- Hi, Adventure Alan,
all the trips I was supposed
to guide in Alaska this year
were canceled. OUCH!
Anyway a bunch of us guides
decided to do our own trip
and we chartered a bush plane
to drop us
North of the Arctic circle
(plane engine roars)
on the Brooks Range Alaska.
The skill of these Bush pilots
in Alaska is just amazing
dropping us
(plane engine roars)
on a postage stamp size gravel bar
in the middle of a raging
river in a deep valley.
And for people that don't know
the Gates of the Arctic
National Park is an
AMAZING! place for an adventure.
It's the Northern most national
park in the United States
with all the park north
of the Arctic circle.
And it's the second largest US park.
There are no roads or trails in the park,
just vast wilderness.
Oh and some very large
animals like grizzly bears.
To navigate 10 days in that
vast trail-less road-less
wilderness, we use GAIA
GPS on our iPhones.
This is the same way I've
used GAIA GPS to navigate in
some of the most rugged
places on the planet.
Patagonia, the Grand Canyon and Technical
Canyoneering in Utah.
We believe it's by a large
margin the best navigational tool
for the backcountry.
Anyway we got some cool
clips of using GAIA GPS
in Alaska that we'd
like to share with you.
But this is just the start,
this is sort of a teaser
video for now until our more
comprehensive instructional
video for "GAIA GPS for Hikers
and Backpackers" is done.
But that video is coming
soon and it's gonna be super
informative and will help
you become a safer and more
efficient back country navigator.
We think it's worth waiting for.
Oh and finally, I'd be
remiss if I didn't say this,
I'm filled with such deep
gratitude to have been in such a
pristine and wild place since
I haven't been able to get out
into true wilderness for so long.
I think others will probably understand
what I'm talking about.
(water burbles)
Hi, Adventure Alan here,
and we're out in the Brooks
Range Gates of the Arctic
in Alaska, this is day five of the trip,
and we've been navigating
all this train down here.
That's Mt. Doonerak and the
distance we've been on the
backside of that terrain with all the snow
we've been using GAIA GPS
to navigate for this trip.
And the reason I'm shooting
this clip today right now
is we did a very elegant piece
of navigation using GAIA,
and we were planning on there's
this huge gully below me
that we had to get around
and we were planning on going
way way up around this
ridge line to get around it.
And we were sitting down in
camp there last night and we're
like, well what if we could
just get up this gully here?
Like if we could just get
down across the bottom of this
gully and get up here,
we'd save ourselves a crap
load of time and effort.
So we're looking on the map
and as we get up on this,
we're like, wow, we really
could kind of do that.
And we're zooming in and
looking at these finer terrain details.
So we did and we came
up and we found this,
we found this incredible game
trail exactly where you want
it to be, I mean you can see that
caribou have definitely
been coming up here.
So we just saved ourselves maybe
a 1/3 of a day of hiking
and a lot of effort.
We're just gonna pop right up over there,
we're gonna hit some hard pan Tundra
and it's gonna be easy cruising so,
thank you very much GAIA.
It's an incredible navigation
tool when you're out in some
really bad ass wilderness areas
where there are no trails,
there's nothing.
And the map is everything.
Navigating with GAIA GPS
(air whooshing)
as our primary navigational tool.
And I'd like to talk to you
about what map layers we use
and what type of maps we use,
sort of our whole navigation system here.
First of all, I am using
GAIA GPS with my iPhone
in my pocket and that's my
primary navigational tool,
but to be safe and I do have paper maps,
you can take a look here.
These are USGS TOPO maps
that I've printed out
from GAIA and you can see
that they exactly match
this USGS TOPO layer
that I'm using on GAIA.
So all the map features are
exactly the same as this map.
So this is no different
than the paper map,
it's a little easier and
convenient to use and navigate
with, I also have obviously a
very high quality compass here
with declination, I'm fully
capable of navigating with the
compass and paper maps, I've
been doing it for 50 years,
but the GAIA is a little easier.
The other layer that I do use
with GAIA is the "GAIA TOPO"
these USGS TOPO maps are
scanned and rastered.
They take up a fair amount of memory.
So I use the GAIA TOPO
maps which are vector based
and they're much smaller
and faster to load,
they take up less memory so
I can take a big huge area,
and it's a backup map in case
I get off of this map set.
I do carry that entire
map set of our trip,
that I take notes on and stuff in this big
gallon Ziploc freezer
bag which fits the maps.
So obviously I've downloaded
these maps onto my phone before
the trip,
I've also got some route
planning and some routes loaded
on my phone here of potential
routes that I might take.
And obviously you need to
download these maps ahead of time
when you're in the field
and you have no signal.
And so I have this USGS TOPO
map which I have dialed up,
but if I dial this back,
and then go back to done,
now I'm looking at this
GAIA TOPO map, which also has
a reasonable level of detail.
It's got Ernie Pass in there
and all this stuff that I need,
not quite, doesn't quite
match the USGS Topo map,
but it's perfectly
adequate to navigate with,
and it pans and moves and
refreshes a lot faster on the
phone and it's a lot smaller
files, easier to download,
but you definitely need to
download these before the trip.
So anyway, that's the maps that
we're taking up here into Alaska.
If I were in a national park,
the other map layer that
I would use would be the
National Geographic
Trails Illustrated Maps.
And those are also available with GAIA.
And if you're in those parks,
those are the ones that
have all the regulations,
all the current trails,
'coz this USGS maps are
sometimes 50, 60 years,
even 70 years out of date
in terms of the trails,
and other features on them and
the National Geographic
Trails Illustrated Maps
the parks are usually the latest
and greatest with the correct
trails and all the camping
regulations and a bunch of
information that you need.
But those would be the
three primary layers.
The first layer is the USGS Topo.
Then I would back it
up with the GAIA Topo.
And then third, if I'm in a national park,
I would definitely have the
National Geographic Trails
Illustrated Maps.
(water burbles)
Well, that's all we have for now.
Again, stay tuned for
upcoming instructional video,
GAIA GPS 101 for hikers and backpackers.
And please go ahead and like this video,
follow our channel.
Finally, through Adventure Alan,
you can get GAIA GPS at a steep discount,
only $16 for a year subscription.
Check out the comments
section below this video
for the discount.
Anyway this is Adventure
Alan, signing out.
