Watching the sunrise from an alpine meadow is something that everybody should experience. The serenity and calmness of a summer morning in the mountains is an incomparable experience. However, before you can enjoy the view, you have to find the meadow. In most cases you need a guide or a good map.
Matt Bannon heading toward Mt. Jefferson from alpine meadow
In July, I found myself planning a trip to Mt. Jefferson, a volcanic peak in the Oregon Cascade Mountains. It is a beautiful backcountry peak, but to get to it you have to take a long, uphill hike on poorly marked trails. For this trip I planned to bring along all of my usual mountaineering gear. But instead of a paper map, I'd be carrying Pocket Navigator, a new Pocket PC software version of Terrain Navigator from Maptech.
Integrated mapping and GPS technology
Terrain Navigator is an easy-to-use mapping program for your PC. It allows you to view and print maps as well as plan trips and map routes. The USGS maps reside on several CDs and you load them onto your PC as needed. Once you've got the right map and understand the routes you plan to take, you use Pocket Navigator to download the map to your Pocket PC (Screen 1).
Screen 1: Pocket Navigator integrates mapping and GPS technology, displaying detailed USGS topographical maps that scroll as you move along your route.
The software integrates mapping and GPS technology on a Pocket PC. It offers amazingly detailed USGS topographical maps of any location in the US, and when used with a GPS receiver the maps scroll as you move along your route. As an outdoor adventure junkie, my mouth was watering at the prospect.
Before I left for the trip, I downloaded the Mt. Jefferson map from the desktop PC program to my Jornada Pocket PC. To make sure the system functioned properly, I connected the Pocket PC to the Magellan 310 GPS receiver via cable and sauntered around my neighborhood. Immediately, the GPS started transmitting location and speed vector data to the Pocket PC. I took a couple of days to drive around town with the arrangement to work out any bugs. Once I was convinced that it did everything it was supposed to do, I was ready to take it to the mountain.
Plotting our progress with Maptech
My climbing partner Matt and I left for the mountain after work on a Friday afternoon. After driving for a few hours, we arrived at the dirt parking lot at the start of the climb. We lashed up our boots, loaded our packs, and then pulled out the Jornada and GPS for the trek towards Mt. Jefferson. We tracked our progress on the Pocket PC as we meandered through the mountains and hills. The Maptech software plotted our progress on the topo map with a red line. Also, the software indicated our position, speed, and direction via a small circle and an arrow. The length of the arrow indicates the distance you will travel in ten minutes at the current speed. Very cool! (Screen 2).
Screen 2: The Maptech software indicates your position, speed, and direction. The length of the arrow indicates the distance you will travel in ten minutes.
The software does a great job of showing where you are, but because the Pocket PC's screen is so small, you have to zoom in to a small section of the area in order to look at detailed topographic lines. If you want to relate your position to a larger area, for instance the parking lot or a nearby lake, then you have to zoom back out. I found myself performing this zooming action very frequently. It soon became a normal activity.
Checking out my position while climbing across the vast Whitewater Glacier. (photo by Matt Bannon)
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