Could a Garmin help you in a survival situation?? (Read 837 times)

I went mountain biking this weekend wit DH and looking back at what happened I can really see how dumb we were. Its a funny story now, but it couldve ended up a little worse. We went out in this area that consists of 3 trails all woven around eachother. Error#1 - We didnt have a trail map and just figured we would go out for about an hour which would be sufficient time to do 1 trail and dump us back out at the parking lot (Yeah right) Error #2 We didnt tell anyone where we were giong Error #3 I left dinner cooking in the crock pot and the oven on with potatoes cooking. and left my semi-disabled brother in charge while we were gone (Ha!) Error #4 We didnt have helmets (didnt exactly need them this time around, but its still dumb) Error #5 We didnt have our cell phones Error #6 We went out at 5pm, it gets dark now around 7 or 730 So after about an hour of truly strenuous activity/falling/bike ditching, I decided I just wanted to be done and go home. Then we realized we didnt know what trail we had picked, or how long it was. After a short while, I thought I remembered from the last time we were there that the trail we were on was the long one, so we decided to hop onto another trail which I believed to be shorter. It was shorter, however it just continually loops itself and never actually takes you back to the parking lot. Long story short, about 2 hours later and at the point where I was starting to think we were gonna have to hunker down in the woods for the night, we found the LAST person on the trials that night who luckily was able to escort us out. It was by no means a dire situation, but it couldve been a little hairy if we didnt happen to bump into him. I think he was my little messenger from above that day! But I got to thinking: I had my Garmin on, but I dont know much about it except to see how far we went. By the way, we had wound up mountain biking over 7 miles that night (For novices like us, this is FAR, especially when I had to physically get off an walk the bike many times) Could the Garmin have helped us in this siutation at all? Is there anyway I could have like seen where we were in relation to the nearest roads or anything? If we had in fact been REALLY lost for awhile, could anyone have been able to get our signal or something??? Thanks, now I know better to be prepared when we go out to this place.

You absolutely could have used your Garmin to find your way out. I didn't actually need it, but I did just that by playing around with the menu while running on a lake earlier this winter: http://news.runtowin.com/2008/01/06/getting-lost-while-running-in-the-middle-of-a-lake.html I had gone around a few islands, and wasn't 100% sure where the trail was where I had come onto the lake, so I started heading in the general direction I though I needed to be in. (I have a very good sense of direction when I'm on foot.) After a few minutes, I hadn't noticed the open water that I'd run by, so I thought hey, I know the Garmin can tell me this sort of thing, lets take a breather and figure it out. So I turned on the maps and had it tell me how to return to start, whereupon it laid out my route that I ran. There was no actual map, but I was able to clearly see where I had come from and that I was basically on a beeline for where I'd gotten onto the lake (I had originally run out from a different direction so no tracks to follow here.) Unfortunately, from that point on it was on "return to start mode" and started beeping at me 15 feet before every turn to tell me that a turn was coming up. I had to stop after the 5th or 6th turn to shut off that feature. Neat when you don't know where you are going, but at that point I knew.

So if it gives lon. and lat. could a person use it for geocaching...or is it not sensitive enough?

I have never seen mine get more accurate than about 10 ft. Depending on accuracy, it could work. The problem is you have to mark you location each time you want coordinates. With a standard hand held GPS, coordiantes are displayed in real time and you can zero in on your target. In short, it would be tuff, but doable.

Ahhh...that makes sense. Might be worth trying, though.

You absolutely could have used your Garmin to find your way out. I didn't actually need it, but I did just that by playing around with the menu while running on a lake earlier this winter: http://news.runtowin.com/2008/01/06/getting-lost-while-running-in-the-middle-of-a-lake.html

This is a really cool feature I will definitely have to play with, but I dont know if it wouldve helped in my situation. You were on a flat lake, but I was in the woods where the trail will continually loop around itself and twist and turn - so if I had marked the parking lot as a point and then told it to get me back to that point, it would only be effective if i could literally walk through the woods with the bike. but i had to stay on the trail. Also, I knew I could turn around and go back the way i came, but at that point it had taken me almost an 1.5 hours to get to where i was, I certainly wasnt going to go back another 1.5 hours! But I will defintiely tamper with this feature and maybe get used to itenough to actually try it out next time we go. And as an added side note: I tried going online and getting the trail map so i could see where we went wrong, but it is literally not availble online ANYWHERE. not only that, they dont even have the map available at the visitor's station up the road. AND the map that is posted at the trail entrance is soooo old and faded you cant even tell the difference between the 3 trail colors. They all look like the same stupid lines! HOW ASSANINE IS THIS?!?! I swear, if I COULD find someone to complain to, I WOULD!!

I have never seen mine get more accurate than about 10 ft. Depending on accuracy, it could work. The problem is you have to mark you location each time you want coordinates. With a standard hand held GPS, coordiantes are displayed in real time and you can zero in on your target. In short, it would be tuff, but doable.

I don't have my 305 with me, so I can't check, but I think that when you customize your displays two of the options are latitude and longitude. This would give you real-time coordinates without marking a location.

Yes - I have used a 201 and 305 for geocaching. Don't really need a map for geocaching, you just need a device that can tell you "300 feet thataway to the lat/long". Forerunners can do this fine.

Ooh...this is so cool! And now the snow is melting! I can't wait to take DS out and do this. His spring break is in a few weeks. That would be a perfect activity with a 7 year old boy, I think.

If I can get lost in the woods snowshoeing and find my way out, anyone can! The Garmin has saved me a couple of times. That's one of the features I love about it...just turn till your arrow points toward start and you're on your way (or use the reverse route feature)! The last time we snowshoed the trails weren't visible at all, so by the time we realized we were "lost" (could follow our tracks, but that would take way too long), we really started running out of time (had to get our little one off the bus). We became less choosey as to where we went and started barrelling through some areas that weren't as clear just to make it more of a straight shot to "start". Made it to the bus with about a minute to spare!