Btw, while googling I found this "An “enhanced sunlight-readable touchscreen”, one of the common complaints about the current Oregon series.  Garmin claims the screen visibility and touch sensitivity have been improved."

Not true?

>A long standing limitation with older Garmin units is the 20 track/500 point limit.  It's a PITA to get high res tracks on the unit.  The Oregon has a huge memory...and 10k pts/track.  If that is important to you it's a big consideration.

Yeah, it's important to me to be able to load high res routes. Though I'm confused by what the actual limit is - Garmin's website doesn't really say, and there seems to be conflicting information. Is it 500 points per route, with a maximum of 10k points total?

>It also has an electronic compass but I may be disabling that as the location "carrot" doesn't seem to orient with it

Buh? I thought that was the entire point of having an electronic compass - so the local map, route etc can always be oriented with your direction of travel, even at low speeds. Otherwise it seems a bit daft...paying $50 for that an the altimeter, when you could just use a normal compass.

But yeah...damn annoying about the bad screen. Other than that (and the price), it sounds pretty perfect.

I was just looking at the Delorme GPSes, which look great...if you live in the USA.

DaveH, I assume you're referring to the apparently very dim LCD? I read about that in some 2008 blog posts, was wondering if they'd fixed it by now? Still, the Oregon is like $200 more than the Vista HCX for what seems to be basically fancier user interface.

What are the 4 map sets, incidentally? How hard was it to download a custom set and upload it?

Yeah. interesting point that PLBs don't have a "I'm ok, tell my partner to stop worrying" button that you could push every 6 hours or so.

>Sat phones are pricey tho.

Horrifically so. At a quick glance, $1500+ (well, in australia anyway), compared to $2-300 for a PLB. Plus it seems you need a "plan"...which is annoying for something you hope to never actually use.

Then again, if you had a sat phone, you'd probably end up using it for more mundane purposes, like coordinating car shuffles or something.

>You can't, for example, load enough high res maps to cover something like the divide or even the AZT or CTR.

At the moment I can't really imagine doing a trip longer than about 3-400 km, but that could well change. Is it practical to store the extra maps on (micro)SD cards and load them as needed, or don't the devices work that way?

>Any GPS that takes AA's will last quite a while with Lithium batteries. 

Until I started searching for a GPS, I hadn't even heard of lithium AAs. From a quick search online, they're surprisingly cheap. Cool.

For such a short distance, why not try something simple (like a backpack), then spend money to fix problems you encounter? Strap some stuff to your handlebars (eg, the boat and paddle, like eric does), some to a rear rack (you can get much cheaper than OMM), the rest in a backpack...

>I also shift things between the pack and bike depending on how much trail or steep descending I expect ahead.

Care to elaborate? Which way does the bike/backpack balance go?

>Unfortunately, the guide book is currently out of print.  I contacted a 1/2 dozen bookstores in and around Tasmania hoping to find a copy on a shelf without any luck.

Argh. Such a common story, and so freaking annoying. What seems to happen is:
1) Volunteers get together to create an amazing long distance trail of some kind
2) They produce a book, or maps, or something, which they decide to sell as a way to finance the project
3) They don't think much about distribution, and print small runs, which are only available by mail order, allow 8 to 12 weeks for delivery...
4) Over the years, the books/maps become impossible to obtain.

It seems completely counterproductive to me to create a trail, encourage people to visit it, then lock up all the information they need to do so.

Other examples: the Great Dividing Trail (maps are at least distributed through one retail outlet, but they have to order them in - and they're overpriced, and the maps themselves are far inferior to the topo maps of the same price), the Bicentennial National Trail (you need lots of maps, they get expensive quickly, and very slowly delivery...), etc. Maybe I'm just a child of the internet, but all this information should be freely available on the web to help decide if you even want to do the trail...

>You're not the same Stevage are you?

Nah, never been to that website before. Certainly not the guy on that trip...

In case you haven't already read it: http://www.bikepacking.net/tripreports/the-tasmanian-trail/

I might be interested, maybe post again closer to the date - depends on work etc. (I live in Melbourne, so it's not so hard to do at short notice.) Certainly looks convenient: take the ferry to Devenport, ride the trail to Dover, then ride 80ks to Hobart to fly back. (Or the reverse). Of course the ferry is more expensive than flying (grrr) but much less hassle with the bike I think.

More than about 6-7 kgs causes me a sore back. I've thought in the past that pack that could be supported somehow by the bike would be great. Obviously you'd still stand up for technical sections, but it would be much more comfortable for the rest.

Hell, even SMS-like capabilities would be a huge step forward. "Urgently need eastern brown snake anti-venin, bitten at 17:55, staying put." is so much more informative than a general distress call, and removes any possible doubt about it being a false alarm, or the urgency of the situation.

Hmm, thinking about this a bit more, I'm very tempted to get a PLB beacon for one specific situation: snakebite. Australia is full of deadly snakes, and it's not uncommon to see one. If there's two of you, one goes to get help. Alone, you're pretty stuffed - any movement accelerates the spread of the venom. I'm not sure you'd survive a 24 hour wait period either...

>20:36 you mean?

Dear god! You realise that for the rest of us, every hill we ever go up we'll be thinking "yeah, it's tough when you don't have the right gearing"... What an eye-opener though, I had no idea you could get 20t chainrings, and I didn't know you could get 36t sprockets...

On the flip side, the highest gear is 29x11? I guess for that terrain, that's fine as well - on the descents, it's not like you're trying to push the speed up.

Wow, how did I miss that gearing? I upgraded from 30:34 granny to 26:34 and thought that was ok. 24:34 I thought was verging on ridiculous. But 20:34???

Wow, I'm even more impressed by your photos now, knowing they came from a $200 P&S.

I notice that your partner was using a hardtail. Any comments about how each held up in technical terrain vs smooth climbs? Does the rear suspension make a big difference to your comfort at the end of each day on a multi-day trip like this? It's a noob question, but then I've never toured with any kind of suspension at all

Incidentally, though, this article did get me thinking about buying a PLB. Looks like they're a lot cheaper in the US - about $300 vs $530 or so, plus shipping. Might be worth it to keep the gf's nerves under control...

>I like your idea of charging (x)dollars if one make an SOS call but where do we draw the line there?

I don't know, and perhaps whether they actually charged the fee could be discretionary. The concept would be that if you're in that much distress, you really don't care about the $500.

The downside to this, as would be pointed out by the Freakonomics authors, is that people of adequate means would be even *more* tempted to push the button, thinking now that they have "paid" for the service. "Yeah, it's worth $500 for a helicopter lift out of this crappy weather."...

Interesting. In Australia, I thought the general rule was that if you push the button, your trip is over. They don't drop you supplies and leave you to it. If a helicopter comes and get you, you're going home in it.

The phrase missing from the article is "moral hazard". Of course it's a problem that if you reduce the risk associated with an activity, you increase the likelihood of someone undertaking it. The economically correct way to deal with it is to impose a cost on activating the beacon. Even if it doesn't cover the cost of the rescue, a fee of $500 would make you think twice about activating it, and of getting into that situation in the first place.

Incidentally, it would be nice if these devices had a few more features. I was in a situation a while ago (out of mobile phone coverage) where I would have liked a device that could have alerted a friend (but not the emergency services). I was scrambling through a rough, but not particularly remote area, by myself, in the middle of the night (blame geohashing). If I'd hurt myself, it would have been great to call a friend, who could have come and found me and driven me home, in a couple of hours. With an EPIRB, there probably would have been a helicopter...that would then have discovered it had nowhere to land...eventually causing great expense for no real need.

>My personal choice for 09 was a Trek 69er FS, big wheel up front to roll over the rocks, bomb down the drops/ledges but with a 26 in the rear to help keep a short tight wheelbase for the tight stuff and lower gear ratios.

Would love to see a photo of this, if you have one.