Altimeter drift during hiking

Hi

What is you experience in multi hour hiking activities with lots of elevation gain/loss?
Mine is not good.
The altimeter drifts consistently even in stable weather
I have added, in the same screen, both GPS and barometric altitude and the latter drifts a lot, while the GPS altitude is very accurate, compared to
signs in the trail

Yesterday I went on a 6 hour hike with approx 1750 elevation loss/gain
The weather was very good, although this does not mean that there are no pressure changes
I recalibrated the altimeter 4 times, based on signs and it still drifted up to 70m (always displaying a higher elevation) in 40 minutes which IMHO is a lot

This behavior is consistent during my past hikes as well, that is why I started a thread asking people to email Garmin to add continuous calibration back
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...x-5-5s/157554-

0 PaddyDeng over 7 years ago

Yes, I have the same problem too, I found this issue on my Fenix Chronos and Fenix 5, and also noticed they both have gps drift issue. The watch is showing I'm moving at 0.2-0.3 mph while I'm siting down taking a break at the trail.

0 cmerrill over 7 years ago

I just returned from a 70 mile, 4 day backpacking trip. The trail was between 10,000 and 12,900 feet with 8 major passes with at least 1,000 feet of climbing. Total elevation gain was around 13,500 feet. I had auto calibration turned on for the altimeter. I never manually recalibrated. There were blue sky days and one of the worst hail storms I have ever been in. With all this, the altimeter was never more than 150 feet off from topo map known elevations. Very impressive.

For or whatever it is worth, the ultratrac feature failed. It was off by either 5 miles too short (Garmin Connect) or 37 miles too long ( Garmin Basecamp). Very frustrating.

0 nmyeti over 7 years ago

I just returned from a 70 mile, 4 day backpacking trip. The trail was between 10,000 and 12,900 feet with 8 major passes with at least 1,000 feet of climbing. Total elevation gain was around 13,500 feet. I had auto calibration turned on for the altimeter. I never manually recalibrated. There were blue sky days and one of the worst hail storms I have ever been in. With all this, the altimeter was never more than 150 feet off from topo map known elevations. Very impressive.

For or whatever it is worth, the ultratrac feature failed. It was off by either 5 miles too short (Garmin Connect) or 37 miles too long ( Garmin Basecamp). Very frustrating.

Which firmware are you running? Glad to hear that the altimeter is decent. It would be awesome if we could get inside 1 contour line, but I can probably live with 150+/-

0 cmerrill over 7 years ago

Which firmware are you running? Glad to hear that the altimeter is decent. It would be awesome if we could get inside 1 contour line, but I can probably live with 150+/-

I was running beta 4.14. I agree, +/- 150 is livable. It was very useful with so much up and down the passes on the Highline Trail.

0 bellostom over 7 years ago

Unfortunately, my experience, as stated when started the thread, is not that good. I expected it to drift less, since the 150' I get is within a very short time period and in pretty stable weather. This weekend I will do a couple more hikes with approx 3000' each. Let's hope I am pleasantly surprised this time

0 manueleltoro over 7 years ago

First I need to mention I have the FR935, which is basically the same watch in a slight different package.

After some 15 hikes I did including some climbing I must say that the altimeter works well for me. Usually it doesn't drift for more then 20-30m. Even with weather changes the watch never drifted for more than 60m (beatiful sun to thunderstorm) and up vs. down is always within a 20m range. I sometimes recalibrate when I see it is off at peaks or points which I know the altitude from, however I am more interested in total number than actual height. To check this, I have both GPS and barometric height on one data screen, so it's easier to check whether the watch has experienced a drift.

The hikes I recorded with the watch so far lastest between 5-9 hours and the altitude range is somehwere in between 1300m up to 3150 above sea level.

I would get your watch checked if you experience unreasonable drifts.