Google Earth and hiking maps

[+imajeep]

I just discovered something very cool about Google Earth, and I wanted to share it. How many times have you wished hiking books included GPX data on the hikes they include? How many times have you wished parks and forest preserves would publish GPX data with their trail maps? Turns out you don't need it.

 

I found a cache in a new (to me) forest preserve this morning that I decided I'd really like to go back and hike. It's big enought to include an eight-mile hike, which is a rarity in Chicagoland. So I went online and found the forest preserve's trail map. The problem is that there are a number of criss-crossing trails, and I can tell by looking at it that I'm going to want to plot a route before going in. What to do?

 

I did a cache a month or so ago where the cache owner had digitized hundred-year-old plat maps of the county, which you could load into Google Earth to see how everything had changed. It occurred to me that I could do the same thing with the trail map. So, I exported the map from PDF to JPG and loaded it into Google Earth (Add > Image Overlay), then stretched the overlay (very easy) to fit the Google Earth landmarks. It fit perfectly!

 

Now I can use Google Earth tools to plot a route for my hike. When I'm done plotting the route, I'll save it as a KML file and convert it to GPX using GPS Babel. From there, it will load right into my GPSr.

 

I can do that for just about any hike. I can scan a trail map from a book, or find a trail map online. As long as the map is to scale (and it doesn't matter which scale, since the overlay can be stretched in Google Earth), I can overlay it on Google Earth and plot a route from it.

 

I thought this was pretty cool, but maybe I've just stumbled across something that's widely done. Is anyone else doing this with Google Earth?

Edited August 4, 2007 by imajeep

[+TotemLake]

I just discovered something very cool about Google Earth, and I wanted to share it. How many times have you wished hiking books included GPX data on the hikes they include? How many times have you wished parks and forest preserves would publish GPX data with their trail maps? Turns out you don't need it.

 

I found a cache in a new (to me) forest preserve this morning that I decided I'd really like to go back and hike. It's big enought to include an eight-mile hike, which is a rarity in Chicagoland. So I went online and found the forest preserve's trail map. The problem is that there are a number of criss-crossing trails, and I can tell by looking at it that I'm going to want to plot a route before going in. What to do?

 

I did a cache a month or so ago where the cache owner had digitized hundred-year-old plat maps of the county, which you could load into Google Earth to see how everything had changed. It occurred to me that I could do the same thing with the trail map. So, I exported the map from PDF to JPG and loaded it into Google Earth (Add > Image Overlay), then stretched the overlay (very easy) to fit the Google Earth landmarks. It fit perfectly!

 

Now I can use Google Earth tools to plot a route for my hike. When I'm done plotting the route, I'll save it as a KML file and convert it to GPX using GPS Babel. From there, it will load right into my GPSr.

 

I can do that for just about any hike. I can scan a trail map from a book, or find a trail map online. As long as the map is to scale (and it doesn't matter which scale, since the overlay can be stretched in Google Earth), I can overlay it on Google Earth and plot a route from it.

 

I thought this was pretty cool, but maybe I've just stumbled across something that's widely done. Is anyone else doing this with Google Earth?

I overlayed a topo quad last year using this. It's a bit of a chore and some map quads don't exactly match up right no matter how you tweak it.

 

Edited August 4, 2007 by TotemLake

[Dinoprophet]

Wow, I never knew about that feature.

 

I just tried it with mixed results. Using a screen capture from ExpertGPS of a bike ride I tracked once, it worked beautifully. But then, ExpertGPS is using satellite pics.

 

When I tried a trail map of the same park, features didn't come anywhere near lining up right no matter how I stretched them. That said, I don't know how accurate this map is supposed to be as far as scale. It's fine for navigating between trail markers but not much else. In this case it would still be good for getting an idea of what trails to take to get to a cache.

 

It's definitely a method worth keeping in mind, knowing that results may vary. Thanks for the idea!

Edited August 5, 2007 by Dinoprophet

[CoyoteWhips]

I'd originally bought my GPS unit to log my hikes so I could upload the tracks to Google Earth for friends and strangers.

 

Turns out they're also good for geocaching.

[mtbikernate]

This sort of thing has been around for quite a long time, but it's never been easy for the general public to do. The Google earth method isn't perfect, but it's close enough for most folks. I'm working on an earth cache, and I had to georeference some old geological maps of the area in question for it.

 

My dad just gave me his old scanner, so now I can have fun with it.

[Craiger9er]

This was exactly the data I was looking for, thanks. I have a pdf format of a topo lake map that I want to use, and this should work, thanks for sharing this info

[2brnot2b]

Just tried it. I like it. Now if I could only find online maps of the local (here in Western Massachusetts) M-M Trails, Robert Frost Trail, and AT. I guess I could scan them out of books.

 

Are there websites where people share their tracks of trails?

Edited August 17, 2007 by 2brnot2b

[2brnot2b]

Ack double post... how'd that happen?

Edited August 17, 2007 by 2brnot2b

[mtbikernate]

There are lots of websites for it, but they may or may not be of use to you due to formatting.

 

I use Garmin's motionbased more often than not anymore. But...they don't have much for hiking trails.

 

NG Topo! mapeXchange has more hiking trails, but you have to have NG Topo! to view the data. And frankly, a lot of it is very poor quality.

[+imajeep]

Just tried it. I like it. Now if I could only find online maps of the local (here in Western Massachusetts) M-M Trails, Robert Frost Trail, and AT. I guess I could scan them out of books.

 

Are there websites where people share their tracks of trails?

 

Yes--Backpacker.com, TrailRegistry.com, LocalHikes.com, and many others. Google 'GPX hike', and you should get a bunch of hits.