Last yr, I made a daring transfer for an ultralight backpacker: I added a chunk of substances to my packing listing. It wasn’t a choice I made frivolously. After two months of analysis, be aware taking, and soul looking, I put down an enormous chunk of cash on one thing I’ve managed with out for my first 4,000 miles of backpacking. In actual fact, it’s the costliest single merchandise in my entire gear closet.
What’s it? A watch.
It wasn’t simply any watch, although. It’s a GPS sports activities watch able to map, compass, health monitoring, and photo voltaic charging. Though I used to be timid concerning the buy at first, it shortly modified how I ready for and executed my thru-hikes.
Utilizing a smartwatch is widespread within the extremely and working communities, however there may be valuable little details about utilizing them for long-distance backpacking. Learn on to search out out why it could be value selecting one up, the way to use one, and a few suggestions.
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GPS Look ahead to Backpacking Execs
GPS Look ahead to Backpacking Cons
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Beneficial Fashions
Scrambling up Capitol Peak, Colorado. GPS watch doing the heavy lifting of calculating pace and elevation.
Benefits of Utilizing a GPS Look ahead to Backpacking
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1. Maintain Higher Monitor of Distances, Elevation, Tempo, and Effort
GPS watches are glorious at conserving observe of your journeys. They will file distances with excessive precision, with knowledge assortment intervals as tight as one second on most fashions. They will additionally calculate elevation achieve and loss utilizing an built-in barometer, and/or a 3D terrain mannequin like mapping softwares and telephones do. This can be a large profit as many digital fashions use 30 meter contour spacing, that means it could lose quite a lot of positive, rolling terrain or add errant elevation when strolling alongside pointy peaks and ridges.
Utilizing the (X,Y,Z) of this knowledge, they’ll additionally present detailed info in your tempo and stopped time. Whereas this may occasionally seem to be pointless information to the “cease and odor the roses” crowd, realizing how briskly you climb steep terrain, cruise flats, or break for lunch might be very useful in estimating tempo for the times forward or future journeys. Mixed with coronary heart price knowledge, it could additionally let you know when you find yourself pushing too arduous and could be higher off calling it an evening.
2. Depend Down the Miles to Camp
With the proper preparation, you possibly can observe alongside your deliberate route and get prime quality estimates of remaining miles and elevation achieve for the day. For the hungry and drained thru-hiker, the query “how far is it to dinner” is usually on the thoughts beginning round lunch. Having these stats able to go in your wrist can get rid of the poorly executed guess-timation that results in empty snack luggage.
I additionally love utilizing this function to estimate my arrival time and work out if I’m going to reach means too early (and will preserve going) or means too late (and must preserve an eye fixed out for an earlier campsite).
3. Immediately Examine if You Are on Path
Moreover my nerdy obsession with stats, having the ability to shortly test if I’m on or off path, or which fork I must take at an intersection, is the first motive I invested in a GPS watch within the first place. Continuously pulling out a telephone from storage, unlocking, opening your navigation app, and centering the map to inform in case you are going the best means has all the time been a serious path annoyance of mine. It can be a serious security hazard when you try this whereas nonetheless strolling (it causes extra issues than us thru-hikers wish to admit).
With no lock screens and the system all the time in view on my wrist, there isn’t a sensible delay in checking that you’re on observe. Most watches supply always-on-displays and centered-on-location maps, that means you may not even must click on any buttons to test your standing.
Me, my wrist map, and my miles left to camp.
4. Off-Route Alerts
Have you ever ever missed a path intersection or taken the mistaken fork within the highway for miles, solely to appreciate it’s good to backtrack to get the place you’re going? I do know I’ve, and greater than as soon as. Most GPS watches have an “off route” alert that gives you a buzz or a beep if you get a specific amount off your loaded course. They may also warn you if you get again on observe to forestall you from overshooting your return.
I can’t let you know what number of miles and hours this has most likely saved me within the final yr alone. It’s additionally helped preserve me off pointless roadwalk. In sections the place the path parallels or weaves on and off pavement, the alert helps pull me out of the “head down and grind” psychological area and catch these faint social trails again to singletrack.
5. Backup Navigation
It’s a hushed fact that the overwhelming majority of thru-hikers usually are not carrying paper maps and are absolutely depending on smartphone navigation to know the place they’re going.
I carried paper maps for the primary few hundred miles of the CDT, however willingly admit I ditched them finally. I turned shortly aggravated with disposing of the extras, resupplying myself with the brand new set, and conserving them useful sufficient to truly use. I finished having them mailed out earlier than I even completed my first state.
This was not an ideal plan: my smartphone was three years previous with a nasty battery and was vulnerable to overheating. After I misplaced my energy financial institution within the Wind River Vary, I needed to navigate for 4 days on 67% of a diminished capability battery over literal a whole lot of blowdowns. My battery died 5 miles in need of my hitching level, leaving me to guess my final handful of turns to the highway.
A GPS watch pre-loaded with tracks serves as a weight-efficient, battery-saving navigation system. I nonetheless preserve a smartphone app useful for large image planning, getting excessive decision map context, and people valuable FarOut feedback, however I can function a lot of the day simply with a watch. Smartphones are fairly robust as of late, however watches are usually extra sturdy, extra water-proof, and tougher to lose since they’re strapped to your physique.
Moreover simply digital maps and programs, most journey oriented fashions may have a function set lovingly known as the ABCs: altimeter, barometer, and compass. The altimeter can exactly observe your elevation, a useful device for superior navigation. The barometer (which often informs the altimeter) can provide a way of air stress adjustments that point out storms prematurely. The compass clearly helps get a way of route, and extra exactly than the digital compasses in a smartphone.
To me, this combo is a wonderfully sufficient navigation toolset for an skilled and accountable hiker. I can’t see myself printing maps once more for all however essentially the most excessive of journeys.
6. Any Climate, No Drawback
Most GPS watches are extraordinarily waterproof, marketed and rated for swimming and even deep water diving. Within the thru-hiker context of the occasional drizzle or fast submersions filling water bottles, there’s not a lot to fret about climate smart.
Some now have touchscreen capabilities however are primarily managed by way of buttons across the casing. Throughout a downpour the place the delicate contact screens on a telephone begin bugging out, a watch gained’t skip a beat with its button based mostly navigation.
I confronted many days of persistent rain throughout my summer season thru-hikes and was pleasantly shocked by how a lot simpler it was to navigate within the rain with my watch strapped over my rain jacket. Me and my telephone stayed constantly dry since I didn’t need to deglove or attain beneath my rain pants, simply to reveal my extra delicate system to the open sky.
A wet day within the Pyrenees. This was the one time it stopped raining sufficient that day to take an image. My telephone spent the remainder of the day fortunately within the zip lock bag.
7. Save Your Cellphone’s Battery Life
Trendy GPS watches are shockingly environment friendly, able to lasting weeks on finish in commonplace smartwatch mode or a number of days throughout excessive precision GPS and exercise monitoring earlier than a recharge. For a tool that weighs about 2 ounces and suits simply into the palm of your hand, their effectivity is tough to beat.
For instance, my present smartphone can observe about 40 hours of GPS at 5-second intervals with a 17 Watt-hour (Wh) battery. Alternatively, my present smartwatch can observe 72 hours of GPS at 1 second intervals with a ~3.2 Wh battery. That makes it about 5 instances extra environment friendly whereas recording 5 instances as a lot knowledge.
A watch may help scale back inefficient telephone use in different methods. Enjoying music straight off the system is at the very least twice as environment friendly. Utilizing it as a morning alarm permits you to flip off the telephone fully in a single day. It could possibly additionally forestall you from utilizing the display through the day to test the time, get a climate replace, or learn the map.
Utilizing a watch doesn’t fully exchange the necessity for a smartphone, but it surely does prolong my telephone’s life by a number of days within the area. This may be the make or break level between needing a big or small energy financial institution, and even carrying a number of.
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Annoyances of Utilizing a GPS Look ahead to Backpacking
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1. Restricted Battery Life
Even when a watch is considerably extra environment friendly, the precise battery measurement is way, a lot smaller than a telephone. With a midrange mannequin, I usually need to cost my telephone and watch at comparable 3- to 4-day intervals. I additionally wanted to test the climate and high off the battery earlier than any rain may soak the system, since it’s sick suggested to plug in a moist charging port.
Having to cost mid-section means it’s good to issue within the watch whereas calculating the dimensions of your battery financial institution. As gadgets get extra environment friendly and system makers proceed to compete on battery life, hopefully this challenge is mitigated.
2. Layering Woes
Folks with jewellery will know that altering layers may cause tangles. That is true with sensible watches as effectively; their relative bulk makes loads of floor to get caught up in. That is one factor I nonetheless get aggravated by, nearly a yr after getting my first watch. Some working particular fashions deal with being lighter and slimmer which may help mitigate this, however comes on the expense of battery life.
My go-to charging configuration.
3. One other Gadget To Maintain Monitor Of
“Maintain it Easy Silly” is usually finest observe in backpacking. A smartwatch isn’t strictly essential, and is simply one other digital doodad to keep watch over when you ought to be having fun with nature. If it’s good to have a telephone in any case, why trouble with an additional system that just about does all the identical stuff?
Being small and inconspicuous, a watch might be straightforward to depart behind at hostels, bathe stops, or inside a tent pocket within the morning.
4. Specialty Charger Plugs
In a world that more and more prioritizes a common USB-C charging port, wearable gadgets are nonetheless suffering from proprietary connectors. Garmin makes use of a 4-pin connector (that’s successfully a cool formed USB 2.0), Coros makes use of a data-less 3-pin cable, and Suunto has a baffling 9 distinctive chargers listed on their web site for various fashions.
The dimensions, mechanical reliability, and waterproofness of the USB-C commonplace means this isn’t going to be included on small electronics anytime quickly. You’ll need a devoted and difficult-to-replace cable or dongle to maintain issues topped up.
5. Costly
High finish, lengthy battery life digital watches have gotten more and more costly. The premium Garmin Fenix 8 will now set you again a whopping $1,200. That’s the identical as an iPhone 16 Professional Max. That’s additionally as a lot as some individuals’s total gear listing prices, or how a lot you would possibly spend in a number of months on path on a price range.
On the similar time, there are increasingly price range choices in the marketplace from manufacturers like Coros and Amazfit that may minimize the fee right down to only a few hundred bucks. The cheaper fashions usually omit helpful options like maps although.
6. Gadgets Age Shortly
Like many digital gadgets, smartwatches have a restricted life span. Batteries get worn down, software program will get discontinued, you journey and smash right into a rock. In all probability, a watch goes to be a recurring price, not a “purchase as soon as cry as soon as” state of affairs.
7. Velocity
One of many causes GPS watches are so environment friendly is that their processors and sensors are small and deliberately restrict energy consumption. Restricted electrical energy additionally means restricted processing energy. In comparison with different electronics in your life it’s more likely to really feel sluggish or laggy. I discover this significantly noticeable when utilizing modes which can be heavy on knowledge and reminiscence, equivalent to panning a map or graphing giant knowledge units.
Navigating the streets of this quiet hamlet simply utilizing the watch.
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Is All This Actually Crucial?
To place it merely, no.
The overwhelming majority of hikers usually are not utilizing wearable electronics, and those that are don’t actually want them. I don’t imply to push the narrative that extra stuff will make or break your backpacking journeys. In case you simply wish to get out and hike, then simply get out and hike.
I’ve loved my watch as a little bit of effectivity and comfort on path, and to fulfill the info nerd in me after I’m residence from my journeys. On the similar time, if I forgot my watch, life would go on and I might nonetheless have an amazing journey.
How To Select
If you’re trying to purchase a watch, listed below are a number of specs to keep watch over.
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1. Battery Life With GPS On
Some watches can final nearly indefinitely in “smartwatch” mode, however GPS monitoring is battery intensive. Be sure you are taking a look at how lengthy the watch can observe for together with your anticipated settings.
2. Photo voltaic Charging
A restricted variety of fashions, particularly from Garmin, have a translucent photo voltaic panel over the show or alongside the perimeters to increase the usable life past what a battery can do alone. Be warned: they typically can’t recharge your watch, simply sluggish the speed of battery consumption.
3. Map Options
A giant gatekeeping function between entry degree and premium watches is the power to see a map on the system. “Breadcrumb” or coordinate storing solely fashions usually are not going to be as useful in figuring out the proper fork within the path.
An extended day forward. At 47mm, I take into account this watch measurement “giant however purposeful.”
4. General Dimension and Weight
Bigger fashions have considerably improved battery life, however are sometimes impractically huge for skinny hikers. Examine your native outside or working retailer for demo fashions to get a really feel for what suits your physique.
5. GPS Tech
“GPS” is definitely a selected sort of satellite tv for pc based mostly location expertise, with the generic class of tech being known as GNSS (international navigation satellite tv for pc methods). There are different, comparable sorts of satellite tv for pc networks equivalent to GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou that some watches may also find with. On excessive finish fashions it’s now commonplace to trace with two or extra without delay for improved accuracy.
6. Sensor High quality
The first use case for a lot of the inhabitants is basic health and train monitoring. These customers are extra interested by coronary heart price knowledge and stress testing fairly than getting excellent GPS tracks of their newest journeys. The wrist based mostly sensors on gadgets have improved dramatically in only a few years, creating a big unfold in high quality throughout manufacturers and gadgets.
7. Show Sort
There are at present two main display applied sciences in watches: MIPS and AMOLED/LED.
MIPS (reminiscence in pixel) shows are fairly a bit like early Gameboys or e-readers. They’re decrease pixel density, not self-illuminating, restricted in variety of colours accessible, however considerably extra energy environment friendly. The show is “all the time on” and solely consumes a bigger quantity of energy when the display updates or the supplemental backlight is turned on.
AMOLED shows use the identical vivid, colourful pixels as smartphones. They devour much more energy and all the time refresh at larger charges. To avoid wasting energy, the usual is to show off the show fully when not in use.
The desire between the 2 is private, however I want the effectivity and ease of the MIPS, and really discover them simpler to learn in full solar than AMOLED.
8. App Ecosystem
All the main manufacturers present a smartphone app to attach and show the info collected by the watch. These are additionally the way you would possibly interface with different mapping platforms, social media, and management music from the system.
I don’t make it a precedence to select my system based mostly simply on this, however it’s value checking what could be suitable earlier than shopping for.
The coaching readiness app telling me my dying is impending (it learn like this each day for 2 months).
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Some Beneficial GPS Watch Fashions for Backpacking
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Garmin Enduro 3: $900 MSRP
I’m at present utilizing the Enduro 3 for a future evaluate, however to maintain it brief, it has every part I would like in a backpacking watch: insane battery life (72 hours of default/ all GNSS methods monitoring), solar energy mitigation, MIPS show, and maps. The one draw back is that it solely is available in a really giant 51mm case measurement.
Garmin Fenix 7 Professional SS: $900 MSRP
The seventh gen Fenix line is a bit dated now, however nonetheless rock stable and more and more accessible on low cost. It has quite a lot of the identical options because the Enduro 3 (MIPS, Photo voltaic, maps) with the great addition of a number of sizes (42mm, 47mm, and 51mm). The massive downside is lowered battery life, at 26-63 hours relying on what measurement you put on.
If you need the choices for AMOLED or extra fashionable options like a microphone, look as a substitute on the present era, the Fenix 8.
Coros Vertix 2S: $700 MSRP
Coros is finest identified for, and nonetheless leads the sphere in, lengthy GPS monitoring battery life. The Vertix 2S has a staggering 118 hours of GPS-only monitoring endurance, whereas nonetheless that includes maps and a top quality MIPS show. Just like the Enduro 3 it’s only accessible in a big 50mm measurement. To be honest to the Enduro 3, the Vertix 2S’s all-GNSS-system battery life is the same 73 hours.
Coros Apex 2 Professional: $450
The Apex 2 Professional is smaller and lighter than the chunky Vertix 2S. Sadly, its battery life is about half. That is most likely one of many higher choices within the “mid vary” price range class.
Suunto Vertical Titanium Photo voltaic: $700
The Vertical is Suunto’s stab at an journey centered, battery monster system. It doesn’t fairly stack as much as Garmin or Coros at 65 hours (of all methods, multiband knowledge) but it surely’s rattling shut. It could possibly additionally stretch fairly a bit with photo voltaic charging in the best circumstances.
Suunto Race S: $350
This can be a extra budget-friendly choice that retains a workable 30-40 hours of monitoring. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the premium fashions, however on the value, it is going to definitely get the job executed. Not like the opposite fashions on this listing, the show is AMOLED, not MIPS.
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Featured picture: Graphic design by Chris Helm
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