In reply to Taki: Hmm, your canyons sound..."interesting"!
You say: "having a GPS, in itself will not get you [un]lost. it can tell you where you are, but unless you have a marked waypoint to the trailhead or something, its not going to get you back to a known location, sans map and compass."
I think it's a bit like that Microsoft joke; the one about the guy who's trying to land his plane in Seattle but he's lost in thick fog. He sees a tall building through the murk, and flies round it until he spots a chap next to an open window.
"Excuse me," he asks, "can you tell me where I am?"
"You're seated at the controls of a light aircraft which is flying past the 20th floor of an office building."
"Thanks mate, that's great!"
Twenty minutes later he's landing safely at Seattle airport.
"How on earth did you do that?" asks his passenger.
"Easy," says the pilot, "what he told me was completely accurate, but no use whatsoever. That meant that he worked for Microsoft tech support, and their building is ten miles north-west of the airport."
It's the same with GPS: it can give you remarkably accurate information, but without knowledge of the context (ie a map), it's of strictly limited use.
Agree with you that map and compass are actually easier to use than GPS in most cases. I do worry about my mate who trudges along ridges with his eyes glued to his GPS, but then I've got the map so we still get up and down OK.