Garmin GPS mod.
Trying to get my Silvretta last day TR up for you guys, but I’m having too much fun testing backcountry skiing gear on our nice Colorado springtime snowpack. Out again this morning, so a quick post about a gear mod, then I’ll process more Silvretta images this afternoon.
Garmin’s idea of having a joystick on a GPS seems cool in the store when you try it out, but take it to the field and the teeny lever may drive you crazy when it gets inadvertently bumped, thus switching things around on the screen so who knows what you’ll be looking at from one “gyping” session to the next. Of course, having a control lock in the unit’s firmware would be too simple and logical for a GPS. I mean, that would be like having a parking brake in a car! How lame! Add things as useful as that, then working with the Garmin Etrex wouldn’t self actualize the geek in us.
The mod. Make a protector ring from the end of a wire nut. Glue it on with two-part plastic adhesive. Relax.
We’ll, my inner geek is plenty actualized, so the other day I got fed up with the Garmin Etrex’s stupid joystick flipping me all over the place every time I brushed against it. Time for the WildSnow modshop to take over. Sorry geeks (and apologies if you guys did hack the firmware and add a control lock — I couldn’t find anything on Google, besides, smearing adhesive on a piece of electronic equipment is like waxing skis. So satisfying.)
In process. Plenty of masking tape, including covering the joystick in case a gob of adhesive gets flung where it's not wanted. I just held the ring on with a finger and puttied the adhesive around it. Surfaces were prepped by toothing with a Scotchbrite and cleaning with denatured alcohol.
The Etrex joystick protector ring I made is about 4 mm tall, and may only need to be about 3 mm for easier access to the joystick. It’s easy to reduce height using a course file, so I’ll tune it after some field testing. Trick was to make the ring large enough in diameter to allow access to the stick, but not so large it wouldn’t protect it. Each to his own on that. My 13 mm ID ring still lets my finger do the walking, but with a thick gloved digit it wouldn’t be so easy. Compromise. Oh the pain. But at least that map cursor will be where I left it the last time I looked at it.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
