Paid $160 for a trail map app that crashed on day 2 of the Smokies trip

Downloaded that fancy offline map app before hiking the Appalachian Trail section near Gatlinburg, and it glitched out right past Clingmans Dome, leaving me with a blank screen and zero signal. Has anyone else burned cash on tech that dies mid-hike, or do you stick to paper maps now?

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dianal941mo ago

Blame the phone, not the app honestly. Battery life and GPS chips act up in those mountains no matter what you pay, and paper maps dont magically fix that either. Plus you gotta think, even a solid paper map wont tell you where you are when the fog rolls in and you miss a switchback. Most of the time these apps are fine, people just dont update them before they leave home or expect magic service in a dead zone. Sounds like you got unlucky, but that aint proof the whole tech approach is broken, every tool fails sometimes.

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