Use Google Drive off-line to store trip documents

Trip Planning

Sep 23

This tip comes from AlpineSavvy reader Tim Donner, thanks Tim! Disclaimer: this tip is not directly related to alpine climbing, but it's pretty handy, so here it is.

Say you’re planning a climb or backpack trip. Useful documents for pre-trip study and field use could include:

.pdf map(s) made in Caltopo, perhaps at a couple of different scales covering your entire route, ideally with a GPX track file of your route drawn on it
a .gpx track file of your route
a scan or photograph(s) of guide book pages
Google Earth screen grabs, ideally with a KML file of your route drawn on it
If you're leading a larger group, perhaps: 1) a roster of trip participants, with personal and emergency contact info; and 2) a general info document (prospectus) for participants with all needed trip details

Here's a convenient way to store all the documents you might need for a hike or climb off-line on your phone, and have access to them when you’re outside cell coverage.

A few notes:

The instructions below are for iPhone; Android peeps, I'm sure you can follow along.
I find it easiest to do this on a desktop computer.
This method uses the cloud on Google Drive, so to do this, you need a free Gmail account. It’ll probably work on other types of cloud storage like Dropbox, but I'm going to stick with Google drive for this example.

Here’s how to make files available offline in Google Drive:

On your desktop computer, assemble all your trip documents in one folder.
On your desktop computer, open Google Drive and make a folder there for your trip. For example, “Rainier climb 2019”.
On your desktop computer, click and drag all relevant files into this Google Drive folder.
Open the Google Drive app on your phone, and navigate to the folder.
Tap on the “three little dots” icon to the right of the file name, and tap “Make available offline”. You need to do this individually for every file in the folder, but it just takes a second or two for each one. (To be clear, you can’t set the available offline feature for the folder, you have to do it individually to each file.)
Done! Now, all these files stored on your phone, available when you’re outside of cell coverage.
To test it, turn on Airplane mode and turn off Wifi. (Doing this simulates being in the backcountry with no cell coverage.) Try opening all of the files in that folder, you should be able to do so.
One more bonus, you can share this Google folder with everyone else on your climbing team, so you all have the same documents. To do this, navigate to the folder in Google Drive from your desktop computer, Click the folder name at the top, and choose “Get shareable link” from drop down menu. Click the “copy link” button, and now you can share that folder with anyone else on your trip.
Once you’re home, deselect the offline use to free up storage on your phone. The files stay in your Google drive for reference or sharing, if you want to do that hike or climb in the future.
One more bonus: with offline use, if you have a Google doc ready, you can add/update notes during the trip and they will be synced once you get back into cell range.