General Route Navigation

I was what you might call ‘lost’ twice on the GDMBR.  At least that is all I can remember.  However, I only lost about twenty minutes of time between the two incidences.  One was blowing by an intersection that I needed to turn on in Montana (I wasn’t paying attention) and the other was coming out of Butte and misinterpreting the map narrative…both of which I realized fairly quickly and corrected. 

For tools, I used the maps, Scott Morris’ GPS tracklogs for the US Section (available free online) and a cheap compass mounted to my handlebars.  I thought I might need my orienteering compass but shipped it back home in Whitefish.  I didn’t see the need for any supplemental maps.  The only time one might need a supplemental map is if an off route trip or bypass needs to be done.  In that case, local road maps are available, well, locally.

As far as the GPS goes, could I have ridden the GDMBR without it and still not gotten lost?  Yes.  Did I use my GPS on a regular basis to verify my route decisions?  Yes, why not?  Most of the time the GPS stayed in my handlebar bag collecting data.  I did notice some ‘dead spots’ on the route where the GPS wasn’t picking up enough satellites to dial in a good location.  I also noticed that Scott’s data seemed to have these dead spaces in almost exactly the same places as mine.  I’d see weird track point settings from my collection overlaid on weird track point sections of his.  We were using the same type of GPS, mine being a later version of the one he used.  My history with GPS’s over the last say, 10-15 years, has not been real positive.  I used military GPS’s for around 8 years (prior to the decloaking of the satellites) and had similar problems.  I trusted a GPS about 60% then and trust them about 80% of the time now.  The overall data I collected from daily tracklogs on the GDMBR seems to be inconsistent and I’d say about 85% accurate.   Take it for what its worth. 

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