Did the Dog Eat My GPS ?

Posted by Grant on 3. March 2009 20:22

I was hiking around a forested ridgeline a couple nights ago, finalizing some course details for the rogaine event this coming weekend. I had our dog with us, Bolivar: the crazy orienteering shelty/lab/chow mix; she just loves to play in the woods!

Things were going fine, and I arrived at a location I was going to use for a checkpoint. I powered up my old Garmin GPS to confirm the coordinates. I set the GPS down on the snow bank, since it would take a minute or two to acquire the satellites, and used my phone to take a couple pictures of the area. Yes, it was at night and it was raining, but I'm very methodical when it comes to validating checkpoint locations. I like to have a couple pictures and, even at night, with the help of my headlamp I can capture significant features.

I finished taking photos and then I returned to the GPS . . . or at least to where I had left the GPS. While I was snapping pictures, the dog was running like crazy through the mud and snow; she gets all fired up and starts eating pieces of snow and making wild grunting sounds. It's really quite a scene! The Garmin wasn't where I had left it, and even with my headlamp on super-high I couldn't find a trace of it. Somehow that GPS device had disappeared in 60 seconds! I immediately suspected the dog, but where could she have taken the GPS? Or maybe she just buried the Garmin in her snow frenzy?

Here is a picture of Bolivar running at the speed of light through a stream:


I did a grid search for the GPS, thinking the bright green colour would be easy to find, but after 10 minutes and lots of tedious analysis of sticks, mud, ice, and pine cones I couldn't find it. I excavated the snow bank I had placed the GPS on, but I still didn't locate it. All the while, the dog, Bolivar, was happily splashing and scurrying around with me -- if she knew I was looking for something she certainly didn't act like it.

I eventually gave up and decided to return the next morning, on my bike ride into work, to find it in the daylight. Alas, the GPS remains missing as I didn't find it the next day. I'm certain the device is within a 30 meter circle, and I know the terrain feature it's based around, but that is the best I can do. Maybe in a month, after the snow melts, I can go back and find the device?

I may never know the truth. Who knows, maybe forest elves are out there playing with my old Garmin as I write this?

So, now I'm the proud owner of a new GPS device and I have to admit that technology has come a long way in a few years! I had the entry level Garmin circa 2004, and now I've got a colour display, lots of menus, integrated maps, and even a "geo cache feature" that I haven't even explored. It's like I've switched from a used Ford Pinto to a new Cadillac! But there is a part of me that is still really itching to locate my old Ford Pinto -- it has to be somewhere up there!