Edge 705 Altitudes

[Oroluk Lagoon]

Yesterday I rode the Tour de Blast, which is a climb from 500 feet to 4200 feet at the base of Mount St. Helens. Here are some data points:

At the 1000 foot sign it was right on.

At the 2000 foot sign it read 1912.

At an intermediate summit at 3,800 feet (the 3000 foot sign had been knocked down) it read about 3,750.

At the end of the road (Johnston Ridge Observatory) at 4,200 feet it was again right on.

I wonder if I had stopped at 2,000 feet and given the unit time to improve its fix, if the altitude reading would have been closer.

This was clearly an unscientific test, but I thought some of you might find it interesting.

The routing was pretty erratic using the route I downloaded from another rider's MapMyRide account. On looking at it after the fact to try to determine why it kept trying to route me off on side roads, I discovered that MapMyRide still has the old Spirit Lake Highway from prior to the eruption! (The route I downloaded is new road). Oh well, no matter, because all you have to do is just stay on the highway all the way up and back.

Anyone interested in reading more about the Tour de Blast should check out the thread in the Pacific Northwest subforum. BengeBoy posted some nice photos.

[luv2climb]

I have found that the roadside altitude signs are not always 100% correct. I actually found a sign in one of the national parks that was off by 1,000 ft. I thought that cannot be right so I told my 60CSx to update its altitude fix from the satellites and the result was still the same. In general I have found that they are 100' +/-.

My guess is that your Edge was probably pretty accurate!

[Oroluk Lagoon]

I hope you're right. Today I had that "Grade" problem that other's have spoken of in your Tips thread. Very early on in the ride the grade figure disappeared and was replaced by "---", as if the timer wasn't started, but it was and the distance was still recording. I turned the unit completely off and then on again...still no grade. So a little later I turned it off for several minutes. When I powered back up the grade came back and continued to function until the end of the ride. Should I report this to Garmin?

[awiner]

Today I had that "Grade" problem that other's have spoken of in your Tips thread. Very early on in the ride the grade figure disappeared and was replaced by "---", as if the timer wasn't started, but it was and the distance was still recording. I turned the unit completely off and then on again...still no grade. So a little later I turned it off for several minutes. When I powered back up the grade came back and continued to function until the end of the ride. Should I report this to Garmin?

Yes, report it to Garmin. It has happened to me many times and so far my reports to them have not seemed to matter. The more people that report this problem the better of a chance they will look into and fix it.

[Oroluk Lagoon]

I reported the grade function problem and in a separate email I also reported the tendency of the routing function to route you directly to the destination rather than back to the nearest point on the planned route in the event you have to take a detour however slight (like down a driveway to a parking lot rest stop). Perhaps this latter problem is due to interface issues with MapMyRide or just my lack of experience, but it has done this to me several times now. BTW, I'm using 2.2.