How good is Gaia for multiday trips?

WU7X

Snow on the Roof
I'm planning a 6-8 day ROF trip through northwest Montana. Most days I am trying to keep the mileage low, 40-60 miles/day. A few will be close to 80 miles, some of which is asphalt. The area covered will be going north from St Regis to the Canadian border, then east to Eureka, finally ending up on the west side of Glacier NP. That is a big chunk of country.

I want to use Gaia on my new 6th gen Apple iPad with 128 gigs of memory, cellular, and wifi. I know I'll need to download a lot of maps. Anyone with experience out there to let me know if the tablet will handle this, and if Gaia is good for long distance, multiday trips like this? My expected maps source for the iPad will be the USFS 2016 topos.

My standby is a Garmin Zumo 665 linked to a 13" Apple notebook with Basecamp and Garmin's northcentral topos. That setup up works O.K., but my eyes are going and would like a bigger screen that the new iPad will provide over the Zumo. I will be using Basecamp to create the routes we'll be following on either GPS system.

Thanks in advance.

Dale
 

jimi breeze

jimi breeze
Dale, would definitely plan to use Gaia on your iPad for your multi-day journey. I've used Gaia on multi-day trips all over the world with no problems.
Have you got the Gaia pro version? It comes with many more and useful map layers. I would guess that with 128 gigs you could download detailed maps with no problem. I've always loaded what I could and found wifi somewhere to continue my trip.
 

WU7X

Snow on the Roof
thanks for the support guys. Guess I'll go with the premium edition of Gaia. Noticed that they include the Nat'l Geo maps. I've used them around Moab, Cedar Mesa, etc., and have found them outstanding! Now to learn how to import those maps and also the routes I've created. Still think I'll bring the Garmin as a backup on my Recce trips to check the plan out prior to Sept.
 

Superduty

Adventurer
Is it safe to assume you want to pre download all the maps before you depart?

I'd you know your exact route downloading is easier. If you don't, then it's a lot more challenging to download large geographical areas (to the point it is stupid). Though it is easier on ios vs android.

Start downloading your map areas sooner than later. My experience is it takes longer to download than you might expect.

Double check by going to airplane mode with Wi-Fi off that your downloads were successful before you leave.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 

WU7X

Snow on the Roof
Thank Superduty. I’m yin the process of creating my routes now. I need to Pre-run everything over the next two months prior to our Sept. old farts adventure. I’ll start downloading now. I’m guessing that the easiest way to do that is to start it up at bedtime and check the results in the morning.
 

Superduty

Adventurer
Thank Superduty. I’m yin the process of creating my routes now. I need to Pre-run everything over the next two months prior to our Sept. old farts adventure. I’ll start downloading now. I’m guessing that the easiest way to do that is to start it up at bedtime and check the results in the morning.
That will work.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 

Skeptic

Adventurer
Has anyone experienced any constraints in using a 16GB iPad in the practical number of maps that can be loaded? I have a 128GB iPad available, but would prefer to purpose the older, 16GB unit if that is reasonable.
 

WU7X

Snow on the Roof
I think it will depend on how much area your maps will be covering. Using the USFS Topo maps background, it took 54mb for two small segments on my first day of a planned 8day trip. You can extrapolate from there.
 

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