My uncle hiked the Long Trail in 1978 with a paper map and now I feel like I'm cheating with my phone | Backpacking Routes - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
My uncle hiked the Long Trail in 1978 with a paper map and now I feel like I'm cheating with my phone
My uncle Ray came by last weekend and we got to talking about his thru hike of the Long Trail back in 1978, all 273 miles with nothing but a folded paper map and a compass. He asked me how I plan routes now and when I said I use an app with GPS tracks he just laughed and said he hoped I at least knew how to read a topo. It got me thinking about how much of the route finding I've handed over to my phone, and honestly I'm not sure I could bail myself out if the battery died. Curious if anyone here still carries paper maps as a backup or if that's just something old guys like Ray do.