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As a father of two active young adults I spent some time today thinkng about what I can do to make sure that they'll have a GPS with them when they go hiking.

Several thoughts come to mind:

First, boy, a handheld GPS with maps & electronic compass is kind of pricey (min abt $185), especially if I have to buy two of them.

Second, even if I do give each of them a GPS, the odds are all too good that they won't bring them with when going hiking.

Third, the one thing I KNOW that they will bring with them is their smartphone - which happen to be Android phones.

So, I'm now thinking that the best and lowest cost solution is to offer to pay for them to install the BackCountry Navigator app, which provides 24K topo maps, seems pretty easy to use, and when set to "Goto" mode displays a compass with a simple direction to waypoint mark.

I wonder about the battery life on their Android phones using the GPS & app, so I think I'd purchase each of them an external battery power pack in the hopes that they might carry them along with - though in reality the odds of that happening might be slim.