GPS Cheating?

[spongebob]

The best thing I do when I go on a bushwhack is set where I park my car as a waypoint on my gps. I feel I would be able to find my car if worse came to worse. I really don't use it after that, and shut it off. When I get to the summit I set that as a waypoint too. I haven't even taken out a compass yet, but I carry two of those though. I think gps is a good safety consideration, especially for solo bushwhack hikers.

 

[woodstrider]

GPS

No, I don't think that it is cheating to use a GPS to find your 46. It saves alot of trouble for the rangers who have to go out to find those "bushwhackeers" that can't find their way out of a paper bag.

 

[ajtiv]

Sherpak
I agree, maybe my point was less clear than it should have been.
I use it as a tool to know where I came from (my car).
It cant tell me where to go especially if the data in the unit is out of date and worse is erroneous.
I typically dont use it to navigate I still use a compass and map.
I track and mark waypoints so I can see where I hiked, elevation gain, distance, time etc and log the info onto my PC.
This way it informs me as to how I hike and lets me compare different hikes to each other with more quantitative data. This is fun and useful.
So cheating is harsh a term, using a good topo map is as much cheating as a GPSR.
IMHO

 

[Benny]

gps

No, i defiently would not say that using a GPS or compass, or whatever would be considered cheating. Hey it's all about the whole experience. How one reaches a summit is his/her own choice. To each his own.

 

[Grumpy]

How can using a common navigational aid to resolve a navigational problem be "cheating"?

G.

 

[Jaytrek57]

"Cheating" exists when one breaks rules.

Getting to the top of a mountain is a pursuit, that may, to the individual or group, have rules.

 

[Grumpy]

"Cheating" exists when one breaks rules.

Getting to the top of a mountain is a pursuit, that may, to the individual or group, have rules.

What/whose rule says that GPS is a no-no in climbing the Adirondack 46 (which is where I think this discussion started)?

G.

 

[JohnL]

I am ambivalent about whether using a GPS is cheating or not but I neither own nor use one. Honestly, I just can't be bothered trying to figure out how to use it or spend the time to program way points or figure out how to punch the buttons with expedition mitts on or remember the idiosynchracies of how to use it in times of stress. I'm just not that much of a gadget person. Not that there's anything wrong with them. A person's directional preferences are their own private business.

Cheating is when you write your name next to a mountain that you didn’t hike up and back down.

JohnL

 

[imarchant]

Whats your purpose?

Hiking is about many different things, such as
1) Being outdoors
2) Physical activity
3) Seeing the sights
4) reaching goals
5) being with Friends
6) meeting new people
7) being alone
etc.

As long as using any equipment helps a person to get out of hiking what they enjoy it is not cheating.

If your purpose is to make things as challenging as possible then you can get into all sorts of arguments like several of the previous posts.

 

[jbrown]

I feel the need to clarify my position. Yes, I plan on doing the 46 without the aid of GPS, but I do not see the use of GPS as "cheating."

How can using a common navigational aid to resolve a navigational problem be "cheating"?

If there was a rule for the 46r's that prohibited the use of GPS in the pursuit of climbing the 46 high peaks, the subsequent use could be termed cheating. There is no rule so it is up to the individual and his or her own convictions to decide whether they will employ this tool in their individual journey. I think no less of the person who uses GPS yet still hikes the mountains I do. They have exerted no less physical effort in reaching the summit than I did.

Under most conditions, you not only don't need a GPS, you don't even need a map or compass either.

Right-on mavs00. Trailless peaks are no longer genuinely trailless in the sense that they once were. Heck, even Redfield with the blow-down requires no map and compass work to speak of. (At least it didn't when I did it...)

Just my $.02.

 

[Jaytrek57]

Grumpy--

I made a general reference and you are reading entirely to much into it.

Peace.

 

[Mark]

Of course it's not cheating IM(most)HO.

99.9% of the spirit of peak bagging rules, both written and implied, is that you ascend to the summit and descend on your own power. (See rules.) So you can't ride a dirt bike up. You can't take a ski lift down. Obvious no-nos.

Why would using a GPS as a navigational aid be cheating, but using a map or compass isn’t? I carry a GPS, but I don’t think I’ve ever used it to actually locate a summit. (Did I cheat?) Even if I did, I’d have no qualms about checking off that summit on my list.

If you really want to open up the discussion to different opinions, let’s ask if it’s cheating to use X/C skis to ascend or descend. How about butt sliding? Mountain bikes on logging roads? Using a sled in winter? Climbing ropes? Roller blading down MW Auto Rd.? I don't really want to ask these questions, only to point out that there are many gray areas.

In the end, it’s all in the head of the hiker. If you think using a GPS is cheating and I use one to navigate one of my hikes, I promise not to flash my patch at you (if and when I ever get one).

Rules or guidelines are there to set some standard. I may not agree with all of them, but there they are. Personally, I think I should get winter credit for hiking Liberty and Flume in April during a huge snow storm, but that guy over there shouldn’t because he did it on a warm, sunny day in January over bare ground. But I won’t and don’t really care. They’re just lists of mountains and sets of rules. I'll abide by them. What the heck.

I took a break last fall on the south ledges near the summit of Whiteface. Two climbers arrived after me and remarked that they thought this was the summit. I commented that the true summit was a little further along the trail in the woods. They casually responded that it was OK. This was a good enough summit for them. “Officially” they did not reach the summit, but in their minds, they did. Who really cares? (I didn’t report them and did not see anything in the news about a congressional investigation on the pair. And, yeah – I did take the extra 20 minutes to find the true summit, but that’s just me.)

So set your own standards where the rules are not specific and abide by them. Let the other guy do the same and let’s go hike.

 

[cushetunk]

If the entire challenge of your hike is to simply reach the summit under your own physical power, then of course using a GPS could not be cheating. However...

I've always found the journey to the summit as compelling as the top itself, especially when I am lost in some god-forsaken snowy balsam thicket and cannot tell up from down. Who wants to know where you are at any given moment? It is the uncertainty, the mystery, that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you may have spent the past five hours tramping up the wrong stream valley. It is reading the mountain like never before; who knew it had so many ridges and knobs? It is thinking you will never make it, and then at last stepping out into the sunlight on top of North Bald Whitecap, just as you intended...

That makes a good hike.

 

[Michael M]

Ask Reinhold and Ed

Ask Reinhold and Ed

I think both would concur that they personally feel much safer without Oz.
Not withstanding RMs more competitive style both are practical/realistic climbers and choose to not needlessly rely on fragile gear, which could place them in harms way. They recognize the enormous subjective dangers of these climbs and choose to attenuate the no self-kill factor, by relying more on themselves

Michael CM

 

[Frosty]

Who wants to know where you are at any given moment?

Certainly not every given moment. But there are two well-publicized fatalities last winter that might have been avoided had the parties in question been able to take a different route down.

Granted, this would require setting up the GPS before the hike with an eye to escape routes, and doing this (setting up bailout routes and alternate ways out) with a map is also helpful and well-advised. But a GPS works better in whiteouts than a map, and if set up ahead of time with labeled waypoints, will get you going down the proper bailout ravine (the one you want is not always obvious under heavy snow cover.)

Frosty

 

[Stan]

It's hard to consider something "cheating" if there are no rules or if you get to make your own rules.

Navigation is the art of applying science to figure out where you are and how to get to where you want to be. How much of an artist you are depends upon how many tools you have and how well you use them. GPS is but one tool, more susceptible to failure than the tool between our ears ... well, maybe that's debateable ... and, in my rules I like to use the most fundamental and basic of all tools, a map and a compass. I don't however, consider myself cheated if I resort to an altimeter or a GPS.

 

[Nadine]

Hmmm, I carry a map compass and gps. I use each as I need them, if at all. I don't consider that cheating.