Our property in WY is at 8000’ atop Casper Mountain and looks
southward with a beautiful view from SE to SW. Far to the SE, one can
see two high mountains and to the SW is a distant range of mountains
while near to the south is Muddy Mountain. I was sitting on the porch
with a neighbor and we were discussing what mountains these were. He
said the high one top the SE was Laramie Peak and the range to the SW
was the Seminoe Range but I was doubtful. He picks my Garmin 76 GPS
up offa the table and turns it on and we begin to wait for it to
acquire satellites. Meanwhile, I get my old Silva hand compass and
take bearings on the mountains. With the bearings, I draw lines on
the topo map from my known location in the directions my compass
indicates. Finally, my neighbor takes the GPS to a place with a
clearer view of the sky out from under the thin Aspens. By the time
the GPS had the bearing to the mountains, I had already plotted the
lines from my hand compass and had decided that my neighbor was wrong
and I correctly identify the mountains.
The moral of this story? Often GPS is simply too high tech to be
useful and a simple hand compass is more useful. Two more times on
this trip the GPS was too slow to start working and I used my hand
compass to more easily get the right info. Unfortunately, the Garmin
GPS76 eats batteries so one cannot simply keep it on unless you have
many more batteries ready.
So, I’d like to see a simple GPS with a built in needle type no
battery hand compass. It would also have a straight edge with a scale
and even a protractor for measuring angles.