Essential Apps For Modern Backpackers – While the ubiquitous FarOut (formerly Guthooks) is a great tool for long-distance travel with well-documented and popular reviews, many backpackers spend their time on short weekend trips in areas not covered by guidebook-style programs. However, if this is you, then the lack of a fully organized guide does not mean that paper maps are your best choice for navigation as your grandfather might suggest. Modern GPS software with loadable features has come a long way since the ‘good old days’.
In the last decade, digital map services have grown beyond paper map copies and have become effective tools for planning and analysis. I call this group of applications “full service” GPS platforms, which provide weather information at a national and/or international level.
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To be an effective GPS system, the service needs to be relevant to all stages of a backpacking trip, including initial discovery, route construction, and route navigation. While you may spend a lot of time switching between offline websites trying to connect every part, there are all-in-one options that can make the job quick and easy.
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There are many full-service GPS programs on the market. However, to keep things short, I will compare three popular and widely used services: Gaia GPS, Caltopo, and the newest onX Backcountry (BC).
Descending into West Bay from Wind River Peak. I was glad to have a very high resolution GPS map for this.
I used Gaia as my main platform from 2018 to 2020, and followed the changes via Reddit (and my mother who now uses my account). Caltopo has been my go-to since leaving Gaia after many issues (more on that later) and my growth as a traveler forced me to look for other options. OnX is new to me, but I heard a fair amount about it from sponsored content and unsponsored sources like outfitters and guides before trying it myself.
In full disclosure, onX has provided me with a year of their Elite membership at no cost for the purpose of writing this article. I pay full load for my current Caltopo subscription and paid for Gaia for several years before canceling my account payment for my mother. I also had direct contact with onX staff to answer questions (mostly confirming ‘missing’ features). Despite this, I promise that my view of the product has not changed. I think my comments below will support that as well.
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The first part of planning your own trip is to have a vague idea of what you want to do. Maybe you have a location in mind, or you were given a GPX file that doesn’t quite match your trip goals but gives some good ideas. Having as much information as possible is good for calling and familiarizing yourself with the area. Different systems bring different types and amounts of data to the table for priority orientation within a region.
Although all GPS platforms have a built-in 2D topo map, having multiple additional layers is great for cross-checking information. The entire state is covered by historic USGS 7.5′ quads, and in much of the west, Forest Service maps provide a modern digital update to that. Combine this with a layer of high-quality satellite imagery and your bass will be covered for many backpacking trips.
Caltopo: 🟢 Good. Covers the basics: indoor digital topo, FS 2016, USGS quads, and several satellite options. It also has great overlays like contours, centerlines, slope angle shading and shadow relief, and more. When you’re online, you can also pull in Google layers like maps, terrain, and satellites. This is great for detailed planning where Google’s next-level satellite images are clearer than others.
Gaia GPS: 🟢 Best. While offering many of the same options as Caltopo, Gaia adds more to the top with more international map sources, the National Geographic Trails Illustrated series, and historical map sets.
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OnX BC: 🔴 Poor. They offer only 2 map layers, indoor topo and satellite imagery, with a few basic overlays such as slope angle shading, active fires and air/smoke information. Although onX made a name for themselves with their Private Land range in the Hunt version of their software, it doesn’t differ significantly from the offerings from the competition for storage purposes.
All three services provide the latest array of satellites, which aim to take complete images of the earth in medium resolution every 3-8 days (on average). This is useful for identifying where snow is lurking, but it can also help in areas with flooding, flooding, and extreme environmental changes.
Caltopo: 🟢 Good. Released from Sentinel Satellites, considered the industry standard. Caltopo also has daily MODIS satellite access but it is not so poorly resolved that it only helps track snowmelt at the scale of entire mountain ranges.
Gaia GPS: 🟡 OK. Produced by the European Space Agency, the resolution and contrast are not as good as Sentinel.
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OnX BC: 🟢 Good. Taken from Planetary Image, it seems to take a slight edge in resolution over Caltopo/Sentinel when I’ve compared the two. It also lets you switch between fully recent and unrestricted recent, useful for areas that may be covered by clouds.
Recent satellite images from Caltopo (left), Gaia (center), and onX (Right), with a box applied to all three to match the scale.
All of these services have a basic 3D topographic model, which manages things like slope angle shading, shadow stability, elevation profiles and any 3D features provided.
Caltopo: 🟢 Best. There are currently two levels of resolution in CalTopo: ‘Standard’ which can be found across the country based on low quality data, and ‘High’ which are more detailed, LIDAR scans of specific areas. They regularly add high resolution areas and cover many of my favorite areas. The shadow support layer has a great mode called ‘Intensified’ which acts like Multiply in Photoshop; it can be fully integrated with the base layer instead of just placing a cloud / changing transparency on it.
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Gaia GPS: 🟢 Best. Gaia is on a similar quest to populate high-quality data in the country’s most popular locations. I prefer the graphic look of the Caltopo a little, but in the end they are in the neck.
OnX BC: 🔴 Poor. It looks equally good at low resolution, and doesn’t bring much to the table that can’t be quickly observed from the contours. There is no shader support option, but it does enable a nifty feature that shows the elevation of the route along the route lines. However, drawing a path over it blocks the view and does not work on cross country paths.
Although all three services pull large portions of their station and landscape data from Open Street Mapping (OSM), some provide additional data that can be useful in planning.
Caltopo: 🔴 Poor. Although it is possible to search all user-generated maps (if they are made by a user to make them public), the shared “Caltopo maps” overlay is less important than the Gaia equivalent because Caltopo is not very popular, and does not make it public. share as default.
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That said, you can easily find entire guidebook-level maps in a way like Hayduke for a good search.
Gaia GPS: 🟡 OK. There is a useful interface called ‘public tracks’ that appear in tracks recorded by users on your own map. This can give the impression of modified/incorrect centerlines, side paths with petroglyphs or good looks, or active cross-country trails. Gaia’s large user base and default public distribution result in a large amount of data available.
OnX BC: 🟢 Good, with caution. OnX is the latest in a long list of Adventure Project brand owners (Mountain Project, MTB Project, Mountain Project, etc), which gives the app access to the vast majority of guides available. This means fast, detailed information on many popular hikes and ski tours. The downside is that much of this content is user generated and of questionable accuracy. Regardless, this is their most powerful feature, bridging the gap to lower power or custom platforms like AllTrails and FarOut, while still having full planning capabilities.
Personally, I found their Hiking Project data analyzing effort. The ‘path’ automatically labeled as hard (black overlay) turned out to be inactive. What I thought would be an hour of downhill turned into 3 hours of hard climbing through the upper level of the bridge. My partner was not happy with me.
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Sometimes, not everything can be handed to you on a silver platter. Being able to access data from other sources in multiple formats is great for storage subsystems with custom maps and custom layers. It is also useful for getting data such as vehicle locations on your platform without side tracking.
Caltopo: 🟢 Good. It supports common GPS file types such as GPX, KML, and GeoJSON. It also allows for custom map sheets such as Geospatial PDFs, GeoTIFF, and even spatial JPEG/PNGs that can be manually aligned. It also has custom layers, in formats like WMS, WMTS, Mapbox Tilesets, and more.
Gaia GPS: 🟢 Good. It offers the same options as Caltopo, although it is harder to operate and manage.
OnX BC: 🔴 Poor. It is
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