Many of us can remember when heading somewhere remote meant unfolding a paper map and hoping your sense of direction was as good as you believed. These days a phone or a small handheld device can show exactly where you're standing and that's a big change.
A lot of this used to need expensive gear and now most of it fits in a jacket pocket. GPS navigation doesn't remove the risks of the backcountry, of course, but it takes away much of the guesswork that used to cause the trouble. Let's look at how it's making remote trips safer and a bit easier.
Plan routes before you leave
Planning happens much before you are actually standing at the trailhead - either at home or at the hotel. With mapping apps, you can plan the route yourself, have it charted on the map and then share or download it on your phone. With newer features like 3D view, you can actually see how steep that climb is in the middle and based on that, you can decide if you want it or not.
Many people also keep a backup of these route files and trip notes on an external drive, so they're not stuck with a single copy on the laptop. It's quite annoying to find an external drive not showing up on Mac the night before you leave, since the files on it are suddenly out of reach. It's worth testing it a few days early. And since you've already gone over the whole route once, there's much less to figure out later when you're tired and it's getting dark.
Downloaded maps need no signal
A lot of people expect the map to load when they get to the trailhead, but the phone usually has no signal by then. In the backcountry cell service disappears quickly, so the maps have to be downloaded in the app before you leave home. Gaia GPS and onX both do this and you can save offline topographic maps for a whole region on the phone in a few minutes.
Do check which plan you're on first, because the free version of Gaia won't let you download maps for offline use. Then comes the part that surprises people – the phone's GPS keeps working in airplane mode, so your location still shows up on the downloaded map even with no bars at all.
Hikers who have tested this report that a 6.5-hour hike used only about 15% of the battery. Official maps are worth a look too, since the Avenza app has hundreds of free maps from national parks and Forest Service areas.
Tracks that lead you back
Most apps can record a track while you walk, which is basically a line showing the exact path you took. If fog comes in, or snow covers the trail, you can follow that same line back to where you started and not have to guess.
Recording does use up some battery – backpacking guides put it at about 2% to 5% every hour on a phone, so a lot of people bring a small power bank and keep the screen off most of the time.
Satellite messengers fill the gaps
GPS tells you where you are, but it can't send a message. That's where the best satellite messengers for remote travel come in. Most of the popular ones use the Iridium network and all of them need a satellite subscription for messaging and SOS. Here are a few that keep coming up in the 2026 reviews:
Garmin inReach Messenger – two-way texting and SOS and the battery can last up to 28 days on a single charge
Garmin inReach Mini 3 Plus – lighter at 4.4 ounces, with a color touchscreen
ZOLEO – much cheaper at around $149 and it works through your phone
Most of these plans can be paused in the off-season. For example, ZOLEO, one of the top satellite communicator services, lets you suspend service for a small monthly fee. This keeps your number active until the next trip. Phones now have satellite SOS as well. But there have been reviews and feedback from various people that says that a dedicated communicator is more reliable for frequent backcountry use.
Two-way contact solves problems early
Garmin's 2025 SOS data shows injury as the top reason people needed help, with more calls for medical issues like altitude sickness than before. But there's a more hopeful detail in the same report – more than 12 percent of users self-rescued without any emergency resources. That’s mostly possible because they could talk the situation through with someone instead of only pressing a button.
Hikers and backpackers were again the biggest group of people who needed rescue and about a third of the responses in the report involved a helicopter. Still, a few messages back and forth can clear up a wrong turn or a small problem long before anyone has to send one.
Conclusion
GPS doesn't take the place of good judgment and it doesn't help much with a dead battery or without a paper map as backup. What it does is remove most of the unknowns that used to make remote travel so risky and a downloaded map along with a way to message someone from the middle of nowhere covers a lot of that. It's worth setting them up before the trip and not at the trailhead. A small power bank and a printed copy of the route are cheap insurance on top of that.