The GPS that stopped us walking on thin ice

Everything on this site so far has pointed one way, which is a problem. I am one person collecting my own evidence and I already believe the conclusion. Evidence gathered that way has a habit of arriving helpfully.

So here is one that goes the other way.

Some years ago I was snowshoeing in the Norwegian fjords with a small group of three. We had maps and compasses, and we considered ourselves competent enough to be out there. This was not a group relying on a phone to think for us.

We were somewhere between five and six hours from the nearest manned hut.

The route we were about to take went across what looked, under snow, like flat open ground. It was a lake. We had a rough sense of that fact, but no way of knowing precisely where its edge began relative to our exact position. The ice, as we found out later that day from a local guide, was thawing, and heavily so.

The thing that gave us our position was GPS. A blue dot on Google Maps, on a phone, in my pocket, in the middle of the snowy Norwegian fjords. It gave us our exact position against the shape of the water, which no amount of judgement, observation or map-reading was going to produce standing in flat white light with no features to take a bearing from.

We walked around the lake.

The conversation before that moment had been somewhat ambivalent about using the device. Naive, probably, but ambivalent. On learning how close we were to the lake, the discussion turned to relief. Later, explaining it to the guide, to further relief, knowing what the likely consequence would have been. If not death for whoever went through, then certainly a dire situation for all of us involved.

I have written on this site about the person who navigates becoming different from the person who is navigated. I still believe that to be true. It was also, that afternoon, completely beside the point.