My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

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GrizzlyGuy
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My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:13 pm

I just got a Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS. I'm going to use it mainly for skiing so that I can use the track logs as my ski log. I'll be able to see how many vertical feet and run miles I ski each day, and how fast I was going during each run. I played with the display options and found a mode where the entire screen becomes a speedometer so it will be fun to glance over at it while skiing to see how fast I'm going in real time.

The display is the old black& white type (like the eTrex series) and doesn't support maps. That's OK, I wasn't looking to replace my 60CSx's and I have ski resort trail maps loaded on my iPhone. I'll probably bring it along on rides anyway, just as an emergency backup unit with my pick-up points stored as waypoints. The pick-up points are major road junctions that I can hike to if I break down and get picked up there by my wife.

I gave it a whirl during today's dog walk and it performed as expected. When I got home I sucked the track into ExpertGPS, used the Measure Track function, and got this:

Image

If you float your mouse along the track you can see your actual speed at each point. My top speed was 10.3 mph while running part way down the hill, and I was cruising at around 3.8 mph while walking back up (XCSKI is where the XC ski trail crosses our street and it is down below my house). Me thinks I can go quite a bit faster if I strap on the skis.

It also has a barometric altimeter and a rate-of-climb display so I could also use it as a backup vario/altimeter when flying sailplanes or hang gliders. Anyhoo, I think it was worth the money as it looks like it will do what I wanted it to do.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby Ken » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:09 pm

GrizzlyGuy wrote:My top speed was 10.3 mph while running part way down the hill
You're a ringer!
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:41 pm

Ken wrote:You're a ringer!
:lol: LMAO! =D>

Oh, and...

:finger:
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby Ken » Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:07 am

LOL...#1 compliment...accepted with honor.


BTW..cool gismo. Where do you usually ski? Down the street...Tahoe-Donner? Or are you a Squallywood kinda guy?
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Thu Feb 03, 2011 7:13 am

I have a season pass at Northstar and mostly ski there (I'm heading over in about 15 minutes to hopefully claim first-chair-up-the-mountain). In the spring I usually buy the spring pass at Alpine Meadows since they stay open later in the season. Sometimes I get lazy, walk out the back door, and ski down to Tahoe Donner. See here: Skiing from Back Deck :)
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:06 pm

Top speed today: 51.3 mph. I got it on The Chute, in the little red section in the track log below. Had I been willing to tuck the top part I could have done a lot better. Maybe if I get a full face skiing helmet...

Image

This Garmin Foretrex is going to be fun. :)
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby hemingray » Thu Feb 03, 2011 8:57 pm

Wish I had one of those back in the day. When Northstar first opened, we went there on a beautiful early spring day and proceeded to go to the top, ski pretty much straight down and repeat. All day. We nicknamed it Flatstar that day. I'm *pretty* sure that was the run. We preferred Heavenly for the altitude and the fact that if you hit the upper lift just before closing, we would get to the bottom after most of the crowd had departed. I doubt my knees could take much of that now!

Fun to see the tracks and speeds with the cool technology!

BTW, I learned to ski at Boreal in the late 60's My parents would pile us on a busload of kids in Palo Alto at 4:45 AM and we would spend all day either learning in lessons or ditching those for free skiing all day. On the way home, the busses would stop in Sacramento at Arden Fair (I think that was what they called it then) for the wide choice of food - listen for your bus number! - and arrive home in the evening. Along with fun for us (me and my brother) I realized later that it gave them a whole day of peace and quiet. Lace up ski boots, cable bindings - good times!

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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:06 pm

Ha! Yeah, the front side is pretty mellow, especially the west ridge part. I like to hit those uber-popular runs first thing, while the corduroy is still perfect and before ski patrol has a chance to erect the slow signs. That gives me plausible deniability: 'Wuh? You mean this is a Mellow Yellow zone?? Who knew, I didn't see any signs!". Then I move to east ridge which is less popular and has a bit of steepness on the top of the runs (the one I showed, Tonini's, whatever they they chose to groom that night). Around 9:45- 10 AM I hit the back side then on to Lookout Mountain. Those are lots steeper than the front side and I stay just ahead of the crowd. Unfortunately, some of my best speed runs on the backside were closed for helicopter logging!

I've literally only been to Boreal once to try the night skiing. Wasn't my cup of tea, and that place gets mobbed by kids on snowboards. Probably riding buses from Palo Alto... :roll: :wink:

I found a bug in ExpertGPS's measurement function. I hit 50 mph on several runs, but it set my speed negative on most of the runs so it didn't show up in the color-coding. I guess I'll have to send in a bug report. :(
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby Ken » Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:43 am

My son used to ski race...he has nicknames for a few of the resorts.


Squaw = Squawllywood
Boreal = Boring Hill
Northstar = Flat Star


We went to Homewood on Sat...best views in Tahoe.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Sun Feb 06, 2011 6:19 pm

Homewood is cool. There is one run where you are blasting down the ridge, you catch a bit of air on a gentle lip, and it looks like you are going to land in Lake Tahoe. Flyin Boy and I were planning to shoot video on that run for Adventure World but it ended up snowing a ton when he came up to do the shooting.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby hemingray » Sun Feb 06, 2011 8:31 pm

Love "Squallywood" for a name! We also used to ski a lot at Alpine, it was my favorite back then. Even though Heavenly has great views of the lake, I agree Ken, that Homewood's are superb. I sure miss the skiing, but there's no way my knee could take the twisting anymore. Sigh.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby hellcat650 » Tue Feb 08, 2011 2:58 pm

Hey ken, maybe we need a snowsports forum? Something totalk about when snow slowsdown atvs.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby ATV'er » Wed Feb 09, 2011 9:15 am

hellcat650 wrote:Hey ken, maybe we need a snowsports forum? Something totalk about when snow slowsdown atvs.
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby hemingray » Wed Feb 09, 2011 9:14 pm

hellcat650 wrote:Hey ken, maybe we need a snowsports forum? Something totalk about when snow slowsdown atvs.
I don't hear much about Greenhorn, I guess all the restrictions did that in somewhat.
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Re: My New Toy: Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Thu Feb 10, 2011 8:32 pm

Some bad news about this GPS: I put in two fresh Duracell alkaline batteries, and they only lasted about 8 hours. I had the "low battery" warning on the screen when I shut it off today after skiing. I'm going to switch to lithiums as per BruteForce's recommendation and hopefully they will give me much longer run time.

Oh well, it did manage to run long enough to log my snow-scorching 53.7 mph run this morning. :)
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