Though we didn't take our AdventureMobile on this trip, I took along my new Garmin InReach Explorer and got a good chance to play around with the features. We were on a cruise out of Seattle up the Inside Passage to Glacier Bay. My main objective was getting some good glacier shots, which I'm still processing, having just returned Saturday. But I wanted to post up some pics and comments about the Explorer.
The Explorer performed amazingly well, despite not having "a clear view of the sky" at every moment. I left it in the window on the ship and then stuck it in the chest pocket of my jacket when we were out on the glacier. Other times, it was hanging on a biner off my pack.
I set up the Explorer to track us every ten minutes and send those points to my Map Share page, see the pictures below. I posted a link on my Facebook page for family and friends who were following our trip. The battery lasted for almost seven days and probably could have gone all the way, but I plugged it in about the fifth day just to be safe. The battery life is impressive when you're using it for tracking only. In Juneau, we took a helicopter ride to Herbert Glacier and hiked around a bit. If you're a Map and data nerd like me, you'll enjoy the screen shots of the data available for each point, showing our speed and exact location. The original info on the Map Share page is much clearer. The screen shots blurred it a bit.
This was a fantastic trip I'd recommend to anyone, though your tolerance for risk taking should be high. An hour after we left the glacier, another helicopter crashed in the same place, causing "minor injuries" only, thank goodness. I later read that you're 27 times more likely to crash in a helicopter than a car. Though I'm not sure that really covers the overlanding crowd
I really like that I can go back and relive our trip via the Garmin Mapshare page. It was cool knowing just where the ship was at any given point and even gave me a good understanding of why we were all seasick on a particular day. Turns out the Captain chose an open ocean route at that point, instead of the more sheltered route behind Haida Gwai that is normally taken. No one told us about that, but the Garmin did! I've since been following our tracks around Glacier Bay and learning more about the specific areas I was shooting. I'm loving the interactive nature of this thing.
Some pics: I have a cool video of our glacier landing too, but can't get it to post here.
The Explorer:
The route:
Topo showing where we cut off for the helicopter ride:
Aerials of our route over the glacier:
Touchdown on the glacier. I love how the aerial shows the movement of the glacier like a river. They told us it's moving about a foot a day.
Here's where we got out of the helicopter and started hiking around.
The data points are fun. Here it's showing we were walking pretty slowly and were at 1683 ft elevation. That surprised me because our glaciers here in Oregon (on Mt. Hood, for instance) tend to be at thousands of feet elevation.
This point has us moving 112mph at 2099ft elevation. I smartly deduced that we were in the copter at that point
. Since I was in the back, there was no clear view of the sky for the 15 or so minutes we were in the air. The Explorer tracked nonetheless.
Of course, some goofing off on the glacier:
The glacier was great, but I have to admit my favorite part of it all was cruising through Glacier Bay. What a stunning, surreal landscape! We were fortunate to get a sunny day and I spent the entire time out on the deck making photographs. It was like heaven.
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