A safety and navigation essential for longdistance riding? Or another bleeping digital crutch for those who shouldn’t be in the wilderness in the first place? Rich Rothwell looks at the dramatic influence that GPS units have had on our sport.

WORDS RICH ROTHWELL PHOTOGRAPHY SINGLETRACK

The morning was getting hotter. I’d set off before dawn from the coast to gain as much height as possible before the Greek sun became too vicious. My legs were scratched from the sharp grasses and thorns that carpeted the dry scree slopes. I was playing my favourite holiday game. Visit a Greek island and find the highest points on the map (Greece seems to specialise in steep, rocky mountains that rear improbably out of the sparkling blue sea). Keep assaulting the peak until I find a way up through the mazes of crumbling olive groves, scree slopes, and in this case, scrubby plants and ancient gnarled trees.

This was Crete and I was trying to reach the summit of Spathi (2,148m). From my experience of living and working on the Greek mainland, I knew that accurate maps were hard to come by, and incredibly accurate OS mapping is not a universal luxury. So I’d set off armed with my wits.

The vegetation was grabbing my bike and my legs. the slope was getting precariously steep. Dragging the bike upwards was becoming increasingly unnerving. the sun was beating down hard now. Sweat crept into and stung the scratches on my ankles. Loose stones skittled down the slope as my feet sunk into the dry, unstable ground. I was falling into the Incident Pit and I knew it. Pressing on was painstakingly slow and, now in a gully, my sense of direction was lost. Looking back down, well, it didn’t look very appealing; the valley floor was 1,000m below and I felt that I could throw a stone down to it.