Gaia GPS

Recently I have had some great trekking opportunities, all of them taking advantage of being in (or close to) a particular location. These were The Subway (Zion NP, Utah), Toubkal Massif (High Atlas, Morocco) and the West Coast Trail (Vancouver Island, Canada). While the Subway and the West Coast Trail are officially considered "for experienced backpackers only", this consideration is a typical western - world - style exaggeration. It is not possible to get lost there.

High Atlas is a different story. Precise topo maps do not exist and while there are many trails you may try to follow, some of them may lead to impassable (in Spring) high mountain passes and some are faint enough to lose when weather conditions deteriorate. Locals are even reportedly messing up with the markings, so the trekkers feeling insecure are more willing to hire a guide (I do not believe this though, nor found any signs of that being a true story). But still, considering the altitude, there is a lot of snow in Africa, and even equipped with crampons you should watch your steps carefully, so a dependable map / navigation is a must.

Preparations for the Toubkal trek were not entirely straightforward. But the more I was analyzing different maps and blogs, I was building the more faith in Gaia GPS. And the set of maps that are available for this service. Finally after carefully comparing the maps and the planned trails with satellite images (thanks Google!), the level of confidence grew to the point of going there with no guide. And it all worked.

Always having a backup I opted for taking two devices: the faithful Blackberry KeyOne and an iPad Mini (the cellular version, as it has a GPS, which is essential). Normally one of these devices would work sufficiently, but electronic devices have one thing in common: they break.If a chance of breaking one device is, say 10%, a chance of breaking both is an order of magnitude lower - just 1%. This clear math tells me to take two GPS/mapping devices when no other navigation options are available.

We started at Imlil, heading to the Refugio Azib Tamsoult (2250m) on day 1, moving then to Refuge Jacques de Lepiney (3000m) on day 2 and then over the Auguelzim Pass (3650m) on day 3 to the  Refuge du Toubkal (3200m) to ascent the Toubkal peak (4167m) on day 4 and get down to Imlil. Days 2 and 3 were definitely the most gorgeous - we were absolutely alone on the trail and were the only group spending the night at Lepiney. What a fabulous place!

This whole trail is fairly easy to follow for those who had done this before. But going there for the first time alone is obviously a challenge and it was really Gaia GPS that made it possible. Our descent from Aguelzim was in total fog (we figured out it was getting very foggy in Atlas in the afternoon in May...) and navigating with Gaia was a breeze, it worked almost like Google Maps do on 101 between San Francisco and San Jose.

Gaia GPS has a number of map sources (select the ones that work best in your area), allows for upfront route planning at a comfort of a home desk and of course has the offline mode that caches all map tiles for your trip. It is a highly advanced topo navigation system that you can rely on - in conditions when other typical navigation systems become helpless.