Create Paper Maps from GPS Track

[+Royal Coachman]

We are geocachers and currently campground hosts at Catherine Creek State Park in eastern Oregon. There are several nice hiking trails in the park for which no maps exist. We would like to provide campers/hikers with paper maps of the trails. BTW there is a cache on one of them.

 

I have walked the trails and created tracks on my Garmin 60CSx. Now I want ot created a good map to make copies of and hand out to hikers. I would like annotate the maps with info about the views, elevation changes and cautions.

 

I am having a hard time locating info on how to copy the tracks to a document format that facilitates annotation and flexibility in layout - Mapsource doesn't seem to do this. It would seem that transposing the track/features to MS Word would be good. Or in a PDF format.

 

Can anyone steer me in the right direction? I have wanted to do this in several other areas we have stayed in but never took the time to learn how.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Royal Coachman

aka Jerry

[+TrailGators]

We are geocachers and currently campground hosts at Catherine Creek State Park in eastern Oregon. There are several nice hiking trails in the park for which no maps exist. We would like to provide campers/hikers with paper maps of the trails. BTW there is a cache on one of them.

 

I have walked the trails and created tracks on my Garmin 60CSx. Now I want ot created a good map to make copies of and hand out to hikers. I would like annotate the maps with info about the views, elevation changes and cautions.

 

I am having a hard time locating info on how to copy the tracks to a document format that facilitates annotation and flexibility in layout - Mapsource doesn't seem to do this. It would seem that transposing the track/features to MS Word would be good. Or in a PDF format.

 

Can anyone steer me in the right direction? I have wanted to do this in several other areas we have stayed in but never took the time to learn how.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Royal Coachman

aka Jerry

Have you tried using Google Earth? Google Earth lets you highlight any path/trail.

[+ergomaniac]

If you have Ozi Explorer and Photoshop it's not difficult to do. Ozi requires an image file of the map area (.jpg, .bmp), if you have a PDF you can bring that into Photoshop and save it as an image file (I save it as a JPG). You can bring the image file into Ozi and download your tracks directly from your GPS onto the map. You can then save the map in Ozi to an image file (that's an option in Ozi) and then take it into Photoshop and add your custom text. Once finshed, save the image as a pdf and print it or add it to your website (or just print from Photoshop). If you are familiar with the two tools mentioned, this is an easy task... if not it's a bit of a learning curve.

[+Sputnik 57]

I would first try USAPhotomaps. It is freeware, allows you to download free topo or aerial maps of the area, and allows you to download tracks from your GPS and print the result.

[+Redwoods Mtn Biker]

If you have Ozi Explorer and Photoshop it's not difficult to do. Ozi requires an image file of the map area (.jpg, .bmp), if you have a PDF you can bring that into Photoshop and save it as an image file (I save it as a JPG). You can bring the image file into Ozi and download your tracks directly from your GPS onto the map. You can then save the map in Ozi to an image file (that's an option in Ozi) and then take it into Photoshop and add your custom text. Once finshed, save the image as a pdf and print it or add it to your website (or just print from Photoshop). If you are familiar with the two tools mentioned, this is an easy task... if not it's a bit of a learning curve.

 

OziExplorer is a great tool. Also, if you don't want a topo map as background, you can use Ozi's "blank map" feature.

[+Cache_advance]

I have an answer for you, but I don't think you're going to like it. I've done it any number of times for work, but the way that I do it involves using ArcGIS 9.2 and the free download from Minnesota Deptarment of Natural Resources, called DNRGarmin. DNR Garmin can be downloaded for free. With that, you can create a text file containing all of the coordinates for each point in the track.

 

Using ArcGIS, you can import the text file, do a bunch of conversions, and finally get it to show on the map. Of course, you would need some other reference data before your tracks could mean anything. In our case, we built a trail map for the summer camp. We got GIS data sets from the county Planning Department. We used the following data sets in our map: property tax boundaries, roadway centerlines, water features, and an aerial photograph. The finished product was exibited in the NY State Fair, and received a commendation from National Geographic. Needless to say, the kids were really excited about the whole project. We have a new 4-H club starting which will be doing a lot of this.

 

If, by some chance, you have access to the ArcGIS program, I can work with you to do it step by step.

[jmundinger]

I'll second the vote for USAPhotoMaps. You could then make the map on either a Topo map or landsat imagery.

 

Another option - it would cost about $100 - would be to get the AllTopo Maps for Oregon (version 6) (http://www.alltopo.com/). This program will communicate with your GPSr. It has a seaming tool that you can use to combine maps (or cut out just a portion of the map). You can also print the map directly from the program. You can write notes associated with waypoints and display those notes on the map and, using html, you have options regarding font, color and size for those notes.

[+H2OBob]

I did that recently for one of my caches. I loaded the tracks into Garmin Mapsource, then printed it out. Then I scanned it into Corel Photopaint, did a little editing to clean it up, and saved it as a JPG file. Photoshop or Ifanview (free) could also be used. If you have a Garmin. you might be able to get the image with Ximage, which is free from the Garmin website.