Adventure-bound: Rockies and desert! (plus comments on GPS mapping tools)

Hard to believe, but in a mere two days I'll be landing in Calgary with two friends to ride down the Continental Divide to Colorado (almost to the New Mexico Border), through the Utah desert, and then back up to Calgary via Idaho. It's a 7500km ADV ride that's taken the better part of 10 months to plan, with much of the effort going into figuring out a route that's in the realm of feasible within our 5-week travel budget.

[Photo by Kent Goins]

After much GPSing in BaseCamp and Google Maps, a route has emerged that combines various established backcountry routes, including the gpsKevin Continental Divide Route, the Colorado BDR, the Trans-America Trail, and the Idaho BDR. Much of the Colorado route is between 10,000-13,000 feet, including the spectacular California Pass shown below. It'll be a physical challenge to ride the whole thing with its varied terrain, weather, and wildlife, while camping much of the way. Many pictures and a detailed ride report to follow.

As I've been working through the detailed GPS planning, I can't help but comment on some of the challenges with using Garmin's "free" mapping tools, namely BaseCamp and its related utilities. Given there's increasingly stiff competition from free alternatives, it's fair to note some growing discrepancies between what Garmin offers for a price, versus what you can now get for free (specifically, Google Maps).

First, I'd like to point out that I purchased the City Navigator Lower US States map from Garmin because the Montana 610 I bought comes with an absolutely useless base map. However, the downloadable map I bought (for almost C$100) cannot be updated or transferred to more than one device. This is a serious limitation if you want to have both a main and back-up GPS pre-loaded with your adventure.

In any case, I found that compared to Google Maps, Garmin's map content is overpriced, under-detailed, and too hampered by DRM to be easily manageable in BaseCamp and on GPS devices. For example, below is a map produced in BaseCamp with TopoCanada base content displayed. Having a printed map of this, that corresponds to your track, is important backup in case your device fails. However, Basecamp prevents you from printing this map with the level of detail shown: the labels disappear, leaving no useful context for all the squiggles. So the only way to print this level of detail is to screen-capture it. Even then, you need to choose between topo or road maps, each with its limitations and costs.

Now compare the above map with the following map made in Google Earth using the same GPX data:

The level of detail is superior to that in the maps from Garmin and is more adjustable. Of course, Google Maps is also free, allows you to overlay satellite imagery for additional detail, and allows you to download maps for offline use on mobile devices for up to 30 days. Even if Garmin provided this level of map detail, it would be too costly to purchase because of how Garmin has chopped up the content over the coverage region I'm interested in. I would need to spend almost $1000 for inferior data with the same coverage. Indeed, I ended up scrapping my purchased Garmin maps because I found that the free maps from Google and free topo maps from GPS File Depot are vastly superior and free (in case you missed that bit). The Google maps print beautifully, and the topos from GPS File Depot load easily into the Garmin. It's a significant problem when customers who purchase a solution receive a worse user experience than non-paying customers.

The second issue (and I've ranted about this before) is that Garmin's GPS devices (e.g. my Montana 610) still use hopelessly outdated hardware. Limitations of the technology prevent you from having more than 2GB of data on the built-in storage, and even though you can put some content on the accessory SD card, there are puzzling restrictions on how you can access and use this additional storage and data. Getting large GPX files and maps on my device reminded me of the days of trying to save games on 5-1/4" floppies, where storage space was a premium. I would love to see Garmin build a next-gen Montana or ruggedized tablet-style device with a modern, efficient, and speedy OS, and more usable methods to build large travel maps and tracks. The current GPS technology competes with 5-year old mobile phones that can now be bought used for under $100 and set up as dedicated GPSes with better performance and more features than a dedicated Garmin device. That's the option my travel mates have adopted, so we'll be comparing notes on the trip.

Third, and as an extension of the above points, there is no practical way to restore maps and routes or tracks to a new Garmin device should the original device crap out while in the backcountry--or worse, if you happen to accidentally erase your device because the menu option to do that is inexplicably--and dangerously--co-located with frequently-used menu commands. Even if you carry a laptop with you (which I don't), it's a painful process to restore. For a device advertised as a rugged outdoor tool, these shortcomings seem like serious oversights. Hence the need to print paper maps and bring a compass--which Garmin makes hard to do.

Bottom line is that reliability means more than solid hardware; the software and other tools also need to be reliable and usable. While it's unwise to rely solely on GPS technology in the backcountry, it can and should be a lot easier and more reliable to use. I don't mind paying for content and technology if it solves a problem and is more convenient than the alternative, but not if the technology and content is demonstrably worse than free options.

After this trip, I'll be investing more time into learning about alternative methods to build maps that don't rely on Garmin's DRM-infested model. The alternatives are now easy enough to use--and obviously superior in quality--that there seems to be little justification for sticking with what I've become adept at using up to now.

Part 1 of the ride report.