High tech meets great outdoors for growing number of hikers

ROCHESTER, N.H. – When Dick Bailey recently prepared for a monthlong hike on the Virginia section of the Appalachian Trail, his equipment was as much Silicon Valley as great outdoors.

Alongside a tent, sleeping bag and other standard camping essentials, Bailey loaded up a PDA, or portable digital appliance, on which were stored his trail data book, 23 novels and his whole journal from his 1998 hike of the entire Appalachian Trail.

And he couldn’t forget his MP3 player-FM radio, which was loaded with 150 songs and audio books, a watch with altimeter and barometer and a cell phone.

“They’re not really a necessity,” said the 60-year-old Rochester resident. “But there’s no reason that you have to go out in the woods and suffer.”

Toting gadgets is a growing trend among outdoors enthusiasts, who these days are as likely to hit the trails with global positioning systems and pocket computers as they are with maps and compasses.

Outdoors retailer Eastern Mountain Sports reports that its sales of electronic gadgets are increasing at a higher rate than that of overall sales.

“And it has continued to grow steadily for the last two to three years,” George Lesure, product manager for outdoors accessories, said from the company’s corporate offices in Peterborough. “This spring that category has been on a very good roll for us, especially the GPS segment.”

Lesure attributes the growth to improvements in technology. “There’s a certain group that is always looking for the next greatest toy,” he said. The new toys, however, also are functional.

Global positioning technology, for instance, allows hikers to navigate in the wilderness with the help of satellites. The hand-held devices feature a screen that displays a map, longitude and latitude coordinates and compass bearings.

The technology gained notice during the Gulf War in 1991, when the public watched on television as aircraft delivered satellite-guided weapons into enemy territory. As the devices evolved throughout the 1990s and got cheaper, smaller and easier to use, they gained commercial popularity.