CGCachers

Is the Open Cycle Map layer not good enough for you terrain wise? No Open Cycle maps are not good enough. The option I'll probably use will be the My Topo option. As I said, I am aware of the Open Cycle maps but they are not as nice or as detailed as either the My Topo maps or the Google Terrain view. The Terrain view made it particularly easy to plot hikes along ridges and through valleys. The hills in the area you show have terrain that just isn't captured by Open Cycle. Also, the lack of shading makes it trickier to read those maps. Here's an image with a comparison on 3 map types of the Deam Wilderness area in the Hoosier National Forest you showed above. The first is a Terrain view I pulled from Google Maps. The next two are remaining available views at geocaching.com. The middle is the My Topo view and the last is the Open Cycle view. Of these 3 I will now use My Topo but will sure miss Google Terrain. P.S. Edited to fix image embed.

They are not lost, you can still use them, just not on that GS page. I see that from an individual cache page I can access the Google Terrain view. But only for that cache. If there's a way to still plan a multiple cache hike using Terrain View then please let me know how to do so because I do not see that available. The best remaining option seems to be the My Topo map option which is better than nothing but not nearly as nice as Google Terrain.

Have a look at the OpenCycleMap. It doesn't have hillshading but it does have contour lines. And - as opposed to the google terrain map - it actually has other stuff than roads on it at the same time. Biggest loss at the moment seems to be quality satellite images. I didn't realize the satellite views were gone as well. That's another huge loss. I have looked at the Open Cycle maps and they are pretty useless for planning hikes. Not even close to the level of terrain detail to be useful.

What Groundspeak seems to want to ignore is the removal of TERRAIN maps. I hike hilly and mountainous areas and the Terrain maps are much more useful than the Topo maps. It's a huge loss for me personally that is going to make finding terrain 2.5 and above much more difficult. Big thumbs down on the new default maps. What was in beta was much better.