

And if you’ve got the bug for wild places-and we imagine that describes an awful lot of our readership here at the Mountain House blog-you’re going to find yourself outside of that realm more than once.
HIKING GPS TRACKER FOR FAMILY OFFLINE
Here we’re going to round up some of the best hiking apps for offline navigation on the market: programs that serve up topographic charts, satellite images, trail guides, and other resources even when you’re outside the realm of cellular or data coverage.

(And, incidentally, a 2013 report by the Outdoor Foundation suggested close to 40 percent of all Americans do take advantage of them while engaged in outdoor recreation.) Smartphone apps can deliver you instant trailside flower guides, birdsong identifiers, celestial charts-and, most notable of all of course, maps and other navigational references for both staying oriented and recording your own movements through the backcountry.

Even if you personally eschew the regular use of a smartphone on your backpacking or paddling or hunting adventures, it’s not a bad idea to have one stowed away in the pack: If nothing else, it’s another emergency tool in case you run into trouble.īut there’s much else to take advantage of, outdoors-wise, with today’s immensely powerful mobile devices. The use of smartphones out in the wilderness is controversial, but there’s no question the technology has real utility.
