Global Positioning System tours may only have been part of the landscape in the Canadian Rockies for the past few months, but it seems the sky is the limit.

When an Alberta company introduced self-guided GPS touring earlier this summer, they hoped it would be the answer for a question they had long been asking.

“For a long time we’ve been asking what we could do to attract the self-driving travelers,” said Rick Bulich, the principal operator of GPS Tour Guide. “An overwhelming majority of people are driving themselves and they aren’t always inclined to join a guided group.”

At first, the company considered creating an audio tour that described the sights of the Canadian Rockies for drivers, but decided that it had been attempted before, and was not met with the greatest success. Then, they noted a new use for GPS technology elsewhere in North America, and GPS Tour Guide was born.

“There were a couple of places where it was being used for more than just navigation, but also to do triggered commentary,” said Bulich.

The units, which can be set up in any vehicle equipped with a radio, are made up of a GPS device and a transmitter. As the certain coordinates are reached, commentary is triggered and transmitted from the rental unit on a pre-set radio frequency.

Bulich knows of only a handful of other GPS tours offered in North America, including walking excursions in New York City and specially equipped mopeds in San Francisco. The Canadian tours meanwhile, cover hours worth of driving, and include dozens of interpretive commentaries.

“We’re really leading the world in this sort of thing,” said Bulich. “And all the people involved are right here.”

Areas covered by the company’s devices, dubbed the GyPSy Guide, include the Trans-Canada Highway from Calgary all the way through the mountain parks and British Columbia to Vancouver, the Icefields Parkway north to Jasper and Highways 16 and 5 from Jasper to Kamloops. There are also extensive tours of Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper, lasting as long as three hours in some cases.

A team of interpretive guides write the material and decide what features to focus on and which tales to tell.

“We try to balance between stories of interest and describing what people are going to find visually stimulating while they’re driving,” said Bulich. “The content really varies depending on the location. In the national parks, there’s quite intensive information on the environment and wildlife.”

The touring units have been available throughout the summer and Bulich said that demand is growing bit by bit.

“Because it’s so new, we have to do a lot of explaining to people about how it works and what it’s about. People don’t get into town and say, alright, where do I get a GPS tour around here. Yet.”

Laurie Schwartz, an interpreter and actor who has guided excursions for Discover Banff Tours and performed with Mountain World Heritage Interpretive Theatre for several years, agrees.

Schwartz is the voice of the Icefields Parkway tour, and wrote the Jasper town tour and the commentary for the road between Mount Robson and Kamloops.

“Jasper was a wonderful tour to put together,” she said. “There are so many things to talk about, so many oddities, some that you can see, like the sand dunes, and some that you can’t like the story of Project Habakkuk.”

It takes time to describe certain roadside attractions and historic factoids, like a secret World War II ice boat project, for example, but Schwartz said it was important to be as concise as possible when writing the commentaries.

“The danger is that people will tune out if you throw too much information at them, and there’s so much to tell,” she said. “You need enough to be precise and informative, but not overwhelming.”

While the GyPSy Guides provide a great deal of information for independent travellers, Schwartz doesn’t think they’ll keep people shut in their cars as they drive through the Rockies. Nearly every significant lookout is discussed as the driver approaches, and the commentary also offers suggestions for short hikes that leave from roadside trailheads.

“The great thing about the tours is that you can encourage people to get out of their vehicles and check things out,” she said.