Maps. Watcha got?

[soup!]

I'm interested to know what sorts of maps everyone uses for trip planning and/or navigation.

Does anyone make their own with software and/or pdf's from http://topomaps.usgs.gov/ ?

Has anyone experimented with plotting their favorite hikes, or hard-to-find side trails (like the dragons tail) in something like google maps? If so would you share them with the rest of us?

[lcrans]

I use mainly computer maps. Currently my most used are the NatGeo topos for Montana state or Glacier Park -- with this you can look on-screen at just about any scale any place in the state, as well as print off areas for hiking reference on the trail. I also use Oziexplorer, which can work with any downloaded USGS topos (Montana from the MT topo finder website). With this you can also scan any map, such as handout paper maps which then have to be geo-referenced with two or more coordinated points on the map.

If you have a gps, there are lots of free maps on gpsfiledepot.com, including transparent maps of trails, roads, property boundaries, hunting area boundaries, etc which can be loaded into a gps to display over either topo or road maps. Of course, the gps company will have maps for sale for their specific receivers. Garmin, for example, has 100k and 24k topos and road maps that the user works with via the program Mapsource. The free maps from gpsfiledepot also are loaded into Mapsource, altho' that program won't handle the transparent overlays......those have to be loaded into the gps to use as transparent overlays.

So, lots of options......many hours of fun if you're a map freak like me!!

[soup!]

I don't have a GPS unfortunately so my software map usage is confined to being able to stitch together usgs quads, plot paths on them, compute the distances/bearings of those paths, and make annotations and grids, and print out usable maps. For this, google earth does an incredible job!

Most people have briefly played with flying over mountains etc.. but don't realize there are several very good topo overlays out there that make google earth into a pretty much fully functional mapping program similar in function to !topo. It has some gps functionality as well but I couldn't tell you how good it is. Whatever functionality google earth gives up the community content out there more than makes up for it for my purposes.. For example, there is a CDT overlay that plots the entire CDT onto google maps. Combine that with a topo overlay and you can print out usgs quads for the entire length of the CDT with a red line marking the actual CDT the entire way. A few years ago that would have been months of work.. Best of all it's all free!

get google earth here:
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
get a topo overlay for it here: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.p ... mber=68690
the CDT overlay I mentioned is here: http://www.phlumf.com/travels/cdt/cdtkml.shtml
(btw if you haven't read any of jonathan ley's trail logs at phlumf.com I highly recommend them. Detailed day-to-day logs of his hikes of the CDT and PCT with photos. Great stuff)

[mattB]

I don't have a GPS unit, so I mostly do paper maps. I have a couple USGS topo quads of some parts of the park where I was doing a hike; I have a couple USGS maps of the entire park, one from 1951 and one from 1968; and also a new National Geographic map of Glacier/Waterton Park.

But what I've been doing lately is to go to the TopoQuest web site and getting and printing the maps for specific areas I was interested in TopoQuest >> http://www.topoquest.com/

I've done a little manipulation and plotting my routes, but its mainly just cropping the map to focus on the area I'm interested in and using a Paint-like tool to highlight my route.

[balou44]

HA! How bout some old school maps? Pre GPS days? This map was from my Dad.

http://glacierparkchat.com/phpBB3/viewt ... 2980#p2980