Climbing couloir and GPS all over the palce

I had to look up couloir. I wonder how many know that word. So perhaps not the best word to use in a general question.

Anyway, I can see that a couloir is "A steep, narrow gully on a mountainside". To me, this sounds as GPS disaster.

A GPS wants a clear view to the satellites without too much reflected signal from surroundings. Some GPS chipsets, such as the SirfStar, can to some extent deal with reflected signal. But your watch does not use a SirfStar chipset.

With my Fenix 3 (which has the same GPS chipset as the Fenix 5) I get good tracks on sea and in open land. When running under trees, or even in a city with small 2 storey buildings, the track gets worse. When paddling into short caves along a coastline, I get errors of several 100 meters.

Also, the slower you move, the more visible the GPS inaccuracies will be. I suppose you moved slower in this cuoloir than on the way to and from it? Your link doesn't work for me, so I can't see your speed.

So without knowing the exact conditions in the coulour, I guess that what you have seen is quite expectable.

Is this because the activity settings?

I don't think so. GPS simply doesn't work very well in deep narrow passages. Maybe another device with better reception would give a slightly better result, but there's not much else you can do.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2517688789

I get a message that I don't have permission to view the activity. Is it public?

Yeah, sorry. I forgot to make the workout public.


About the use of the word "couloir", it's a fairly common word in mountain lingo, so maybe it's not so out of place in an outdoors GPS forum, but what do I know...

I was indeed moving slow and stopped for long periods while climbing, so I guess that's the problem. Anyway, if anyone else is using this watch while alpine climbing it would be nice to know if there are workarounds... maybe something like pausing the activity while climbing? Or, is it possible to record two activities at the same time, say hike for the approach and climbing for the actual climb?

Thanks!

it would be nice to know if there are workarounds...

A potential workaround would depend on what you are trying to achieve, because it is not clear to me.

maybe something like pausing the activity while climbing?

This way you would loose the track (and all other data) for the climb section. Is that what you want?

Or, is it possible to record two activities at the same time, say hike for the approach and climbing for the actual climb?

Two activities at the same time? You make the approach and climb at the same time? And anyway, changing type of activity won't make GPS perform any better.

I think he wants an activity divided into three consecutive parts, like a triathlon activity which is divided in swimming, cykling and running. And in the middle part he doesn't want the GPS enabled.

I don't know if this is possible. I know there is "Multisport" activity, but I have never tried to understand what it does.

In that case the F5 is capable of it. You can define a custom multisport profile that will include different types of activities, and one of them could have GPS disabled.

Try to enable glonass, in some cases (or maybe in some places or days) helps.I have had good results in some routes under big walls, but usually glonass make poor tracks.

Arturo J. from Alicante