Varying geofence warning distance setting to suit changed conditions

I want to share a cautionary tale about the importance of adjusting your geofence warning distance to suit changing terrain and track conditions.

On a recent bushwalk (what we call “hiking” in Australia), I set a 50-metre deviation warning on my geofence system. In hindsight, that setting proved inadequate. Here's why.

I was walking a 10 km segment of the Great North Walk—a much longer trail spanning over 200 km. The broader 33 km portion I was on traversed a variety of track types, including sealed roads, gravel all-weather roads, fire trails, and narrow footpaths. The 10 km section I tackled included an all-weather road, a fire trail, and a foot track.

I began the walk just before lunch without a geofence set. After two hours, having already strayed from the trail for 45 minutes earlier in the afternoon, I activated the geofence with a 50 m deviation limit to avoid another detour.

I kept going along a mix of foot track, fire trail, gravel road, and then another section of foot track. After 30 minutes on the last foot track, I noticed that the terrain and track quality had deteriorated compared to earlier sections. It was now late afternoon, but I pressed on, assuming conditions wouldn’t get any worse.

I was wrong—very wrong.

Within another 30 minutes, daylight had faded, the terrain had steepened, and the track had become indistinct. Eventually, I stopped, unable to see any sign of the trail either ahead or behind me.

Frustrated, I bivvied where I was, only to be kept awake by my geofence warning repeatedly sounding. I eventually realised that I was camped right on the 50 m boundary. As I shifted position during the night, I must have been crossing that line, triggering the alert.

Other misadventures followed—but I won’t digress.

The next morning, I reset the geofence to a tighter 10 m distance and set out to find the track. Within 15 minutes, I began to pick up faint signs of it. As I walked, the alert kept sounding whenever I drifted off course, helping me return to the likely route.

In the end, the adventure ended not-too-unhappily.

The moral of the story: had I reduced the geofence deviation limit to 10 m earlier, I would likely have stayed closer to the track and avoided losing time at dusk. At best, I might have made it to my destination before nightfall; at worst, I could have avoided having to stop in such an unsuitable spot for the night.