huge Improvements to Next Gen Gaia GPS Hiking App - Adventure Alan
The GAIA app is available for iOS and Android. I've only used the iOS version. It has 3 levels of "membership", the free version is limited (no offline maps); the $9.99/year is the version that I bought and there are around 30 or so base maps that are available for downloading. There is also a $30/year version which includes Nat Geo trail maps and one other proprietary map system which I gather has costly licensing fees. I prefer "OpenhikingMapHD" as my base map for hiking. It has most of the hiking trails built in to the topographic maps in the areas where I've hiked and want to hike.
On a recent trip (the week prior to Christmas) to Laguna Beach, CA, I made it a point to hike each morning to start the day off right. I wanted to hike 5-7 miles daily. Using the Gaia website, I could scout out potential hikes in the area and then plan the routes. This would give me the planned distance but more importantly the elevation changes for the intended route. With this tool, I mapped out 5 separate hikes that were fantastic and were all new even to our host who has had the house in her family for generations. It is fairly straight forward to place the waypoints of a route on the laptop and then save it to a folder which makes it available on the phone app.
Another fun feature is to record one's track. It is kind of like an electronic bread crumb however with much more information - distance, speed and elevation changes. The tracks will then be saved on the map and viewable afterwards. In terms of battery life, it does a pretty amazing job of battery conservation - the gps will work in airplane mode and the app will use about 2% of the battery per hour of use tracking. For day hikes, battery use is a non-issue. If I were doing an extended multi-day hike, I would not track this way though.
With the basic $9.99, one can download the topographic maps of the area of interest to the most zoomed in scale. It's best to do this with a wifi connection as the maps can be pretty large. Once the maps are downloaded, the phone can be used without any cell service. Many of the places I like to camp and hike don't have cell coverage (even here on the East Coast!). For those Old Schoolers who always want a paper map, these can also be printed beforehand.
Here is a link to a more formal review which also has pics: Huge Improvements to Next Gen Gaia GPS Hiking App - Adventure Alan
