Navigating
Navigation, and the fun technology to accomplish it, is a big hobby of mine. I love maps, and if you regularly use the words “waypoints, tracks, gpx, kml,” you’re speaking my language. Unfortunately, no single piece of software or hardware does everything that I need it to do, so I have evolved a system with different hardware and software components that I mix and match to best suit the situation. “Evolved” is an appropriate word: my system is continually evolving. I’m always on the lookout for new solutions that make navigating simpler or more efficient (I may be a dinosaur when it comes to some outdoor gear, but navigation technology is not one of them).
Over the past few decades I’ve been fortunate to have varied outdoor venues for employing, testing, and refining my system. This includes entering narrow passages in remote coral atolls in the South Pacific on our 40 ft. sailboat, finding fissures in the Utah desert for slot canyoneering, finding people while participating in Search and Rescue, and a ton of car-camping far off the beaten path. Different navigation tasks require slightly different approaches and tools. However, my base system has turned out to be general and widely applicable.
On this page I will discuss my current system, which is most specifically oriented towards navigating the woods and desert, both by car (usually to find the campsite), then by foot for the trail/off-trail adventure.
This is going to be involved enough to warrant an outline of the content: