The outdoors – Page 28 – a sibilant intake of breath

GPS and navigation

I have been annoyed recently by full-page ads in which RIM is advertising the navigational capabilities of their new BlackBerries. They suggest that people can throw away maps and compasses and wholeheartedly embrace the combination of GPS and electronic maps.

I know firsthand how useful GPS can be. As an altimeter or a way of locating yourself in a featureless landscape, it cannot be beaten. Likewise, it is very helpful for quickly figuring out where you are when you are out on the water in a canoe or kayak. All the same, I think there is a fundamental value in being able to read a map, locate yourself on it, and work out a course to where you want to be. It isn’t enough to take a course in these things and forget about it. As with any complex skill, practice is important.

Some common sense is also a necessity, no matter how you are navigating. If your GPS-based automobile navigation system tells you to drive along train tracks, you should be aware that machines are fallible, and highly stupid as well. They have no common sense by which to evaluate whether, for instance, a bridge has been washed out or whether a linear course between A and B includes a series of lethal cliffs. There is also the small matter that some dead batteries a splash of water or a dropped piece of gear could knock out both your map and compass equivalent, if you are relying on a GPS system.

On GPS, Galileo, and precision
A post on the nature of time that concerns the GPS system
On great circles

Lakeless

Unfortunately, I lost the Walking Club ballot for the Lake District trip. That is probably going to be good for my exam revision, but it will be a shame not to see the area before I leave.

Oxford verdant and twittering

The emergence of spring in Oxford is rather dramatic. I would expect that this seems especially true for someone from Vancouver. Since most of our trees are coniferous, the degree of colour change that accompanies the passage of the seasons is much less pronounced. Our green mountainsides may spend less time obstructed by cloud-banks, but we are rarely treated to the elegant site of a large and ancient tree gaining or shedding its foliage.

In addition, Oxford seems to be positively thronged with birds these days: singing in the early morning and escorting the first – almost comically cute – ducklings along the banks of the Cherwell. All this has made showing Hilary around even more enjoyable. Today included a lengthy visit to the Natural History Museum and a far shorter one to the Museum of the History of Science, complete with the famous Einstein blackboard. Attending my first OUSSG meeting in a year in a non-executive capacity was enjoyable, even if I didn’t partake in the very fine dinner that takes place beforehand.

Speaking of the OUSSG, some of you may remember when I said that the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group needs a new webmaster? Well, the position remains open. The level of work involved is fairly limited and the group is a rather interesting one. Anyone who can run a blog knows enough about the web to maintain the site.

Mountain hat-trick

I may be spending the weekend of June 2nd hiking in the Lake District of England. Along with the Highlands of Scotland and Snowdonia in Wales, this one of the most significant mountainous areas in the British Isles. The only problem is that the Walking Club trip is uncomfortably close to my final exams, which will be between the 11th and 16th. Whether participating is possible or not will depend on how frantic things are looking closer to the date.

Photos from Scotland and Wales are linked on this page.

Wales 2007 photos: fourth batch

Welsh landscape with sheep, taken on the third day of walking.

Small lake, halfway up a mountain.

Welsh valley, viewed from the highest point we reached on the third day.

Snowdonia does not suffer for lack of moss. I like the colours.

A gloomy view of Snowdon, as well as the two other peaks we climbed on the first day. This is the last photo from Snowdonia that I will be posting.

Wales 2007 photos: third batch

Bridge in the nature reserve we visited on the second day. Because of the low altitude and protected status, there was far more vegetation there than elsewhere in Snowdonia.

Pool at the base of a waterfall

Another group photo, this one with me in it

Creek flowing from the waterfall

View uphill to the ‘barn’ in which we stayed. Nearby was a small power plant, with turbines operated by water pressure. A long pipeline – resembling those for natural gas – ran down to it from a lake somewhere above us.

Wales 2007 photos: second batch

Keeping my hat on was a constant challenge, given the lack of a chin-strip and the strong winds.

Because the winds on the second day prevented us from going up any peaks, we visited this nature reserve instead. It was nice to see some trees.

In the reserve, some of us climbed along a steep hillside to see a large waterfall from above. We also got some nice views of the valley below and the seashore.

The Welsh landscape is dominated by bare rock, separated by grassy sections. Often, you see veins of quartz in the shale that look like snow, from a distance.

Wales 2007 photos: first batch

Shed beside a Welsh lake.

All over the Welsh countryside there are walls and paths made of slate. The amount of labour involved in building them all must have been colossal.

Our first group photo, in front of the view we had from all three peaks on the first day.

Climbing Snowdon was a foggy business.

On the third day, we hiked up to a ridge but found it too windy to continue. On the way down, we walked around this lake.

Welsh surprises

Wales was not without surprises, two of which I will quickly detail now.

The first concerns the ‘barn’ in which we were to stay. When I heard the term, I thought about the barn that Meghan Mathieson’s family has in Duncan: uninsulated wooden walls, big swinging doors, hay, and the rest. What we actually got was a ‘hut’ belonging to the Pinnacle Club – a group of women climbers. It was the size of a house, warmed by a coal stove. It had fridges and stoves and showers and a special room for drying sopping gear (though our numbers and level of soppingness challenged it). When compared with my initial expectation – better than a tent, with the possibility of rats – it was downright palatial.

The second surprise should be evident from the videos I posted last night. We were almost constantly buffeted by gale force winds during the first two days, and still encountered moderate winds at high altitudes on the third. I spent much of the trip literally holding on to my hat. Since it has no chin-strap and I could not come up with a way to tether it that did not risk either destroying the hat or garroting me, I had one hand on the brim (or atop my head) for the better part of all the hiking. On Snowdon, the cold and relative thinness of my gloves meant that my non-hat-holding-hand was always desperately trying to recapture warmth in a fleece pocket, before I did the switch – mindful that a pause could send the hat flying off into the foggy abyss.

As is so often the case after a vacation, things have piled up in my absence. I have two issues of The Economist to read, two letters to respond to, several dozen emails to deal with, and a thesis chapter ostensibly due on Wednesday (with all the reading and writing that entails). Forgive me if I am a less prompt correspondent than usual for the next while.

Atop Snowdon

This short clip was made when the Oxford University Walking Club reached the peak of Snowdon – the highest point in Wales – on March 10th, 2007. As you can see, we did not get a terribly good view for all of our upward marching.

Here is another short video, and some photos on Facebook. I will post some nicer versions here soon. For now, I need to prepare for my meeting with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow.