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download maps

Someone holds their phone out infront of snow-capped mountains.

How to Find Your Location Without Cell Service

by Abby Levene November 21, 2021

written by Abby Levene

You’re on an adventure having the time of your life, until all of a sudden you’re lost. You can’t find the trail, and you don’t have cell service. Whether you’re hiking, offroading, running, or biking, we’ve all experienced that moment of panic. In fact, that’s a large reason why Gaia GPS was born.

Don’t worry, Gaia GPS has a feature to save you from hours of frantically trying to retrace your steps in vein. In fact, you can find out where you are in seconds, even when you can’t get a cell signal. All you have to do is pull out your phone, open Gaia GPS, and locate yourself on the map. Here’s how to do it.

Plan Ahead — Download Maps for Offline use

In order to locate yourself on the map, there is one catch. You must have your maps downloaded for offline use. Thankfully, downloading a map is easy to do. You just need a Premium Membership. Then you can download maps for the entire region that you’re traveling to, or even an entire state.

Pro tip: Before you leave the trailhead, start recording your tracks so you leave a bread-crumb trail of your steps right on the map. That way you can always retrace your steps and find your way back.

Locate Yourself on the Map

Lost and have no clue where you are? Find yourself on the map in seconds thanks to the “Locate” icon. Simply open the Gaia GPS app, and tap the circular icon with the four compass points in the very center of the top toolbar in the app. The arrow icon (called the “Map Arrow”) now shows your exact position on the map. Zoom in or out and pan around the map to get a better sense of your bearings.

Pro tip: You can quickly see how far away you are from the trail or the trailhead. Simply tap your desired destination on the map, and a drawer will pop up on the bottom of the screen showing the distance to it.

Navigate Your Way Back

Once you’ve located where you are on the map, you can use Gaia GPS to find your way back to familiar ground. If you are recording your tracks, hold your phone out in front of you and turn your body until the map arrow points in the direction of your breadcrumb trail. Start walking along your recorded track and your arrow should move right along with you.

If you’re not recording your tracks, don’t despair. Examine the map to find the trail, trailhead, or a particular feature on the map you’d like to reach. Once you’ve pinpointed your destination, you can even drop a waypoint onto the map for easy reference. Using the map arrow as a guide, work your way back.

Unlock the Backcountry with a Premium Membership

Stay found on your adventures with a Gaia GPS Premium membership. Access the map even when your phone is completely offline and in airplane mode so you can locate yourself on the map, create routes, create and edit waypoints to mark important spots like campsites and water sources, and record tracks and follow them back.

A Premium Membership also gives you access to Gaia GPS’s entire map catalog. Download hundreds of maps, including National Geographic Trails Illustrated, high-resolution satellite maps, weather overlays, and government-issued topo maps like USFS topo, all the USGS quad maps, and MVUMs.

November 21, 2021

A screenshot of the Gaia GPS topo map showing the west Coast of the US has the region of Washington state highlighted.

How to Download an Entire State Map with Gaia Topo

by Mary Cochenour August 19, 2021

written by Mary Cochenour

Have you ever grabbed your backpack and rushed out the door only to find out at the trailhead that you forgot to download your digital maps to your phone? When this unfortunate event happens, digital maps in the app appear fuzzy and out-of-focus as soon as you leave cell service. We have a solution for you: Gaia Topo.

Recently redesigned, Gaia Topo lets you download huge swaths of land in a matter of minutes and without hogging up your phone’s precious storage space. Download an enormous wilderness area, a sprawling national park, or even your entire state — yes, the whole state — and never be caught without a downloaded topographic map again. Here’s how.

How to Download Gaia Topo for Offline Use

Downloading maps to your phone in Gaia GPS is easy and intuitive. Follow these steps to download your entire state, a park, or a wilderness area with Gaia Topo.

Membership. Make sure you have a Premium Membership to Gaia GPS to download maps. Gaia Topo is free to use. However, downloading maps for offline use requires a Premium Membership.
Select Gaia Topo as your map source. Open the Gaia GPS app. While viewing the map in the iOS or Android Gaia GPS app, click the Layers button at the upper right. Make sure to select Gaia Topo. Deselect all other maps sources for optimum download speed and size.
Navigate to the area you want to download. You can simply pan the map by swiping or you can search points of interest or trails using the magnifying glass search icon. Simply type in a point of interest in the area you want to download, such as a peak, a lake, or a city, and select one of the suggested locations to direct the map to the area.
Tap the “+” button. Tap the “+” button at the top of the screen and select “Download Maps”.
Select the area to download. After selecting “Download Maps,” you will be directed to the map, where you will see a red rectangle with blue dots at the corners. The area shaded by the red rectangle signifies what will be downloaded. Drag the blue dots at the corners of the red rectangle to make the area larger or smaller.
Download a state, national park, or wilderness area. You can create one large box that covers the entire state or piece together multiple downloads to be more precise if the area you are downloading is not a perfect rectangle. The latter approach helps keep file sizes smaller and download times quicker, but it does mean you’ll have to repeat steps 2 through 6 until you’ve downloaded the entire area to your satisfaction. Don’t worry about overlapping the red rectangles—Gaia GPS will not download both areas after you’ve already downloaded one.
Adjust the Max Zoom slide bar. To adjust the detail level for the map download. The higher the zoom (1:12,000), the more detail the map will have but also the larger the file will be. If you’re running out of room on your phone, reduce the zoom (1:1536000) to make a smaller file size. Learn more about zoom levels here.
Tap Save. Tap “Save” at the lower right side of your screen. A screen will pop up giving you the option to name your map and save it in a particular folder. Press “Save” again, this time in the upper righthand corner of the screen. The download begins, at which point the app goes back to the main map. To watch the progress of your download, tap on the Download Status spinning wheel icon towards the upper left of the main map in the iOS app. In the Android app, tap the Saved icon, then select Downloads from the menu.

Gaia Topo: Quick and Tiny to Download

Downloading maps is crucial to your adventure game because it lets you view maps and navigate in areas without cell service. Traditionally, downloading large areas of the map soaked up a lot of time and phone storage. But the completely retooled Gaia Topo takes the sting out of this process.

Hand curated and optimized for efficient downloads, Gaia Topo delivers minuscule download times and file sizes all while improving its style and detail. The chart below gives examples of download times and file sizes for large areas of the map. Of course, downloads speeds may vary depending on the size of the area downloaded, the zoom level selected, and internet speed.

A screenshot shoes download size and speeds for various states.

Create Snap-to-Trail Routes from Anywhere

An added bonus of downloading the map for your entire state: you can now create snap-to-trail routes in areas without cell service. When you create a route in the field, snap-to-trail automatically follows the contours of the trail for you. This gives you the most accurate distance and elevation metrics available and builds your route quickly and precisely. Enjoy this seamless route planning tool with your Android and iOS devices, from anywhere at any time. No wifi or cell service needed.

If you’ve already downloaded the map for your entire state but would like to access snap-to-trail route planning offline, you will need to redownload the map. Here’s how to do so:

Delete the map from your Gaia GPS account.
Select the area you would like to download.
Make sure “Include data to create and navigate routes offline” is toggled ON.
Download your map, and you are good to go!

Ready for an Adventure Offline

Once Gaia Topo is downloaded, you will able to access the map even when your phone is completely offline and in airplane mode so you can locate yourself on the map, create routes, create and edit waypoints to mark important spots like campsites and water sources, and record tracks and follow them back.

Gaia Topo is free to use on gaiagps.com and on your mobile device through the Gaia GPS app. The free version allows you to view the map, plan a route, and search for trails all while connected to the internet. However, you will need a Gaia GPS membership to be able to download maps for offline use.

Try a Gaia GPS Premium Membership to tap into a limited number of maps within the Gaia GPS catalog. The Premium Membership unlocks the entire Gaia GPS map catalog, allowing you to layer and download multiple maps sources at one time. View the maps together to get a complete picture of the terrain you will encounter on your next adventure.

August 19, 2021

Gaia GPS How-To

Best Uses for Your Cell Phone in the Backcountry

by Joe Pasteris July 6, 2021

written by Joe Pasteris

These days, nearly everyone heading into the backcountry carries a smartphone in their pocket. These powerful gadgets can, of course, make calls, send texts, and check email when in range, but they also offer many useful features far away from cell towers.

In the backcountry, cell phones have become a go-to navigation tool, an alarm clock for an alpine start up the peak, and the place to conveniently store guide books and favorite maps. Check out these ways you can use your phone in the backcountry even when cell service is nonexistent.

Know Your Location with Gaia GPS Navigation

Paired with a navigation app like Gaia GPS, your smartphone transforms into a powerful, compact navigation tool for backcountry travel — even when you’re out of range for cell service. You don’t need cell connection to pinpoint your exact location on a map, record your track, or find important map features, like water sources and campsites, for the backcountry area you are visiting.

To access maps offline in Gaia GPS, simply download the map by following these steps:

Select the map source and any layer you want to download, Premium members can access and download multiple maps and layers at one time.
Navigate to the area that you would like to download.
Tap the (+) icon at the top of your screen.
Tap the “Download Maps” button from the menu.
Tap and drag the dots at the corners of the highlighted rectangle area, and adjust it to cover the area you want to download.
Tap “Save”

You’ll be able to access the downloaded maps from the Gaia GPS app even when your phone is completely offline and in airplane mode to save your phone’s battery. When you’re out in the field, you can use the app to pinpoint your location on the map, drop waypoints to mark important spots like campsites and trail junctions, record your track and follow it back to retrace your footprints back to the car.

Get Your Bearings with a Compass App

A compass is an essential navigation tool that you use to take a bearing or orient your map so you can identify prominent land features and find your way if you get turned around. iPhones come with a compass app loaded on them, and can be launched from your iPhone’s home screen. Not all Android phones come with a compass, but there are many popular compass apps available for free. You can also pull up the Gaia GPS app to display the bearing for the direction you’re traveling. That said, you should always carry a handheld compass, too, in case your phone battery dies.

Download Guidebooks and Data Sets

Many popular trails and routes have guidebooks or data sets that show mileage and map coordinates for points of interest along the trail. But books are heavy and take up room in your pack. Gone are the days of tearing out the pertinent pages of a guidebook and taking them with you on the trail. Many guidebooks are available electronically and can be downloaded to your phone. If your favorite guidebook isn’t available electronically, you could take photos of the pages that apply to your trip and pull them up on your phone when needed.

Use Your Phone as a Watch for Simple Navigation and Alpine Starts

Many people have ditched the wrist watch in favor of using the clock on their phone to tell time. Knowing the time is important in the backcountry, because it helps you make important decisions such as whether to push on or stop and make camp. Time is also one of the three components of dead reckoning navigation, one of the most basic and useful backcountry travel skills. Dead reckoning involves learning your general position in the filed by using the mathematical formula of distance equals rate of travel multiplied by time. Using your phone clock or a watch on your wrist, you can find out how far you traveled by multiplying the time you were walking by the speed you were walking.

The phone’s clock also has an alarm to wake you from your deep sleep in the woods. Now you might be thinking you won’t need an alarm on your vacation to the backcountry. But an alarm comes in handy for alpine starts, when you need to wake up before the sun rises so that you can get an early start on the trail to tackle big climbs and beat afternoon lightning storms on exposed peaks and alpine passes.

Measure Slope Angles with an Inclinometer App

Backcountry skiers and snowboarders use inclinometers to measure the angles of slopes when assessing avalanche risk. If you don’t already have a dedicated inclinometer, or you’d prefer to use your phone for that task, download an inclinometer app. The Avalanche Inclinometer app (iPhone and Android) is simple to use and features a large display, making it easy to read the slope angle in any weather. The app also displays your elevation and includes a compass.

In addition to inclinometers, Gaia GPS premium members can view the Slope Angle-Shading Overlay to see the subtle changes in slope angle on a topo map. This can be a helpful tool for planning your backcountry trips, but is not a substitute for carrying an inclinometer when backcountry skiing or snowboarding in avalanche terrain.

Use Your Phone as an Extra Flashlight

Almost all smartphones come with a flashlight app that’s handy for quick tasks, like looking for something inside your tent or getting out of your tent in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature. The light on your phone is probably not powerful enough to illuminate the trail while hiking, but they are helpful for use around camp and inside your tent at night. Look for third-party apps for fun in-camp features like strobes and different colors.

two hikers taking a picture of each other, one using a cell phone camera

Document Your Trip With Pictures and Video, Save Photos to your Track

With a smartphone in your pocket, you have access to a high-quality, lightweight camera that you can use to capture photographs and videos on all your backcountry trips. For many people, the default camera app that comes on a phone has everything they need: It should allow you to make exposure adjustments to get the lighting right, choose a focal point to ensure your subject is in focus, select high dynamic range (HDR) mode to capture a range of color and brightness, turn the flash on and off, and add gridlines to help you compose the perfect photo. If you want even greater control, look for a third-party camera app that lets you make shutter speed adjustments, change the ISO, and turn on image stabilization.

You can also use your trip to record points of interest in the Gaia GPS app. When tracking your route with the Gaia GPS app, snap a photo and save it to your saved route in exactly the place you took the photo. To do so, you simply tap the + icon in the top Gaia GPS menu in the iOS or Android app and select “Take Picture” when you want to attach an image. Learn more about how to take and add pictures in iOS and Android.

Create a Journal of your Trip

Many people enjoy bringing a small notebook and pencils into the wilderness to collect their thoughts in the quiet space of nature. But paper and pencils can get trashed when jammed into a pocket of your backpack. Try turning your phone into a travel diary with one of the many travel journal apps offered both free and for subscription. These apps bring a more in-depth solution to documenting your trip, including options to use text, photos, location tracking, and voice recordings to store all your memories and thoughts from a venture into the woods. When you come back to civilization, many travel journals sync your electronic journal to all your devices, so you can edit more freely on a bigger screen. Some journals even let you collaborate with other users to create a complete picture of your trip.

Stay Entertained with Games, Music, and Podcasts

For many people, the backcountry provides a space to “unplug” and get away from seemingly ever-present screens. But if you’re on a long journey and find yourself needing a distraction, try downloading crossword puzzles, games, audiobooks, inspiring outdoor podcasts like the Out and Back podcast by Gaia GPS, and playlists from your favorite music apps. Make sure you download files and/or apps to your phone before leaving home because there’s no guarantee you’ll have cell service out in the boonies. Also, nearby campers and resident wildlife would appreciate you bringing headphones to cut down on noise in the wilderness.

the Wind River Range in Wyoming, mountain in background and yellow flowers in foreground.

Identify Birds, Stars, and Plants

How many times have you looked at a pretty flower on the side of the trail or a bird chirping in a tree and wished you knew the name of it? Check out these apps, that will help you identify constellations, birds and plants.

To identify stars, try the free SkyView Lite app (iPhone or Android). It uses your phone’s camera to identify objects in the sky, including planets, constellations, distant galaxies, and satellites.

The Audubon Bird Guide app (iPhone or Android) helps you identify birds. Enter what you observe, such as color, size, and length of tail, and it will narrow down the choices for your location. The app offers data packets for offline use, which is essential when you don’t have cell service.

To identify plants and animals on your trek, try the free iNaturalist app (iPhone and Android). Using your phone’s camera, it can recognize many species of plants, animals, and insects. The PlantSnap Plant Identification app (iPhone and Android) is another popular option. Its free version helps you identify flowers, trees, mushrooms, cacti, and more.

Save Your Phone Battery

Relying on your phone for many tasks will wear down its battery. But there are many ways to conserve your phone’s battery while in the backcountry. Try running your phone in airplane mode, dimming the screen, and turning off location services for all the apps except maps and navigational aids, like Gaia GPS. Also, consider toting along a back-up battery or solar charger to juice up your phone on a long trip.

Mary Cochenour contributed to this story.

July 6, 2021

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