Follow up on Knots Claim

[matthew.d.kirk]

I believe the SPOT tracker works as follows, please correct me if I am wrong...

Though I'm not a hacker, I'd agree the day is here. How well your hardware hack works would (I believe) depend on what output is expected. If an after-the-fact map/summary sheet such as what Dan recently published with his claim is all that's expected, sure. But if it's to fake a batch of check-in emails and/or a live or delayed track, you'd still need to overcome a "secondary timestamp" issue.

Each automatically generated check-in email (from tracker company domain) has its own timestamp separate from the unit's (altered) timestamp. Similarly, pins on live/delayed maps would have to appear at reasonable times. You'd have to do this over a hundred times over the course of 1.5 months (based off #pings of other tracks: Anish=153, Dan=121 Stringbean~130, even Joey with trace unit has 100 out with 360 miles to go)...

It seems faking timely transparency is much more tedious. And based on simple math, the more thorough the documentation, the more chance of a slip. Per usual, the devil is in the details. This is why I continuously harp on the importance of getting info out sooner than later.

[Just Bill]

Way over my head... I just got to the point that I can post photos that aren't rotated onto WB, lol.

The nice thing with Spot- is the track data eventually gets turned in as a report from Spot.
That wouldn't preclude you from faking the actual transmission (or simply faking an FKT period with a vehicle or assistance)- but at least the data isn't a manually stored stream of points.
If you did have a device that stored the track- you have all kinds of opportunity to manipulate the data as needed as Matt has shown with his efforts in mapping.

Where the spot can be played with even by a technophobe like me is the check-in's as those come via emails. I could probably figure out how to do a check in only trip and then simply edit the email to turn that in.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

That's why- despite the great aid a tracker can be- I still feel strongly about normal documentation. (pictures, narratives, posts, and a trip report).
Honestly those tell most of us more than any tech ever could. In much the same way you can spot somebody on their first trip by talking to them and looking over their gear, actions, and habits.... when you turn in that stuff a phony tends to stick out. Your gut tells you this person is full of it better than any GPS ever could.

Actually to me it seems that with the rise of better smart phones and their presence on the trail as standard gear; that simply enabling geotagging and metadata settings on your phone means that every photo you take can become a reliable "PING" in a GPS string.

Knotts, Joe, and Joey have all expressed the frustrations they've had with their GPS leash... and I think there has been too much emphasis on GPS as some sort of panacea.
It's a nice tool; but realistically it seems you're possibly better off simply carrying a bit of extra juice for your phone and doing things the normal way.
When the inevitable holes in your GPS pop up (and you have no idea when those are) then you need some other back up regardless. So might as well think of GPS as a secondary system of documentation in my mind.

I like the Spot personally as I found it usable, and having the SOS when you're going balls to the wall with no sleep is something that gave my loved ones at home huge piece of mind. Thankfully no one has been seriously hurt but it doesn't take much to take a serious tumble and get in trouble.

But if it comes down to it- I value conversation, emails, photos, and traditional stuff much more highly.



As anyone who reads my posts can attest- I love a thousand words- but pictures are pretty damn useful too.
It should still always boil down to personal honor and integrity. Those may not be as cut and dry as a rock solid GPS- but they are more valuable to me.
People crap on these as just a race, a stunt, or a crappy way to use the trail. If it does boil down to just a string of GPS and some social media... it will be just a race.

But if it remains a combination of traditional documentation with additional layers of proof- then these FKT's on long trails can remain inspirational journeys with compelling stories.
Data points don't tell a tale, just a time. The clock is the backstory- the hike is what makes them special. I'm not all that interested in who wins a race, but I am very interested in what happens when people race themselves and share that journey.

Right now Joey is probably "out" as far as the clock is concerned. But as far as what FKT's are really all about in my book- it's still an amazing race I'm deeply enjoying.

[pbakwin]

It's interesting that no one has tried the Delorme tracker for an AT FKT. The unit is slightly heavier than SPOT, and somewhat more expensive to purchase and operate. But it seems to have a better satellite network & also has more functionality. Being able to send & receive text via satellite might not seem like that big an advantage on the AT where you have cell coverage a lot of the time. The Delorme has a rechargeable battery, so managing that would be another question. But I'd bet if you're just sending 5-6 pings / day the battery will go for a long time.

Bill: At Ultimate Direction we had a specific design spec to allow for carrying trackers on or near the top of your shoulder since the beginning of the Signature Series vests several years ago. I have been quite adamant about this. No royalty to you for this idea!

[Just Bill]

It's interesting that no one has tried the Delorme tracker for an AT FKT. The unit is slightly heavier than SPOT, and somewhat more expensive to purchase and operate. But it seems to have a better satellite network & also has more functionality. Being able to send & receive text via satellite might not seem like that big an advantage on the AT where you have cell coverage a lot of the time. The Delorme has a rechargeable battery, so managing that would be another question. But I'd bet if you're just sending 5-6 pings / day the battery will go for a long time.

Bill: At Ultimate Direction we had a specific design spec to allow for carrying trackers on or near the top of your shoulder since the beginning of the Signature Series vests several years ago. I have been quite adamant about this. No royalty to you for this idea!

Dammit! I was hoping to retire on that one. Now I gotta go dig your vest out when I get to the shop and look better how you set it up. I've been sliding them up to where a load lifter strap would go so the unit was facing up, rather than out if that makes sense. On my 'fast pack' style I put a small netting envelope closer to the top of the roll top sleeve to store it. I was inspired by that BPL article they did some time back and the much better results they got simply by ensuring the unit stayed as close to flat as possible.

I think given the last few attempts that the delorme will get looked at harder.
The spot is pretty accepted in the LD hiking community overall as delivering the okay and SOS for a reasonable price and battery life. It functions so well for most hikers for that purpose that it's become a solid piece of gear. But under FKT conditions you have to really know how to use it right.

For my part... I've got the phone along as the camera and all the other functions so the bonus features of the Delorme were duplication of effort in my mind.
However Spot has been quietly creeping their pricing too with an intro rate and escalating annual fee... guessing Delorme may be more competitive than before as it's been a few years since I looked.

You probably know best... any drawbacks to going with a full metadata enabled picture system?
That seems to fit everyone's style pretty well and it's a piece of gear you're likely to have.
Though I suppose Delorme with two way text and a smaller camera could work.

It's handy storing all the PDF's, spreadsheets, music etc in the smartphones so as much as I like to turn the thing off- I still see the phone as the most practical single use piece of electronics to have.
In that sense- if there is a way to use that tool more effectively then it's about as user friendly as it gets.
My phone is now set up to sync to a one-drive account with little or no impact on battery life... that system could be used to document in real time via a shared folder (or google drive, or whatever).

On the flipside- both Kaiha and Dan... and hundreds of folks really have dealt with death of a phone on the wet AT. So a one device solution may be too big a risk regardless.

I don't know- in theory you make it easy to comply, you get more compliance.
But I don't find the current system all that hard to comply with as it is. I have some empathy, but not a lot of sympathy.

[ScareBear]

Though I'm not a hacker, I'd agree the day is here. How well your hardware hack works would (I believe) depend on what output is expected. If an after-the-fact map/summary sheet such as what Dan recently published with his claim is all that's expected, sure. But if it's to fake a batch of check-in emails and/or a live or delayed track, you'd still need to overcome a "secondary timestamp" issue.

Each automatically generated check-in email (from tracker company domain) has its own timestamp separate from the unit's (altered) timestamp. Similarly, pins on live/delayed maps would have to appear at reasonable times. You'd have to do this over a hundred times over the course of 1.5 months (based off #pings of other tracks: Anish=153, Dan=121 Stringbean~130, even Joey with trace unit has 100 out with 360 miles to go)...

It seems faking timely transparency is much more tedious. And based on simple math, the more thorough the documentation, the more chance of a slip. Per usual, the devil is in the details. This is why I continuously harp on the importance of getting info out sooner than later.

That's only two or three transmissions per day! Easy to do, especially from the comfort of a motorhome or motel room! All you need is an established set of GPS coordinates for the AT(easily and readily available for free...) and a time plan on when to send each set of coordinates. You would also have to appear in person from time to time, in between coordinate transmissions, just to appear as if you are actually doing it. Taking a few pictures each day, talking to a few people each day, etc...You would just wear your SPOT's case/shell to make it look like you actually had one on you...

Easy peasy for anyone who doesn't want to do the FKT, but is good with hiking a few hundred miles as part of the fraud. Wouldn't work for an armchair hacker not on the AT at all...

And, don't forget about another "hack" that nobody seems to have considered. Doppelganger. Well, not a real doppleganger. But how about your night-time doppelganger to carry your SPOT while you slept/rested? Nobody is going to be able to ID your doppleganger after dark or say that they didn't see you go by...
Just a friendly little game of pass-the-baton relay race on the AT...

JB, I am leaning more and more to the fool-proof method I outlined in my email to you. That would be a hilarious catch, no?

[MuddyWaters]

Im not tech savvy, but i expect also its possible today for a team of unscrupulous people to pull off a sham. It will always come down to trust.

Unfortunately, there are people that thrive on the challenge of faking sucess. Its happened in marathons .

Legitimate contenders probably arent among them fortunately

[russb]

The way I see it (and like armpits, we all have opinions) is that until there exists an official body which sanctions and oversees these records (Guinness-esque) then all FKT are nothing more than personal quests. The person who completed them knows what they did, and how they did it and likely will have been different from another person's hike in more ways than just Time. I applaud all those who completed their journey with whatever metrics they self imposed. The FKT is only what it stands for, the " Fastest KNOWN Time" not the fasted time proven beyond a reasonable doubt and accepted by a bunch of people on a website. /opine

[jdx1177]

JB, phone metedata is also far from a panacea. It can be very easily manipulated more so than a sat tracker I would think. I'd imagine the same for sat trackers though, lots of very talented people out there doing all kinds of crazy things with electronics.

As far as the spot, IMO it seems like a classic example of an inferior product with a catchier name and better marketing than its competition. The delorme uses a truly global sat system as in full coverage anywhere on the planet. Spot not so much. They use a sat system with less overall global coverage. Delorme also offers more flexibility in their plans. Like you can turn the service on and off whenever you choose you don't have to pay for the whole year if you don't need it. Plus two way communications and the ability to pair with your smartphone if you choose to.

Just a wacky thought, since we're going down this road. How about a list of established landmarks you have to have a picture of you in front of and a GPS waypoint. Maybe random signs roughly halfway between road crossings all along the trail. I think there's a lot to be explored and discussed here. Again not a panacea per se but another piece of the overall evidence puzzle.

And forgive my ignorance as I wasn't paying as close attention to this stuff as I do now. What is the "pizza gate"controversy in reference to Anish's hike?
I did think it was weird she never revealed details about the hike publicly(as far as I know) I always assumed this was to protect her strategy from being copied which I think is pretty lame given the overall nature of this community. I'm only speculating, but my thought is holding onto these fkts has a lot to do with her mental well-being.

[Just Bill]

The only good thing I see with pictures with integrated data- is you should take the pictures regardless. A short handful of years ago nobody had GPS. Pictures with GPS data is a big leap.
A string of GPS with no other data is a step backwards really.

I do agree- the delorme will likely be looked at much more seriously in future. Spot is super well known and trusted by long distance hikers, but doesn't mean it's ideal for this.

To give you an example. Knotts submitted a picture of him in a random hotel.
I'd bet many of us familiar with the trail could have nailed down which hotel it was given his rough location.
You can tell alot from a photo. Especially if you know the trail. Doubly so on an extremely well marked trail like the AT.

Most importantly. You can see the person. How do they look, what time of day is it. Are they sweating on a hot day, or said they were there in the morning when the shadows say it's night time. Did they bitch about several days of rain but take a picture of them dry, clean and happy.

Do they look like they are doing what they say they are doing when they say they are doing it.
Spreadsheet and splits are the timeline.
Photos validate that timeline. They further validate the hiker in many ways. And they make it interesting...
GPS shows a device was there- it's boring as hell.

Peter could probably share more about how he was able to review Brett Maune's hike, despite a sea of doubt, from the videos Brett provided. That is the classic case of your documentation proving what you did.
Because Peter intimately knows that trail and was able to see the hike through the evidence supplied, he was able to see past the numbers that were so far beyond what had been done before most couldn't wrap their head around it.
Hikers who know a trail can tell you which side of the trail a sign is on in a given section. You don't need a list of landmarks because the whole trail is a giant landmark.

That's why I like traditional documentation. It really tells the story. I like stories, races... not so much.

Anish-
Turned out she was a bit too inspirational for her own good and people came out to 'help' when they should not have.
Pizza gate involved her getting quite a bit of trail magic, but specifically her boyfriend at the time surprised her.
Fairly innocent all things considered, but those who saw it as intentional support that she received dubbed it 'pizza gate'.
That's why she put so much emphasis on her privacy on the AT.