If you buy a paper OS Landranger map nowadays, it has a code printed on it, covered with a “scratch off” layer. The code can be input to the OS App which then allows you to download an off-line copy.
Don’t get me wrong, I will use it again, and I think GPS is a brilliant invention.
It’s just that I’ve never had a paper map fail catastrophically - appart from blowing away / catching fire, I don’t think it could.
Electronics (especially consumer grade) has that potential, to say nothing of software bugs…
That’s reasonable since you already paid for the paper version. I don’t know what being ‘off-line’ means in terms of restricting its use. I still use my Landranger paper maps (1:50,000) for cycling but they don’t have the detailed features that the Explorer series have for safe navigation in the hills.
As for electronics and software bugs, I field-tested the app on my iPhone 4S on many local walks to give me the confidence that risk was very low. You can always print a high-quality paper version from the app in the unlikely event of your device dying. But there is no risk-free solution to anything.
Probably the safest thing for most of us to do in sudden near-zero-vis conditions is get into your Bothy bag and wait for it to pass. The techniques for navigating in such conditions (like counting and timing your paces) are not without their problems (especially when scrambling up and down paths on steep hills) and you had better have practised it dozens of times before trying it for real. I suspect most SOTA activators have not developed those specialist skills. We shouldn’t be sniffy about any navigational aid that improves safety.
I once dropped a map crossing the Carneddi, and despite knowing the hills fairly well it was a very uncomfortable feeling! Even old technology sometimes can fail! After that I kept an old 1:50000 map in the bottom of the rucksack as a plan B!
PS agree about stopping - was on Buachaille Etive Beag with a MG with bad winter weather approaching- his advice was to get down in front of it, but if it turned to a white out to spend the night up there until it was safe to move…
I have navigated the old way with a compass and pacing off a summit and aiming off and am usually very accurate but find that it is quite a lot slower than getting the phone out. Have now added a watch to the general SOTA equipment with a built in GPS and altimeter. I’m not sure if it is cheating or just sometimes disappointing discovering just how far it still is to the AZ. The next little challenge is to get my head around the code needed to convert from lat / lon to a Uk grid reference.
I now navigate with a paper map and use the OS map with a subscription as a double check so I am much less reliant on pacing and aiming off but have a plan B for a software issue.
Yeah, spending the night in a Bothy bag is unpleasant and you won’t get any sleep but it could save your life. Most winters you hear on the news about deaths in the mountains and it often turns out that he (it’s usually a He) tried to press on down in the dark or other poor vis.
That can be an advantage. If I remember, I tell the app to download the map for the route before I leave home. Otherwise, you might find you have no network coverage at the start of the walk and the app can’t download it there (or you get lucky and get a network connection as you walk higher up) - another reason for taking a paper print-out of the route.