Water Route
Not planned
I would like to suggest that a canoe/kayak (or water) route option for those of us that would like to follow the water. I recently went into the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and and although I could track it during the trip, I wanted to plan my route first but my only options were Hiking, Cycling, Driving and straight line routes.
-
Official comment
Hey y'all,
I can definitely see how it would be helpful to snap to waterways when creating routes.
We don't have plans for anything like this at the moment, but I do have an open request for this feature and I've added all the votes here.
Thanks for suggesting this. We will update here if this feature becomes available.Comment actions -
Absolutely would be a great addition. The paddler market is huge.
I downloaded Gaia for this exact reason - and I'm also going to BWCA in 2 weeks.
However, to make "Canoe Mode" useful, and not just an icon, there is one mandatory distinction between other modes:
Compass mode cannot be used for navigation. It needs to be almost exclusively course mode.
The are 2 reasons to support this:
1) Paddling requires two hands - and involves water. Meaning you cannot hold the GPS flat at your waist, while looking down at the screen. Paddlers typically mount their GPS units on a thwart/bar, in front of their paddling station, oriented directly forward. This way no water gets on the unit when the paddler switches paddling sides. So, the problem here - with the iPhone - is that compass mode goes batty if you don't hold the unit flat (screen facing up to the sky). So, again - course mode - not compass mode.
2) Canoes "crab" when there is any wind -- ie., the direction the canoe is pointing is a different direction than it's path over the water. So, compass heading and course are rarely ever going to be the same and will fluctuate significantly - usually by 10-20 degrees but theoretically up to 90 degrees - or even 180 degrees if a canoeist reverses bow/stern in a headwind (a useful technique in canoes in order to put the heavier end into a wind without shifting people/packs/gear). By comparison -- In a car, the direction the car is facing is Always the direction of travel (wheels on ground). For a hiker, holding the phone in front of them while walking forward, the direction they are facing is also almost always the direction of travel (except if they are walking sideways, backwards, etc).
Gaia's 5 mph threshold between compass & course:
Gaia cannot simply default "Canoe Mode" to "course mode" because Gaia uses compass under 5mph, even in course mode, then switches to course mode above 5mph.
This will not work because the average touring canoe speed is between 1.5 and 3.5 mph and even slower if you are "vacation paddling" into the wind. Kayakers typically tour above 5 mph, but even in a mild headwind that can easily be cut to 3 or 4 mph. So, unless the 5 mph threshold for course mode were lowered/disabled in Canoe Mode, navigation would still take place using compass mode. Moving that slowly in course mode, of course, has accuracy tradeoffs since it may take a bit more time to move enough to register a new gps fixpoint - which is used to interpolate heading. But the pros outweigh the cons.
-
I agree, this is a much needed feature. 90% of my excursions that I want to record are kayaking or canoeing. Seems like if a route can snap to a trail without the need for multiple waypoints being placed as a guideline for the route, that it could can snap to a river. Lakes are more problematic.
-
Just want to bump up this thread and say I would love a river route option as well! Manually making routes on rivers is tideous, and the elevations get all messed up because Gaia assume you're hiking from point to point, so if you don't perfectly follow a river it gives you very inaccurate elevation changes and even distance.
-
@mitchelhare - absolutely! I agree. Using Caltopo as a .gpx eporter is a clunky work around. Caltopo is also a competitor of Gaia, so ultimately I believe Gaia needs to add this feature if they want to stay the best trip planning software.
I hike in a lot of different canyons, and a lot of times those canyons don't have snap-able trails in them. Almost of them have mapped streams/rivers in them so a waterway snap would benefit canyoneering and hikers along with paddlers. -
I have been thinking about this as well. I'm a river guide and it would be an amazing feature to have packaged download options with river routes and the key information like camping spots and hikes from rivers included in those sources. In the USA there are some amazing publications that have been developed catering to these users. A classic and incredibly well done publication by RiverMaps, Guide to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon is a good example of data that would be great to have on Gaia. I love this app, my go too for all my trips!
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
75 comments