Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board GPS signal at Portal and along Whitney Trail?

Just curious...does anyone have any experience using GPS handheld devices at the Whitney Portal and along the trail? I was interested in using a Garmin Etrex to track and record my progress up the trail but was wondering about position errors due to signal loss, especially along the lower part of the trail. Additionally, WAAS satellites aren't visible from the portal, right?

Thanks.

My Garmin eTrex Venture C worked fine -- through rain, lightning, fog, snow -- on my hike from the portal to the summit on the main trail on August 27, 2007.

That will depend somewhat upon the model and age of your GPS (.i.e. chipset), but if you have signal loss it will be temporary due mostly to tree cover.

As for WAAS - can't comment. That features uses too much battery for my needs, so I never turn it on.

You should have good GPS reception with any of the eTrex models, even the older ones. WAAS will likely be hard to receive until the summit as the WAAS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit over the equator, However, not sure why that would matter as the GPS accuracy without WAAS is 15 meters or less, which is plenty for a hike on the main trial. If you do a search on this web site, you can find GPS coordinates for the hike.

GPS works great on the main trail. I used my ancient Garmin 12 to map the 97 switchbacks (without WAAS), which you can see here. Up the North Fork, however, the satellites can be blocked by the canyon walls.

If you do not have Excel, you can see a jpeg here.

I presently use Garmin's GPSmap 76CS model and love the features, including WAAS corrections, but I may add one of the eTrex models to my collection later on.

I have a Garmin GPSmap 60CS (no X - doesn't accept the SD card). Below Lone Pine Lake I had some apparent loss of signal issues. Also, a waypoint shows as being well up the North Fork, but I was never there.

Dan

Hello,

It's been years since my day climb but I thought some of you might be interested in this. http://findmespot.com/
Costs about $100 a year but if you hike alone or a lot, it can be a great security tool. Happy Hiking,

Jerry