Memorize the map. Your mind is your best navigating tool.
Memorize the map, carry it with detailed knowledge of what is on it and a spare compass (or two). I mostly visit remote areas, generally thinking of trails only as a means to get off the trail to where I really want to go via bushwhack. For a major trip to an unfamiliar, or even a semi-familiar area, I like to spend hours going over the map in considerable detail, memorizing major features
and their relationship to each other, then begin again going back over the route to pick up on successively smaller features. A sense of direction at each is extremely important. I try to memorize what I would do when encountering each landscape feature, as well as possible alternate choices. I find that when I get out there and at the end of the day or when I am extremely tired and perhaps also dehydrated, the mind may not work so well. If I have a layered approach to memorization, the major landforms will be obvious, and they will trigger memory of smaller details. That's when those hours spent on map study really pay off.
Some people hike primarily just to reach a destination. Usually from what I read here it is some kind of summit. Want to use a gps to get there? Go ahead. Just be sure you are as capable of getting yourself back home again without using the gps if it should become lost or break. Total reliance on such a single mode of total failure is foolish. Other people (like me) find far more enjoyment in observing the landscape and figuring out where I am by using my own continuously developing skill and brainpower. I would much rather know where I am every step of the way by looking outward, using my mind with the aid of map and compass, than to focus on a machine to take me to an endpoint as the goal.
I do own several gps devices. I use them in two ways... first as a long distance canoe racer I use a gps to monitor my speed both when training and during a race. Rarely would I need to use it to navigate, except in very long distance races in a new area or to otherwise gain racing advantage. I programmed 768 waypoints in routes around islands and current during the Yukon 1000, for example. Even there, visualization on the spot with prior knowledge of the map would take priority over following the gps arrow. The gps is a tool during a competitive race.
The second way I use a gps is as a SAR Crew Boss. I work very closely with DEC rangers during a lost person search, and of course the gps is central to search grid navigation and end of day coverage monitoring, to ensure complete coverage in precisely the correct area assigned. You had better know in an instant how to program an assigned search block when a ranger tells you to go there. Even so, completely understanding of use of map and compass is still primary when navigating and leading a crew through the terrain and reporting findings to incident command. The gps is a necessary adjunct tool during SAR.
However, I do not use a gps when hiking for personal recreation. To me it is no more than an unnecessary distraction. It is far more enjoyable to take my time and experience developing use of natural clues along with map, compass, and my brain. I never stop learning, I always know where I am to any reasonable and necessary degree of accuracy, and where I am going. I don't need the gps as a tool to do that.
