Earlier this year, I went up to Big Bear for some snowshoeing. I went on the Pine Knot Trail, and while it was fun, I definitely got lost more than I like to when I’m in the middle of the woods – both due to the snow covering most of the trail junctions and a very poorly designed map.
While wandering through the snow, I had to resort to checking my iPhone to make sure I was taking the right turns on the area’s labyrinthine system of fire roads – but the low levels of detail on the Google Maps and the poor cell phone coverage in the area made that very, very difficult.
Cut to several months later. I was planning a trip to Yosemite, and noticed AccuTerra was offering a free Yosemite pack, so I loaded it into the phone and gave it a go. It was great for finding which way to go at trail junctions (and much faster than taking my pack off to get at my maps), but I didn’t really dig into the features any more than that. When I found out they were releasing high-resolution map packs for the L.A. area mountains, though, I opened up my wallet to give it a go.
Here’s how it works – you download the free app from the iTunes App Store, and after a sizable download, you’ll be presented with this opening screen, which should give you a pretty good idea of what you’ll be able to do:
The first thing you’ll want to do is fire up the map store to start loading some topo maps onto your iPhone, so you won’t run into the same problem I did in Big Bear, where you’re relying on a spotty network to download a Google Map that’s vague at best.
The maps are divided into four categories – National Parks, States, State Parks, and Recreational Areas – and mostly range in price from $1.99 to $2.99, which is a pretty great deal. Most physical topo maps of single state parks can run you 12 bucks, wheras the “California South” regional map, which covers from Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands to the Mexican and Arizonan borders and all the way north through Death Valley and Sequoia, is only $1.99 (plus, your first map download is free with the App!)
“HD” maps are usually $2.99, and cover a smaller area, but in higher resolution. The Angeles National Forest is currently in “standard definition,” but still gets the job done for showing you where all the peaks, trails, and campgrounds are in the Forest. The San Bernardino HD pack lets you zoom in to about this level before it starts getting blurry, and has a higher level of detail in the elevation contours:
If you’re worried when I say these HD maps cover a smaller area, don’t fret – the coverage area for the San Bernardino Map is shown in red below:
Of course, all this level of detail and coverage comes at a cost — and that is hard drive space. The App itself will fill up 111MB of space on your iPhone. HD maps like the San Bernardino Mountains are 192MB, while the regional maps like California South will eat up almost twice that amount. Even with a 32GB model, this almost guarantees you’ll only be able to hold a small number of maps on your phone at a time – and will most likely want to delete and reinstall the app before you head out to save on space for more frequently used apps – but again, the level of detail on the maps themselves – along with the fact that you won’t have to rely on network coverage to get your maps on screen – is worth it. Space-conscious iPhone owners can rest easy, knowing AccuTerra keeps track of every map you’ve purchased, so if you need to delete one to save space, you’ll be able to get it back anytime for free.
Now, to the actual field testing.
On Thanksgiving, I took a leisurely, late afternoon hike in Icehouse Canyon, and tested out the route recording functions of AccuTerra. iPhone users know our mobile devices of choice are not known for their battery life – so be sure you turn off Bluetooth, 3G, WiFi, and all the buttons and whistles you won’t need on the trail. If you get cell phone coverage, AccuTerra will use that to triangulate your location before using GPS, but even without the assistance, I found AccuTerra was able to get a lock on my location significantly faster than my Garmin GPS receiver.
If you’d like, you can also save battery power by reducing the GPS accuracy and turning off elevation recording through the App’s intuitive menu system. Once you’re ready to get started, just click the “target” icon (the same one the Google Maps App uses) to center your position. Hit the slideout menu on the right hand side and tap record to start recording your trek!
In that image, you can also see another new feature in the latest version – Google Maps integration. You can easily toggle between Google Maps original view, satellite hybrid, or the AccuTerra topo maps, which can be helpful if you’re getting lost trying to drive TO the trailhead.
On the trail itself, AccuTerra can be as unobtrusive as you want, but for all intents and purposes, your phone has just become a fully-fledged GPS receiver. You can stop to take pictures with it (geotagged, of course) and mark waypoints with full text along the way, and they’ll all be saved as part of your track. If you’d like, you can even set AccuTerra to play a chime at certain intervals – so you can know every time you’ve hiked another mile without having to stop and check the phone. It’s all pretty cool, and it’s getting more powerful with every update.
Of course, if you just want to lock your iPhone and keep it in your pocket, that’ll work, too.
Checking your route on the trail will be very familiar to anyone who’s ever used a GPS reciever before – you’ll see your track in green, and your current location in a pulsing blue dot. Note the level of detail in Icehouse Canyon, even on this “low res” map:
If you have a 3GS, you can tap the compass button to use the iPhone’s internal compass to show your true-view position on the map, too:
When you’re done with the hike, the App has some great presentation options. You can view all of your statistics on a single splash screen, and a detailed elevation chart on a second screen:
Of course, one of the main benefits of having all these statistics is boasting to your more sedentary friends when you get home, and this App makes that easy, too – you can send an email with your trip in a Google Map (the link expires in a few weeks), email a Google Earth KMZ file, or share the stats and pictures on Facebook. Like the rest of the App, it’s all very easy and intuitive.
Final Word:
While no hiker should ever be on the trail without a hard copy of a map, AccuTerra is by far the easiest, most full-featured, and slickest hiking App I have seen to date. While hard drive space will probably be an issue, the maps are cheap, coverage is wide, and the level of detail is great for most hikers (and the HD maps should be good for pretty much everybody).
On the iPhone 3GS, I found AccuTerra to perform as good as – and in some cases better than – a dedicated GPS receiver. While the iPhone’s battery life will never be as good as a handheld GPS unit, I was able to get great coverage and tracking in a tree-lined canyon that had previously given my Garmin some trouble.
Bottom line – if you have an iPhone and you hike, you should download AccuTerra.
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Great detailed review. I may get this as a backup to my current method.
Thanks for the writeup- very complete!! Have one question for you- can you download the track file to your computer to sync up with pictures taken with a camera other than your iphone? I used to use a garmin GPS, and downloaded the track and synced it up with the timestamp from my pictures. Could this be done with this app??
I tried Google Maps on my Blackberry, a few weekends ago, at Henry Coe SP but even though it’s only ~15 miles off the 101 corridor there wasn’t enough wireless coverage. Maybe Accuterra has something in the works for us (hint, hint), too.
Erik, As it stands right now, you can only email a KMZ to yourself – you can do a little bit of editing on that file in Google Earth, but I don’t think it’ll be as simple as what you’re probably doing right now.
I’d bet there’s a pretty high demand for AccuTerra to be able to email their files as GPX, and if they can, they’re probably working on it for the future … unless there’s a behind-the-scenes technical limitation I’m not aware of.
Is Ice House Canyon snowed in to the point that I’d need to use snowshoes, or is it still hikable? Went for a hike with snow on the ground two weekends ago near San Gorgonio at a slightly higher elevation, but obviously that was before the latest storms. Sorry for not directly responding to the post directly, though the app seems fantastic (but I am sans-iphone).
How would this stack up against a Delorme Earthmate PN-40? Could it be a better or comparable option? Thanks!! (Love the site by the way — the wife and I have done over 100 miles of hiking this year with the help of your hike info!).
Matt – not sure on the Delorme comparison, but there are a few advantages a GPS receiver has that an iPhone will never have -
1. MUCH better battery life
2. Ruggedness- dropping a GPS unit is no big deal. Dropping an iPhone is.
3. The ability to take you files off in GPX format. AccuTerra may add this feature later, but right now, all you can get is a KML file.
I’m wondering how well it works on a 3g? I’d really want to have some way to charge the battery. Also if it isn’t using any network resources then maybe 3g, edge and email push can be turned off so it isn’t hunting and trying to lock a signal.
It’d probably work just as well on a 3G, albeit with slightly slower load times. The only location technology the 3GS has that the 3G doesn’t is a compass, which you don’t really need to use AccuTerra.
I use this with a 3G and it works pretty well. I am still finding my way around it and should have practiced with it BEFORE I went out into the desert on Sunday.
Do you put it in airplane mode so it isn’t trying to capture a 3g/edge/gprs signal?
Derek, did you find it different than a real gps unit? I’ve never owned or used one but wondering if it’s worth it to just get a real gps, since my compass skills stink.
Helix66 – Josh with AccuTerra here.
You can’t put the iPhone in Airplane mode because that turns off all the radios, including the GPS. Turning off 3G and turning down the screen brightness are probably the two biggest battery boosts you can employ. Other than that – the real determination on whether an App like AccuTerra is sufficient for your purposes is more dependent on the limitations of the device. Once we complete our feature set, the biggest difference will be the fact that the iPhone is not waterproof and the battery longevity is much more restricted than a dedicated GPS device, as Casey mentioned. We do supply Magellan and Lowrance with more comprehensive terrain and POI data for their outdoor GPS units.
We are going to integrate the 3GS compass pretty soon – we have a bevy of other enhancements that are coming into the App in the next 30-60 days. The biggies are KML import of trails & points so you can pull others’ data off of content sites, and we’re completing HD maps for the entire contiguous US. So we’ll have coverage for every state park and forest by early summer.
I’ve been using the app for a month or two now and it’s great (minus the battery life issues, but I haven’t been turing of 3G so that may be partly my fault). One thing that I didn’t see mentioned here that anyone thinking of getting the app should know is that for $9.99 (as of writing this) you can get the accu-terra map candy app. It’s the same app but with unlimited maps. Only other thing that currently bothers me about it is no HD map of the Santa Monica mountains, but if what Josh says is true then that will be fixed soon.
Thanks for the update, Josh!
AccuTerra is always rolling out great improvements for this app. It’s definitely found a permanent home on my iPhone.
I only use AccuTerra to track where I’ve been, rather than get me to a location, so I can have a reference when I create maps for my book and can log mileage and elevation profiles. I sometimes use it to see where I am, but mostly, I memorize topos and Google Earth before I head out and have a paper topo in my pocket for finding out where I am.
I no longer carry a stand-alone GPS. In areas of suburban hiking where I am guaranteed a cell signal, I often use Trimble’s AllSportGPS, since it can download Topo maps through 3G pretty quickly if I need it in a pinch, but it won’t store maps on the phone like AccuTerra does.
I am currently writing up a review on an external battery that recharges my iPhone in the field. It’s been working great so far. I turn WiFi and 3G and simply hikeg with the iPhone in my pocket, sometimes taking it out to see how many miles I have gone to reference a landmark in my notes. The battery enabled me to track my 22+ mile trek to Villager and Rabbit Peaks over a weekend and had plenty of juice for more.
With solar recharging solutions, it could go even further.
I am pretty happy with the free Anza-Borrego Map that I got with the App, but it doesn’t match the Topo in my pocket, so when hiking cross-country in the desert and trying to determine where I was, while helpful, it took some doing to match the App to my Topo map.
Since I had some crashing issues with AllSportGPS on my last trip, I am likely switching to AccuTerra as my “go to” app on future hikes.
And helix66, if you are planning on going out into the wilderness, it’s probably a good idea to brush up on your compass (orienteering) skills. It is a great skill to have.
Josh, good point about airplane mode shutting off the gps receiver, I never thought of that! I have an 8gb 3G so I’m not sure how well it’ll work out, mine is jailbroken and unlocked, all I can see that doing is making all those settings easier to access via SBsettings. I just downloaded it and will see if I can get it to work and store the SoCal map…and learn how to use it!
Derek (100 Peaks), you are totally right about learning those skills, I got a decent book on navigation a while ago and partly read it. I know there’s a difference between navigation and orienteering. Either way I need to get out and use the compass!
Thanks for the comments and to Modernhiker, this site has been a really cool inspiring me to “get out”!
Oh, the other advantage to the jailbreak process, which is easy for then new 3Gs is something called “3Gunrestrictor”, you launch it and select apps for it to work with and it will allow those apps that normally “require wifi” to now use the 3G that we are all paying $30 a month for.
Has anyone used “map candy” which is supposed to be accuterra with unlimited map downloads? Is it as good?
It’s the same software, just with the ability to download as many maps as you want. Basically it turns your phone into an ok gps with unlimited maps (in the areas that are covered) for $10. I’m glad I spent the $10 on it.
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