Adventures

We got an epic email into support today. We’re glad Gaia GPS helped in this precarious situation!

My buddy and I were doing a bear hunt in south-central Alaska. We were in pretty extreme mountainous terrain than involved a horrendously thick multi-hour bushwhack to access. Basically, we pursued a brown bear much longer than we should have.

It began to get dark before we even began our descent back into the mandatory bush-whack. It wasn’t long before it became pitch black, and we became lost and disoriented in the thick alders and spruce forests. My friend, being a “traditionalist,” didn’t believe in using such tools as a GPS. I did not think we would be hunting in this exact area, but I pre-downloaded some maps on the Gaia GPS app before we left in the morning.

Knowing we were completely lost and running out of energy (we also didn’t bring our tent as we expected to be back before dark and wanted to travel light) I opened up the app hoping that our location was somewhere on the fringes of one of the maps I had downloaded. After receiving a few “GPS returned bad coordinate” messages, I tried one more time and our position showed up! We were in a completely wrong place, but with the Gaia GPS app in hand, I was able to guide us out of there.

We made a lot of bad decisions that night, but having the Gaia GPS app saved us from a long, cold night; or worse. $20 is a small price to pay for something that can save your life.

We get a lot of interesting reports back from people using Gaia GPS in the wild, everything from tracking wolves, to research in Mongolia, to climbing Everest. One email we received today made me really remember why we started this whole thing in the first place.

Like these folks, I’d found myself lost in the woods, even with a map. And no one came by to guide me out with Gaia GPS:

…the hikers we encountered up there were indeed totally lost and headed into very difficult and dangerous terrain. Steep cliffs with thousand foot drops were less than a few hundred yards ahead of them. Our jaws dropped when we heard them say where they thought they were. Seriously.

By showing them the little arrow on Gaia on an iPad Mini, which PROVED where they were, and PROVED without a doubt as no map could ever do. They were NOT where they thought they were, GAIA helped convince them we were correct and they were not. They were lost, if temporarily so, and on dangerous ground. Like a cat going up a tree, it was way harder going down than up.

I use caps sparingly, but wanted to be clear how GAIA was better at that moment in the field, than a map. One of our patrolmen then gave them his own expensive land map, as well wisely as his cell phone number, as you shall see, and we pointed them out. They quickly became lost again, even with a land map, and wisely called us back on their cell, and I went back down and led them out to the proper trail.

 

I’m delighted to share that Apple’s “Your Verse” ad campaign is now featuring Gaia GPS.

You can read the story, Elevating the Expedition, in which elite mountain guides Adrian Ballinger and Emily Harrington lead their group to the top of Ama Dablam in the Himalayas, with the aid of Gaia GPS on iPad. This “verse” is foreshadowed in Apple’s TV commercial – you see Adrian and Emily trekking across the Himalayas, echoing the pictures in the web story.

I am told summiting Ama Dablam is a treacherous, technical, and death-defying feat. Our whole team feels honored to have our software carried to such great heights, and to see the name Gaia GPS rise up in the news. We want to see Gaia GPS in all of the wild places on Earth, and with the guides of Alpenglow Expeditions carrying our app, we think we’re much closer to that goal.

We’re doing a sale today on iOS – just $9.99 to celebrate the release of Elevating the Expedition.