Mary B. asks:
I am trying to research a hand held GPS for my adult son who often hikes alone. The product reviews on one model on Amazon pointed me toward your topographical maps. Could you offer any suggestions about what model GPS you would recommend? There are so many out there and I haven't found anyone who is using one to give me advice. He is hiking in all seasons here in New Hampshire and has for years.
The cold would be a factor with batteries and reception should be top notch. He always researches and purchases quality equipment, but I would prefer to surprise him rather than ask his advice.
Thank you for any help you could offer.

Like your son, I spend a lot of time hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I rely on the Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx for all of my hiking and snowshoeing trips. This is an outstanding GPS for anyone who loves hiking, geocaching, backpacking, or winter sports. It fits comfortably in a pack pocket or you can attach it to your belt or sternum strap with its belt clip. (Just be very careful and check that it's still attached every few minutes.)

More importantly, it's a joy to use. It fits well in your hand, has buttons that you can use without removing your gloves, and the Garmin user interface is superb. I only recommend Garmin GPS receivers, based solely on the user interface.

There are at least three models in the Garmin GPSMAP 60 family. The GPSMAP 60CSx is the high end, with a color screen and an electronic compass and barometer. I'd pay the extra to get these two sensors - most serious hikers will appreciate them.

I'll throw out three other low-cost alternatives: the Garmin eTrex H, the Garmin Foretrex 201, and the Garmin eTrex Legend HCx. The two eTrex models are smaller, and use a little joystick button thing. That click stick is fine in the summer, but can be a real pain in the winter when you'd rather keep your gloves on. If your son will be leaving the GPS in his pack and only using it occasionally to confirm his location (which, honestly, is likely - trails in New England are well-marked), this wouldn't be a bad choice.

Taking that to the extreme, there's the Garmin Foretrex 201, which is ridiculously light and straps to your arm. I wear one of these for summer hiking or paddling. It does come with a extension arm strap, but I find it difficult to wear over a winter parka.

The GPSMAP 60CSx and Legend HCx have color screens and can display contour lines if you purchase additional software from Garmin. I find it very difficult to get a big-picture of the surrounding terrain on the little screen on the GPS receiver, and prefer to print out and carry a paper topo map with UTM grid lines created using ExpertGPS. All of the GPS receivers can display UTM coordinates, which makes it easy to plot your GPS location on the paper map.

The Foretrex has a non-removable, rechargable battery, but the other three Garmin receivers take two AA batteries. I usually use rechargable NiMH batteries with my GPS receivers, but a great gift for anyone who uses their GPS in the winter would be a pair of lithium AA batteries. Lithium batteries work much better at temperatures below freezing.

A GPS receiver is a great Christmas gift that your son will use for many years. Merry Christmas!

Michael B. from Washington asks:
I'm interested in using my GPS for hiking and I found the Backpacker.com web-site has hikes with trail routes that I can export to ExpertGPS. I was hoping that there were other such sites you can recommend that have a more complete list of hikes/maps.

Recommended sites with GPS trail data in GPX format

There are lots of great Web sites for exchanging and downloading GPS data. ExpertGPS uses GPX, the GPS Exchange Format, as its native file format, so you can open GPS data from hundreds of Web sites, print out a map, and send waypoints, routes, and tracks directly to your GPS. Here are some of my favorite sites that support the GPX standard:

TravelByGPS.com - Doug Adomatis runs a great site with lots of hand-collected GPS waypoints and tracks. Each data set has a detailed description, unlike lots of the sites which claim to have 100,000 trails. (They do, but all but a handful are just dumped out of a GIS database with absolutely no information accompanying them)

GPXchange.com - Hans Wain and Fred Williams have a site with lots of trail data, and offer a convenient way to print out really nice poster-size topo maps and aerial photos with your GPX data on top.

EveryTrail.com - A newer site with lots of GPX data.

MapMyFitness.com - Runners can share routes or download and view them in ExpertGPS.

GPX Resources at TopoGrafix.com - At the bottom of the page you'll find additional Web pages that offer data in GPX format.

Know a good, free site that allows public download of GPX data? Add a comment below!

An ExpertGPS user asks:
I have an older GPS that uses a serial cable, but my new laptop only has USB ports. How can I connect my GPS to my computer?

How do I Use a USB to Serial Adapter with ExpertGPS?

If you have an older GPS receiver with a serial cable interface, and a newer Windows desktop or laptop computer that only has USB ports, you will need to use a USB to Serial Adapter to connect your GPS to ExpertGPS. A USB to Serial Adapter is a small piece of hardware, usually just an inline cable, with a USB plug on one end, and a 9-pin serial plug on the other. The USB to Serial Adapter that I use, the U209-000-R from TrippLite, is shown below. Many companies sell identical products - I have a feeling they all come from the same overseas source and differ only in the model name sticker and the name on the little CD driver that comes with the package.

The first thing you need to do is to install the driver software that comes with the USB to Serial Adapter. If you don't have the driver, you can go to the manufacturer's Web site to download and install it. Without the driver software, the cable won't do anything. Here's a picture of a successful driver install on Windows Vista. Very Important: Notice that the driver has assigned COM4 to the USB to Serial Adapter!!!

Once the driver is installed successfully, you can plug the USB to Serial Adapter into your USB port, and Windows should display a pop-up message saying that a new Plug and Play device was found and recognized. If this doesn't happen, you need to address this problem before proceeding. Contact tech support at the USB to Serial Adapter's manufacturer (not me) for assistance.

Now connect your GPS receiver to the adapter and turn on the GPS. Don't launch ExpertGPS until the GPS is connected to the adapter, and the adapter is connected to your computer.

Waypoint, route, and track transfer

If you have a Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance, or Eagle GPS and want to transfer waypoints, routes, or tracks, run ExpertGPS, and click Preferences on the Edit menu. Click My GPS Receivers, click Add, and select your GPS from the list. When asked for the COM port, select the same COM number that Windows assigned to your USB to Serial Adapter when you installed the driver.

Real-time tracking on a laptop

To track your location in real-time while outdoors with a laptop, run ExpertGPS, and click Preferences on the Edit menu. Click Tracking, and select NMEA as the Protocol. When asked for the COM port, select the same COM number that Windows assigned to your USB to Serial Adapter when you installed the driver.

Click Enable Tracking on the Tracking menu, and ExpertGPS will begin listening to the NMEA data being sent from your GPS receiver, and updating your position on the map every second or two.