I got back from a week of hunting in temperatures running from 20˚ to 42˚ and back down to 24˚. I stayed at a friend’s place and it was normally a 40 minute drive to get into hunting country. We would start out the morning watching the weather but once we were on the road I had my Garmin Rino on the weather to capture a more detailed forecast.
I am getting at what the drain or load on the unit was. The power source was the Garmin rechargeable battery. Before leaving the house the unit was in Track Mode, and I had the Map screen up. My partner dropped me off at a high saddle and the plan was for me to work to higher elevation cut across the slope to a secondary ridge and drop to the bottom where I had ran into a bear last year.
My partner drove a few miles to “J” hook to a ground stand where he could watch an old clearcut that was growing back. I already had his ground blind as a waypoint in my gps. I selected it as a Go To waypoint in my unit. The plan being once I could look across the drainage and see the location I would switch waypoints. The second waypoint is where I killed a buck a couple years ago. This was the general location I spotted the bear last year.
The weather was real nasty with a cold rain, and then snow. My glasses were fogging up along with my old binoculars. The window for the hunt had opened quickly and I forgot that I had put my Leopold binoculars in my range bag and took a pair of fifty year old binoculars on the trip. Visibility across the top was bad along with the clouds setting down on the peak at times. This was a trip for a gps because at the top the topography split into three drainages. I came close to dropping into the wrong drainage because of the limited visibility.
To have dropped into the wrong drainage would have been a nasty event. I have been sick for two months and not in the best of shape. Going down in the wrong drainage would have dropped me about 1000 feet in elevation and I would have to regain 500 feet in elevation and walk a couple extra miles to make the pickup point. I normally bring an extra Midland radio for my partner to use, but did not because he has a set of radios. He did not have his radio with him.
When I got on the steep North Slope I had to cross an area that had been logged and there was a lot of slash on the ground covered with up to two feet of frozen snow. I checked the Bearing Pointer on the Compass Page and the Dist To Dest box. My partner had shot a buck on the lower slope below the ridge that I want to cross and worked down. I had used my Nikon 800 rangefinder to determine the distance of his shot which was 266 yards. Best estimate was the ridge from his location was 400 to 500 yards away from his stand.
The snow had changed to a pounding rain and I cut across the snow covered slope to get into the timber so that I did not have to fight the snow on the ground. The steep slope was slick and I took a couple of falls in the process.
Once in the timber I checked the Weaver scope on my 7MM Magnum and it was clear, and the covers went back on. But it was the gps I kept checking every few hundred feet to make sure that I was on course because rain and low clouds, along with water covered glasses messed up my visibility.
Once I was on the right ridge I glassed my hunting partners stand and realized that he was not there. I knew I was running about an hour behind time. It happen that we were in one of the few areas we hunt where there is limited cellphone coverage. I got in under some heavy tree canopy to break the rain fall and gave him a call. Normally we do not have our phones on when hunting. He did not answer but returned my call in a few minutes.
When the rain intensified he had return to his pickup and moved to the location he was to pick me up. I told him I was still an hour out. I set my gps for the location I had killed the buck. Going direct to the pickup point was not the best because of a rock face and steep terrain. Going to the kill site put me below the steep terrain and from there I could work my way out to one of my old campsites where he was going to pick me up.
My footwear was not the best for steep slopes but they were great for the snow rain mix. I was wearing a twenty year old pair of LaCrosse Iceman Pacs. My smokejumper 10 inch vibram boots were put away all week because of wet and cold conditions. I took couple of falls, the first one was when I was on some open ground and a grape fruit size rock rolled under my foot and I hit the ground on my side keep my rifle up to protect it. The other was crossing the icy frozen snow on the steep slope. It was more of a slide then a fall. I carry the Garmin Rino in a camera case because of its size and it did not suffer any damage.
I know my way back to the road but I selected my old campsite new to the road waypoint as a matter of practice and made it out to the pickup point.
After some lunch we head for the snow in the higher elevation hoping to pick up the track of a bear. No such luck. The gps keep recording our track and was a dependable source of location information along with Weather Radio updates. I used the same battery a second day before charging it. The charge level at that time had dropped to 32%.
A little Catch-22 the next morning when I started up the gps in the pickup the back light did not come on and I could not see the screen enough to work the menu options to return the backlight. It did not matter when the sun came up.
I must have lost some brain cells during the illness because I could not remember how to reset the light. Later on I remember and had the backlight working the next morning when we started out. There must have been some sort of fault that caused it to shut down.
After the battery was charged I replaced it with an extra rechargeable. With the Garmin gps units the Altimeter and the electronic Compass need to be recalibrated after a battery change.
A gps is a handy tool when the fog sets in, or the clouds come down on the mountain tops. It is not too difficult to become disorientated; especially when the body becomes fatigued from exertion and cold.
The next day the temperature held around 24˚ and there was a lot of battery left at the end of the day.
I have been interested in the DeLorme units but they have not been in the budget. The PN-60 with Spot just might be the thing for old guys.
http://www.delorme.com/
