Trail Riding/marking

So far , this season's been a blast.
Seen some good trails, and plan on exploring further.
Lovin my bike, we both are beggin to explore more.

Trouble is...there's always new trails...I live near an endless supply and there's and endless supply connected to them...so it seems

I've been preparing my kit , in anticipation...lotsa wants there...but trail marking and recording has been a hassle.

I guess a GPS would help...but I don't have much experience or budget to work with on this.

I'm sure $500 at futureshop would suck me in real nice...but is there a better choice?

Maybe a better trail marking system would help too...?

I can use a map and compass...but doesn't seem convenient on the fly, for what I'm doing.

With a better system , I'ld certainly explore better/farther...

Any advice for a noob?

Learn to use a GPS. Amazon has the Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx on sale right now for a steal of a deal, about $240. Similar pricing may be found at GPS Central or GPS City, maybe or maybe not.

If we can teach Afghan tribesmen to use DAGRs, you shouldn't have a problem with a Garmin GPS. I don't care how good you think you are with a map and compass, you aren't even remotely, ball park close to what a GPS will do.

You can buy Topo Canada and acquire Mapsource at the same time, or you can search on how to get Mapsource for free (without pirating, which I don't condone) then download the free Ibycus mapset, which is essentially the NRCAN 1:50k mapset you should be familiar with.

There's a GPS forum here, for GPS/mapping specific discussion.

Once you've figured things out, you can start filling in the Nova Scotia holes in www.DualSportMaps.com

Cool, thanks. I will check into it.
...Do you suggest that Garmin as a minimum?
...And I will search the proper forum next time.

mucker wrote:

Cool, thanks. I will check into it.
...Do you suggest that Garmin as a minimum?
...And I will search the proper forum next time.

Garmin is the only way to go. Unless you've got a degree in geomatics or are willing to take the time to learn the background nause to properly run a Trimble Juno or something similar.

In function, accuracy, etc, there really is little to choose between the Garmin's, Delorme's, etc. They usually use the same GPS chipsets and whatnot. The essential difference is the amount of support for the Garmin products. All the recreational GPS companies produce their own mapsets (obtained from exactly the same base mapping), it's the third party mapping and utilities that make the difference and give Garmin the edge for the majority of people. If you're a serious enduro competitor perhaps a Trail-Tech is more to your liking, for example. But for maps (as another example) you won't find anything like the free Ibycus mapset for Delorme or anybody else, nor will you find third party products like Backroad Mapbooks in Canada for anything but Garmin.

The 60CSx is very inexpensive right now and a fully featured and trail-proven GPS. I prefer the Rino 530HCx, for it's additional radio, text, and polling abilities. Same features and GPS accuracy with comms added - but the comms are mostly pointless if you don't ride with others also using Rino technology, or carrying a GMRS radio, or don't need weather alerts. I think when you go below the 60CSx, like the Etrex series, you lose things that aren't worth the money you save for a dual sporting GPS. The Etrex are pretty good units as well, depending on the version of Etrex, but if I didn't own one already I wouldn't choose it for my first one right now.

You won't find much in the GPS forum right now, and when you don't know if you should use a GPS "or what", General is about as good a place as any to start. I try and get on here once a day and do a cursory check to see that threads are generally in their area of focus, so it isn't that big a deal to move one that goes sideways into another area (as this one is almost starting to get, but it's still general) or should have been somewhere else to begin with. It's not about being anal about using the right forum, it's about keeping our ever growing knowledge base as effective as possible in focusing that knowledge into easily and quickly scannable forums. So I change subject lines frequently to reflect the contents of the thread as well.

On the cheap, do you have a smartphone already?

Heh...my cellphone's about 6 yrs old. And costs $15/mnth.

Mine too actually, but I have a 7 inch tablet and a $30 holux m1000 that gives gps to anything that supports bluetooth. The thing is though, you can pick up an used smartphone that has gps and wifi, often for free from people who have upgraded. You don't put a sim card in it and you basically have an mp3 player, gps(need to get offline maps), web browsing, thingy. I did that with a little windows mobile phone, an incite. Takes more work to set up, but seeing as how I am poor and my time worth little, was worth it to me