“Are we there yet?”
That was the question my son Charlie posed to me midway through our recent hike on the Pacific Crest Trial. Taking a 7-year-old hiking can be a frustrating experience. The whining, the lolly-gagging, the incessant questions. Charlie isn’t a grumbler but he, like all young children, can be a bit impatient. Normally I’d have no answer, but on our recent trip it was nice to have an exact answer to his query.
The Halfmile PCT app (available for both iPhone and Android) is a great tool for experienced and novice hikers trekking along the Pacific Crest Trail. It provides real-time location data and point-to-point directions to nearly anywhere on the 2,650-mile trail that stretches from Mexico to Canada. I wanted to try it out so I took my son and a friend and his son and we hit the PCT near Stevens Pass.
We used the app to plan our trip, find our location and update our kids on the distance and elevation gain to our destination: Nason Creek, 3.5 miles from the Stevens Pass trailhead. So when Charlie asked his question, all I had to do was take my phone out and open the app. It gave us the exact distance (to within a meter) to points north and south of our location on the trail.
That doesn’t mean it stops the belly-aching.
Using the Halfmile PCT app on the trail can seem incongruous. One minute you’re outside, getting back to nature, climbing over boulders, fording streams; the next you’re whipping out your iPhone and looking at a screen that is telling you it’s a mile to the next water source and here’s how to get there.
But the Halfmile PCT app didn’t seem too invasive on our bonding with nature. It’s a basic app and it was more helpful than distracting. It was fun to take my phone out every half mile or so and check our progress. Also I can see how it could be indispensable for thru- or multi-day hikers on the trail. The app provides detailed information on campsites and water sources and also gives you a fair idea of what your day might look like in terms of distance and elevation gain. We passed a number of hikers with iPhones strapped to their gear.
One practical element we noticed was that the app worked when I had no cell service. My friend didn’t have the app and he could use Google maps on his iPhone early in our trek. When we got about 2 miles in, though, we lost cell service and his maps were fractured and no longer updating. The app, on the other hand, worked just fine.
Later in the trip Charlie asked again: “What’s the app say?” he said, trying to squeeze his hand into my pocket. “How much longer ‘til we get there?”
This time I swatted his hand away and kept the phone in my pocket. Sometimes it’s nice to keep things a mystery and just enjoy the scenery.
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