Garmen Mapsource Topo Maps

[Guest RON]

Glad I found you website!! I'm new to this and would like some advice. About a month ago I bought a Garmen E-trex Vista. When I got the unit my plans were to use it primarily for hunting in remote areas. It now looks I'll be be doing more with it. When I looked at Amazon.com for the Garmen Topo maps it had mixed reviews, 2 favorable and 2 unfavorable.I think the Topo maps would be a great help,but now I'm not sure what to do.Any advice would be a great help. I'm told that the Garmen Topos are the only ones that can be down loaded to the unit?

[Guest Elwood]

Ron,

welcome to geocaching!

I too own the etrex vista, and the garmin mapsource topo maps, i enjoy the topo maps when i am in the back country here in utah, but i also do alot of urban geocaching,and use the metroguide mapset also.

all mapsource maps made by garmin are downloadable to the vista unit, limited only by the 24mb memory size. so i keep a set of maps of about 100 mile radius from my home loaded in my gpsr at all times, and if i am going outside that radius i download specific maps for where i am going.

the topo mapset is not the equivalent of the 7.5 minute USGS quads, but they are fairly accurate, close enough for most geocaching.

[Guest k2dave]

The topo maps are slighlty outdated but do make it much easaier to use the gps for navigation in areas where there are lots of elevation changes. Basically I would say they are very useful as they are but more is desired.

 

example during a winter shoeshoe my wife and I took a trail that wound down a ridge. basically making a giant U turn so we were pretty close to our starting point but very much below it. We didn't want to go back the same way so I looked at the gps topo screen and found a revene where it looks like water cut a slope into the ridge. We went right to it and though it was hard in shoeshoes we were able to get up it.

[Guest Choberiba]

quote:

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Originally posted by k2dave:

Basically I would say they are very useful as they are but more is desired.

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Don't forget some of the cool things you can do, like uploading tracks to your PC to see where you were.

 

I initially thought a C-note was too much for this software. After playing with my copy for about a week I'm happy with the purchase.

 

Let's face it, without free online maps to compare this to, it's a heck-of-a deal.

 

I too have found unknown paths and determined which way is the better choice by using the map on a cache hunt.

 

Copy all three CD's to your hard drive before the install (or reinstall) and you won't have to mess around with swapping CDs.

 

It has much faster access times this way too.

[Guest gstrong1]

Constantly use the Mapsource topos & have no complaints. Load the maps into my III Plus, Vista & MAP76 & they work great. May be a little outdated as far as not showing some newer roads etc.(although I've never run into this problem).I just got back from the 6 million acre Adirondack Mountain State Park here in NY,where I placed 2 more caches. Had all 3 units on while on my treks along the fantastic trails up there, and when I got back, the tracks from all 3 units were directly on top of the trails that are on the Mapsource topos. While placing the caches, I was able to see where I was on the trail & what land features were up ahead. A great help in deciding how far to go to get a real good cache location. I would not be without them. Placed 21 caches so far & found 53 or so, & have used those maps on every outing.

 

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Gary "Gimpy" Strong

Rochester,NY

[Guest RON]

Thank you all for your replies concerning the Garmin Topo maps, it is a great help.Guess I'll be ordering them soon.

Ron