Wilderness GPS: A Step-by-Step Guide (Mountaineering Outdoor Basics)

* Simple, focused, and accessible, Wilderness GPS is for anyone using GPS in an outdoor setting
* Trust us: first-timers need help to use their new backcountry GPS devices
* From the authors of the bestselling Wilderness Navigation (65,000 copies sold)

Thousands have learned compass and map skills with the help of father-and-son team Bob and Mike Burns and their straightforward, simply explained book, Wilderness Navigation. Now they’ve written a book for everyone who has bought a backcountry GPS device and found it inexplicably complicated to use (which includes most of us). Wilderness GPS is an easy-to-use guide to get you navigating the outdoors with your handheld GPS device. Wondering how to choose from the variety of gear and computer programs, or how to use a GPS with your map and compass effectively? Wilderness GPS details this and more including:

* How to select your GPS gear
* Getting started and practice routines
* Different coordinate systems: latitude and longitude vs. Universal transverse Mercator (UTM)
* Routefinding in wilderness settings, including common scenarios
* GPS vs. map and compass routefinding
* Using GPS on water
* Using your GPS with a home computer or mobile “smart” device

 

Bob Burns and Mike Burns are the authors of Wilderness Navigation, a nationally bestselling primer that serves as the official textbook for navigation courses taught by The Mountaineers and other outdoor education centers. Together, they have decades of professional experience in teaching map and compass, GPS, and navigation in the outdoors and have hiked, scrambled, climbed, and snowshoed all over the West Coast and beyond. They both live in Seattle.

Bob Burns joined The Mountaineers Club in 1971. In 1972 he graduated from the Basic Climbing Course in the Everett branch. In 1975 he moved to Seattle, and graduated from The Mountaineers Snowshoe Course in 1974 and the Intermediate Climbing Course in 1976. He served on the Club’s Climbing Committee from 1975 to 1985, and on its Board of Trustees from 1986 through 1991. He has hiked, scrambled, climbed and snowshoed extensively in Washington, Oregon, and California.