This year, Gaia GPS started a podcast to help inspire your backyard adventures and beyond. Here are the top five episodes according to our listeners. Stories range from unexpectedly becoming a world class athlete, to surviving a bear attack.

Exploring great backcountry terrain often goes hand in hand with the threat of avalanches, but with careful route planning and rational terrain management, dangerous slides can largely be avoided. Before you head into the backcountry, brush up on how to use the best maps to identify avalanche terrain and plan the safest routes.

Bruce Tremper nearly died in an avalanche. Tune in to hear this harrowing tale, and how getting buried alive changed the trajectory of this avalanche expert’s life.

No more trial-and-error in driving up to the trailhead to find the deepest and lightest powder. The new Snow Stations (Daily) map gives you up-to-date, 24-hour reports on snow conditions in remote areas around the western US and British Columbia. Check out the new map to get a look at real-time conditions on peaks and passes in your favorite backcountry zones.

From staying on course to checking avalanche forecasts, navigating with Gaia GPS proves even more valuable during winter. But you can’t use your phone if it dies in the cold. Learn how to preserve your phone battery when the temperature drops.

Give a gift outdoor lovers will actually use — an experience. From travel, to education, to safety, our holiday gift guide rounds up the best COVID-friendly experience gifts for nature lovers and adventurers.

Get the low-down on avalanche safety from the man who’s written the literal avalanche safety books, Bruce Tremper. This week on the Out and Back podcast, Tremper nerds out on snow science, shares his backcountry safety playbook, and busts some long-standing avalanche myths. You won’t look at backcountry zones the same again.

The release of Android 2020.11 includes fresh updates to improve your viewing and navigation experience on your tablet and phone. Now you can navigate with all your trip details visible on your tablet, quickly view map legends across devices, and save photos from the app to your phone.

Learn about these new updates and make sure you have the newest version of Gaia GPS by updating to to 2020.11 in the Play Store.

As winter looms, the AMGA is here to provide educational resources for using Gaia GPS to the fullest for safer planning and navigation. In this series of short videos, AMGA/IFMGA guide Silas Rossi runs through how to use Gaia GPS to plan a route, better use your phone as a GPS unit in the field, and record a track.

This holiday season, meet some of our favorite organizations making the outdoors more inclusive for all. Join us in giving them a little extra love with a donation or by supporting their efforts online.

Plan trips faster than ever with the USFS Recreation Sites map in Gaia GPS. This map clearly marks U.S. Forest Service campgrounds, trailheads, visitor centers, and other points of interest at high zoom levels, letting you view your options across an entire national forest.

Examine trail conditions from the comfort of your couch using two new satellite imagery maps. FreshSat – Cloud Free shows mostly cloudless terrain. FreshSat – Recent shows as up-to-date imagery as possible. Both maps use satellite data from the Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 government satellites, and are updated at least every 14 days.