Teva Mountain Games Steep Creek Competition

June 3, 2010

We went to the Steep Creek Competition at Red Cliff today, it was a great chance to see some world class creek paddling and send updates back to the Village in Vail where the main Teva Mountain Games area is located. We were pretty excited because there’s no cell phone reception at Red Cliff… our messages announced the leaders and finally the winners before anyone else could get the information out. Not a bad example of what you can do with the new Earthmate PN-60w & SPOT Communicator! Congratulations to Tanya Faux and Sam Sutton, this year’s Teva Mountain Games Steep Creek Champions!

You can follow all of the DeLorme and SPOT activity by going to our Teva Mountain Games Shared SPOT Page below… you can see all of the Check-in messages and Tracks being created by media, athletes, and people checking out the new release!

Sorry, Teva SPOT messages have expired, the shared page is no longer available.

Check back for more news from DeLorme, SPOT, and the Teva Mountain Games!

Chip Noble
Team DeLorme


Beta Challenge #2: Plan, Explore, and Share

May 24, 2010

I thought I’d put together a post on what we’re up to with the DeLorme Earthmate PN-60w and SPOT Satellite Communicator beta test and give you a chance to see some of the new features…

The following screenshots and descriptions are part of my results for a Beta Challenge that requires the use of all the hardware and software we are releasing to Plan, Explore, and Share the results of an adventure. While not a major summit here in Maine, our Pleasant Mountain hike was my daughter’s first ascent so we were pretty excited to be able to send a message to her grandparents from the top!

Here are the steps we followed to put the trip together:

Planning

The Planning screenshot shows two waypoints—one for the parking lot and another for the summit of Pleasant Mountain. We actually used the DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer descriptions to select the mountain because it is the closest one to our house that had over 1,000 feet of elevation gain. I created a route from the parking lot to the summit and then created a track based on that route so that I could profile the hike on the PN-60w. I used the Geocaching features in Topo North America to create a Pocket Query in case there were any caches on the mountain. The last thing I did was download the aerial imagery for the mountain so that I could see detailed information about the terrain.

Read the rest of this entry »


Geocaching in Salt Lake City

July 23, 2009

Last night Team DeLorme met up with a group of geocachers for a cache run in Salt Lake City.

We started out at the Salt Lake City Travel Bug where we met the cache owner, Lefty624. He was very helpful and allowed us to hold a little meet and greet at his location. We were joined by cachers from the Utah Association of Geocachers as well as some cachers who were attending the Outdoor Retailer Show. We found five caches in all with most of them being pretty challenging micro and nano caches. Geooogle, a local cacher, showed of some exceptional geosense and helped with several of the difficult micros. Thanks to Firennice for sharing his local knowledge of Utah geocaching as well as helping to keep us out of the hot sun! Thanks also goes to Cache Advance for sharing more about using Textmarks for geocaching, check out her post for a cool way to share that you’ve found the cache. Congratulations to Cach-U-Nuts for winning the Eartha 3D geocoin!

Here are some photos from the event. Thank you to all that attended, it was a lot of fun to get out and geocache while visiting Utah!

Chip Noble
Team DeLorme

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Visit from John Huston of North Pole ’09

July 22, 2009

John Huston visited the DeLorme booth today to share stories, pictures, and waypoints from the historic trip that he and Tyler Fish completed during their Victorinox North Pole ’09expedition. The two polar explorers became the first Americans to ski unsupported to the North Pole on April 25th of 2009… and they did it with the help of their DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 GPS devices! You can check out their blog to read more about the trip. Here are two of my favorite entries… the first covers a very scary event where John fell through the ice and spent some time in arctic waters.

http://www.forwardexpeditions.com/226-day-47-an-eventful-day-4-17.html

The second is titled “The Long Road Home” and shows a photo of the PN-40 on Tyler’s journal with an entry that simply states “The North Pole. Tired, proud… smart, safe. Here… we are here now.”  

http://www.forwardexpeditions.com/263-the-long-road-home-5-21.html

John brought his PN-40 with him to the booth and we were able to download the waypoints and take a couple of pictures. Check out the DeLorme patch on John’s expedition fleece, very exciting!

John Huston

John's PN-40

The Topo USA map below doesn’t show much detail for the North Pole but John was very happy with the device, especially when they started tracking their rate of drift at the end of the trip. The current was moving the ice so quickly they ended up deciding to ski without breaks for the end of the trip just to make sure they made it to the pole in time for their return shuttle!

North Pole '09 Topo USA

We really appreciate John taking the time out of his busy schedule to stop by the DeLorme booth and share their experience with the Earthmate GPS. Check out their site for lots of great details about the trip.

Keep an eye out for the August edition of Backpacker magazine where DeLorme has a two page ad on the inside cover congratulating John and Tyler on their amazing accomplishment. I was lucky enough to get John to sign my copy. We have a few other signed magazines at the DeLorme booth at Outdoor Retailer if you stop by…

Chip Noble
Team DeLorme