The Trail Log

I’m something of a GPS geek. When I hike/backpack I carry 3 different GPSes on me. I’ve got my Garmin Colorado, my TrackStick, and my Garmin Forerunner. I’ve always been on the lookout for a device that would let me do some kind of real-time communication with my GPS data and with services like Brightkite and Fire Eagle out there, I became even more desperate. So when I discovered the SPOT, I was overjoyed. After playing with the device for a month, I’m still excited, but it’s not quite the perfect solution.

The Bad
If you get a SPOT, you should be warned that this is not the kind of device that you can just take out and start playing with. For one, the signal isn’t good enough, and two - my biggest complaint - is that the indicator lights are terrible. It takes some getting used to in order to figure out exactly what the SPOT is doing (and what it isn’t). Plus, the SPOT doesn’t really seem to be meant for any kind of “instant action”. You can’t click a button and expect an email or text message to come right away, so it’s difficult to pull it out of the box and start testing it. You really have to carry it around for a while in order to get a sense of whether or not it’s working.

The other big bummer is that the signal just isn’t that good. I was generally okay with the GPS signal while hiking through trees and on cloudy days, but the actual data signal didn’t seem to be great which means you may be getting data, but you won’t always be sending it. Supposedly it uses the Globalstar Simplex network which I’ve heard people having general issues with. The other problem is that because it’s a simplex network, you won’t get any indication that your message has arrived. The receiver only does one-way transmission so it can’t tell you if the message was actually received.

Finally, I hate the clip. It doesn’t attach well to my pack.

The Good
The SPOT is tough. I dropped it off my 2nd story balcony onto cement and the sucker kept on ticking (my heart did skip a beat however because I’d only gotten it that day). I also like the user interface on the SPOT mapping application. It uses Ajax and Google Maps and does a pretty good job of plotting things. One thing I don’t like is that it isn’t always as granular as I would like so sometimes the dots are squished together if I’m not moving fast enough.

It’s also fun to share GPS stuff. Aside from sensitivity issues, the SPOT generally picks up most of my tracks and gets messages sent out most of the time. It’s fun to be able to checkin to places remotely and give my parents a map of exactly where I am. The help and 911 features are also great. As an emergency device, SPOT is perfect. It gets most of the messages out, and would give anyone trying to find you a huge advantage - so in my opinion that in itself is worth the price of admission.

The other great thing about the SPOT is the battery life. It only takes Lithium batteries, but it lasts forever. Something like 14 days when you’re in the track mode which pings the satellites every 10 minutes and 7 days in 911 mode which does it every 2-3 minutes I think. So you’ll be in good shape if you bring a couple of extra Lithium batteries.

Conclusion
It’s a great idea with far from perfect execution but they’ve started off on the right foot. As a social media device, SPOT falls far short, but as an emergency device, it’s excellent, and that’ really what it was made for. If you do a lot of backpacking/hiking, I really encourage you to get one. If you’re going to be in urban areas most of the time, the iPhone 3G will do you just fine when it comes to GPS messaging.

Ciara and I were looking for a backpacking trip with little to no snow and ended up finding it oddly enough in North Cascades National park on the Ross Lake Dam trail (map) (Flickr Photoset). In order to do the hike you need to get a free overnight backcountry permit from one of the North Cascade Ranger stations scattered about. That was pretty easy and once we did that we made our way to the trailhead. We got a bit of a late start and didn’t begin hiking until around 4:00 that afternoon.

The trail starts off going down a trail and then turning into a road where it intersects with the dam. The views off the Ross Lake Dam are great so take a moment to stop and enjoy. After crossing the dam the trail goes gradually uphill as it snakes along the lake. There are a couple of small, easy creek crossings along the way. Eventually the trail forks. The right trail goes down to the Ross Lake resort so keep left.

About 1/3 of the way through the trail starts to get higher and break through the trees a bit providing great views of the lake. About half way the trail intersects with with the Sourdough Mountain Trail so keep right and work your way gradually down through more forests. The trail goes through another gradual uphill and crosses a couple of streams before finally finding its way down to Big Beaver Creek. The first campsite along the trail is the Pumpkin Mountain campsite but we continued on to the Big Beaver Creek campsite.

We couldn’t actually find the Big Beaver Creek site. It’s a big area and we found signs for the horse camp and the boat camp but nothing that resembled an actual campsite. Instead we tried to camp in the lowest impact spot possible - an area that is normally covered by water.

Grab our GPX track for the Ross Lake Dam Trail Reversing it will get you to the intersection of the Ross Lake Dam trail and the Big Beaver Creek trail.