SiliconFiend
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Posts posted by SiliconFiend
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If you are trail hiking and "putting all your eggs in one basket" navigationaly speaking, by having your only maps in your GPS (and maybe your only compass too?), you are playing navigational "Russian Roulette". There is no freaking way I am entering the backcountry without my GPS AND a good paper map AND a grid card AND a good compass.
So...That begs the question: Why would someone want to study a tiny little screen of a map on a GPS if you already have a paper 1:24,000 quad. and a grid card with you (which you dang sure should have)? That is why I use a Garmin Foretrex 101...The smallest, lightest available. Not to mention the extra hundred bucks to buy those maps. On screen mapping for handheld hiking units is way, way, overrated and frustrating to use. I get really, really tired of having to play with the click stick to pan the map around to see beyond the screen (Yes...I have used units with maps extensively in the backcountry.) Give me a paper map any day of the week. I open it up, and instantly can see the whole "big picture".
Incidently, I print my own 1:24,000 topo maps from NG, using Adventure Paper. This stuff rocks!
I'm talking about day hiking or backpacking on simple, well-defined trails, not an expedition. The trails I'm used to hiking are pretty straightforward--one way in, one way out with maybe some spur trails; not 40 miles into a wilderness area. Normally I wouldn't carry any map or compass at all. If I have a GPSr that can do mapping, I want it to be comprehensive. It's for reference purposes, and maybe for "Let's go see what's on that trail" or "look, there's a lake up there", or to answer the kids "how much farther"? Actually, that last point is pretty relevant--with routable trails, you could get accurate on-trail distances.
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Annadel is a wonderful park. There are plenty of .gpx files available online of the trails there. Download those and the contour files for the park and you've got the basis of a great map.
Ah, but I don't need to, because someone already created that map. See here: http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com/maplist.ph...nnadel&det= I'm not sure how he did it; I'm guessing he traced the park map PDF 'cause I can't find any GIS data for California State Parks online.
Hey, congrats on the baby, by the way. I didn't realize you were in Fort Bragg. I love the Mendocino coast--one of my favorite places in the world.
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The Magellan Triton series of GPS receivers looks promising. They are to come out in a month or so and have the ability to use the 1:24000 topo maps.
Yes, I know; I've been reading the forums. As I mentioned, Topo is not all that interesting to me; I want accurate trail maps, and I haven't seen that the National Geographic topo is an improvement there. I would pay $100 or so for accurate, routable trail maps of all of North America which included trails in national, state and regional parks. The data set is much smaller than the CityNavigator series.
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I think the best offering in this regard at the moment is the Delorme Topo USA 6 and the Delorme PN-20. T6 is pretty good quality--I have heard a few complaints of road inaccuracies. They have about as extensive a trail database as is available, which still leaves a lot out. The trails are routable, though, and you can add tracks to the program as routable trails (or roads, as you wish). The PN-20 is a fairly new product, though, and it has a few rough edges yet (it's not so great for a lot of street navigation, for example).
From what I've seen, one just about has to resort to online user libraries for trail data. There was a good sharing of these sites in a thread here this year (which was nicely summarized here.
I'm not sure why a more complete collection isn't available commercially. I guess there are just too many of them, and they can change too quickly to catalog them well.
The Delorme is interesting, but for now I'm sticking with the crowd and getting a Garmin.
I read that thread yesterday, but it left me unsatisfied. I'm working on making my own from national park service data, to start with. When I get a good collection I'll share them via mapcenter.
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There are a couple of other alternatives.
We use our Garmin for hiking, some in National Parks, but most out. There are a number of web sites that post GPX tracks for commonly-used trails. Backpacker.com, TrailRegistry.com LocalHikes.com most immediately come to mind.
And when that fails, we've been able to locate trail maps online (usually in PDF or jpg format), which we load into Google Earth as overlays. That allows us to use GE's Path tool to create a route, which we then save as a GPX file.
So even though Garmin's topos don't have a lot of trails, we've found it pretty easy to add them from GPX files.
Yeah, I've seen that option as well, but adding trails one at a time from tracklogs is even more painful than one park at a time. This seems to beg for a community effort. If everyone added their tracklogs as polyline routable trails, we could come up with some data in a hurry.
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I've done a lot of searching, in this forum and on the web, and it seems that there are no good, comprehensive trail maps available for GPSrs, specifically for Garmin. I've looked at all (both!) the official Garmin trail-type maps. The National Parks Topo seem to have the right detail--complete, routable trails--but the coverage is limited to national parks. Plus, it's US-only. The Topo US maps have some trails but not all, and they're not routable (a minor point, but it should be easy to do--rarely are there turn restrictions or one-way segments on trails as you would get on roads). I'm not all that excited about topo anyway; at the least I'd like to have it as a separate map set so it could be turned off to declutter the display.
I'm looking for something with the detail of the National Parks map set but with coverage of trails in national, state and regional/county parks. Ideally it would have the trails, key features/waypoints, vegetative cover (so you know if it's one to avoid on hot summer days). That doesn't seem to exist. (Maybe it's a lucrative opportunity for the motivated individual).
I've looked into publicly-available GIS sources for trails for creating my own maps. There is some data out there, but it's going to be a lot of work to convert the various formats, piece things together, etc. Unless I find something already done, this is probably the painful route I'll pursue. I did find one map at MapCenter for nearby Annadel State Park which is about what I'm looking for.
In my dream world, what would be ideal is if Garmin devices supported an open map format, then we could create a comprehensive map data set (or build off of OpenStreetMap.org) to use. But I'm willing to bet that Garmin's map sales are subsidizing the cost of the devices. So, you pay one way or another.
Sorry for the rant. Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/volunteering?
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Got mine from offroute.com $234.95 plus 9.99 shipping
http://www.offroute.com/product/view_produ...amp;CatID=14347
How quickly did you get it after ordering it?
I just ordered a Vista HCX today from offroute.com (Reno, NV). They claim it will ship on or before the 21st--must be when they're getting more from Garmin. You could also try gpsonsale.com (AZ); it was $229 but shipping was about $4 more so it's about a wash. They also said they were out of stock but just said "mid-August" for getting more. If you want one faster you could probably pick one up for about $245 or so (check Amazon), plus maybe tax, and of course plus shipping.
No good trail maps for Garmin?
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
That's interesting. I haven't seen that personally; maybe it's happening in certain areas. But even if the software focused on the three park types I mentioned (national, state and regional), that would be sufficient coverage for me. The key is to get GIS trail data from the various agencies. If they're able to make paper/pdf maps, I'm sure they used GIS as a source. That data should be public information (if it was collected with public money), but sometimes they're funny about sharing it.