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Tried that new GPS route app on the PCT near Crater Lake
I shelled out $40 for a premium trail app that promised offline maps and perfect elevation data, but it guided me onto a washed-out side trail that added 5 extra miles of bushwhacking. Spent two hours backtracking and lost half my water supply scrambling over deadfall. Has anyone else had a GPS app steer them completely wrong on a familiar stretch?
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drews553mo ago
Man I feel your pain... that sounds like a nightmare with the water situation especially. I actually read this article a few weeks back about how these trail apps are using data that's sometimes years out of date, and a lot of them just copy old government maps without checking if anything changed. The author was saying the Forest Service actually updates their own digital maps every spring but most app companies don't bother to sync with them. They just want to push out a "premium" product and call it done... It's wild how a $40 app can be worse than a free government PDF and some common sense. Makes me wonder if any of these companies actually send people out to walk the trails they're mapping.
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dakota_miller933mo ago
It is basically fast fashion but for hiking apps.
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sam_cooper3mo ago
The whole "premium" thing is a joke sometimes. I had one of those apps, the one that costs like $50 a year, send me straight into a closed trail that was basically a creek bed by July. The "offline maps" were garbage because they were based on old USFS data from like 2012. Ended up having to use my phone's GPS with a PDF of the real map I downloaded from the forest service website for free. Saved myself a lot of trouble on later trips just using Caltopo and printing paper backups. The apps are fine for pavement but they don't understand that trails move, wash out, or get rerouted every single season.
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