Re: RC: Marking an Endurance Ride with a GPS

[LSimoni197@aol.com]

Kat definitely voiced most of my concerns about using the GPS for endurance rides.  I can add a few more considerations to think about before planning to mark trails in this fashion.

A GPS is powered by small batteries which would go dead at inconvenient times.  For safety the riders of the XP needed to carry an extra set of batteries in the saddle pack.  I personally refuse to add up the dollars I spent on replacement batteries for just one month of the XP.  We began changing them early, rather than have them go dead on a ride.  I believe they lasted a day and a half in my GPS unit.  So I would fill up with gas, and buy more packs of batteries.

AERC is continually encouraging new riders and members.  I feel the requirement to buy a GPS to do an endurance ride would be a big deterrent to new riders giving our sport a try.  I would not put out a couple of hundred dollars before I even knew if I liked distance riding. 

Also, as Kat said, the GPS worked good in the flat Midwest where the trail was on section line roads, with most turns coming only every mile, and sometimes not for 13 miles.  I live in Grass Valley and have helped mark the trail for the Scotts Flat ride and the Wild West Ride.  These rides are through forested canyons.  I could not imagine holding a GPS in my hand as I weave around the tree trunks, hoping to protect my knees, and leaning forward out of the saddle for the steep up hills, or down hill to water crossings.  These are single track trail in many places, and the kind of trail I most enjoy riding, but I surely would not want to go past a turn, and them have to double back to get on trail, or hold a GPS in my hand looking at it, rather than at the rocks and roots and holes in the trail.  Kat may teach riders to look up in an arena, but I look where my horse is putting his hoof down on these trails.

This reminds me, in many areas, volunteers mark different sections of the trail for the ride managers.  That is easy for us to do with surveyors tape, and lime plus an occasional paper plate.  Most rides are not one direction in a straight line as the XP was.  They are a series of loops, sometimes riders of different length rides use the trail in different directions at different times.  This can usually be done with minimal confusion by using different colors of tape, and telling the rider which side of the trail the markings will be on.  I believe that this could be much more difficult with a GPS.  The ride manager would need to plot all of the way points for the entire route while riding a horse.

I believe that we encountered another problem with the GPS marked trails.  This GPS way point programing can be done way in advance of the ride date, even a year before.  Well, sometimes there are road blockages.  Roads which are now gated.  In our mountains there are many downed trees, and in other places a rider could end up on the wrong side of a fence, only to discover no way through and a long back track must be taken.

Perhaps both methods have there place, but I personally prefer to follow a marked trail that I can see the markings on the trail.

Lynge