I am frequently asked about how I go about planning my trips. My outings often take me to terrain that is not frequently visited, so information and beta can be hard to come by. I tend to be a meticulous, detail-oriented trip planner, pouring over pictures, trip reports, guide books, and maps before ever setting foot on the trail. In fact, I get a lot of joy out of that part of the trip process – there is nothing like spending a rainy January night with my Sierra maps spread out in front of me, dreaming of August summits.
When I get home from trips I dump my GPS tracks on top of maps, studying my routes on top of topo maps. It helps me build my map reading skills so that I can make better decisions and estimates when I’m planning my next trip or out reading a route in the backcountry.
Since I spend so much time with my nose buried in maps, I thought I’d share my favorite mapping tools and how I use them before, during, and after my adventures.
8. Heywhatsthat.com
You know those big panoramic photos where I name all the peaks? Yeah, I do know a lot of them off the top of my head, but when I don’t I use heywhatsthat.com to help jog my memory. Enter a coordinate and elevation and it will create a pan of the skyline and map of the visible terrain. Check out this analysis of the 360 degree view from Mt Tom!
7. Physical Paper Maps
I have boxes and boxes of maps (I have three other boxes in addition to the picture at the top of this post). AAA road maps, Delorme Atlases, Tom Harrison trail maps, National Geographic maps, giant BLM wilderness and National Forest Maps, and printouts and publications from countless parks. I hold on to them and try to keep them organized so I don’t have to print out the same things over and over again. Often, my trip inspiration will come from pouring over one of these maps. And of course, no matter how good your electronic gizmos are, nothing replaces good old paper maps in the backcountry.
6. National Geographic Topo
Long before decent mapping programs were available online, when Mapquest was in its infancy and no one had heard of Google Maps, National Geographic Topo was my go-to mapping program. And, even after all these years, it still holds a key role in my trip planning. The interface is old and out of date, it crashes frequently, and it takes forever to open up, but I still love it. Once I’ve figured out an area I’m interested in from a paper map, I’ll take it to Topo, starting to trace over trails and potential routes, getting mileages and elevation gains. I can add waypoints and labels and create printable maps with my added data overlaid. Topo provides the raw data when I head into the wilderness – I create my routes and waypoints in the software and print my maps off of it, and also load the data into my GPS unit. That means the data in my GPS matches the paper map I’m looking at.
Here is an example of a map that I prepared and printed off before a trip. I uploaded the waypoints into my GPS, so that I knew when my GPS said I was at waypoint ‘Saddle’, for example, that’s exactly where I was on my map.
When I get back from my trips I’ll upload my GPS track on top of the map I created to see how I moved through the terrain. Here is the same map as above with my GPS track imported on top (in red):
5. Google Maps
Google maps acts as another inspiration piece. When I’m interested in an area I’ve never been before I’ll pull up Google maps and turn on the photo layer. As I pan around images pop up, and I have found some really interesting things this way, especially on my trips to the desert. The other day I was looking at an area in Mojave for a potential hike on our Thanksgiving trip. I started panning around that area in Google maps with the picture layer on and found all kinds of cool mining ruins – topo maps don’t give you that extra context! However, I’m using Google Maps less and less because the next tool in my list has the photo layer too…
4. Acme Mapper
This is one of my favorite online mapping tools. It gives me the same data I get from National Geographic Topo except it is FREE and web based so I can access it anywhere. It provides eight different map styles (road maps, topo maps, satellite views, etc) and it is very easy to flip between them. This tool becomes especially useful when I’m getting into the nitty gritty of planning a trip. I’m starting to get into the detailed planning of my winter desert trips so I’m spending a lot of time in Acme Mapper. Often, when deep into the desert backcountry, topo maps can be a bit inaccurate when it comes to old 4×4 mining roads. If I’m dropping waypoints in NG Topo for my maps I want them to be accurate – sometimes the map will show a 4-way intersection but when you get there it’s an 8-way intersection – so which one is the actual right turn I want? I double check all of my waypoints in Acme Mapper, toggling back and forth between the topo map and the satellite view – the satellite view will quickly reveal if there are extra roads or if the topo map is inaccurate.
Check out this mess of old mining roads in Nevada. This was part of a route into a peak, and I wanted to make sure I had waypoints to navigate through the maze. Sure, I could just drop them at the intersections on the map and hope it was accurate, but the scale here is so small that being even 50 ft off could turn us down the wrong track.
So I opened up Acme Mapper and started toggling between the topo map and the satellite view. Zooming in on satellite view let me see what roads still look good and if they matched up with the topo map. I made micro adjustments to my waypoints and we got through the zoo of roads without any problems.
3. Hillmap
This is another online mapping tool that I recently discovered, and it’s slowly replacing both NG Topo and Acme Mapper. I’m finding myself going to this one more and more. You can look at maps side by side, choosing between several different layers. You can draw on them, drop waypoints, and upload GPS tracks to layer on top of whatever map you’re looking at. For now I’ve mostly been using the side by side map views, but as I spend more time in this program I’m using my other tools less and less. In the screenshot below I was panning around looking for potential backcountry 4×4 campsites in Mojave, comparing the topo map roads with clearings on the satellite view. This is another example of why satellite view is so important for trip planning – neither of the two arms heading left off the main road towards camp areas line up with the single road shown on the topo.
2. Gaia GPS
Gaia GPS is an application on my iPad. No connection is needed as long as I download USGS topo map data of an area before I head out on one of my trips. I can also upload my waypoints to overlay on the maps. Combined with the GPS on the iPad, it acts like a giant awesome GPS unit with my own custom data and detailed topo maps. It’s an awesome tool to have in front of me as I’m acting as navigator on our backcountry adventures.
1. Everytrail
Have you noticed the maps embedded at the bottom of my trip reports? This service is provided by Everytrail. All I do is upload my GPS track after a trip and a few photos and it takes care of mapping it for me. I can embed it in my blog posts and share it with you guys. I’ll use GPS tracks uploaded by other users and advice and beta from their pictures. A lot of my trip planning is made easier when I can get that kind of data from other people so I love being able to share it back with the outdoor community.
Are you as nerdy as me when it comes to planning a trip using maps? What are your favorite tools? What am I missing?
Huh. I read it twice, but I still don’t see iOS 6 Maps. I’ll go read it a third time…
…seriously though, thanks for posting this — I was unaware of #2-4, and they all sound interesting enough that I’ll need to spend a bunch of time with ’em soon. Thanks!
I’m loving Hillmap more and more. The only thing that Topo still has over it is the ability to trace exact paths and extract the distance/elevation data. Hillmap DOES let you drop waypoints into a track and extract the data though, so it’s really close.
Aw, this made me smile 🙂 You would HATE me in the back country! I minimally plan, and kinda just wing it 🙂 9/10 of the time, it works so I go with it….but I think I would drive you and Heidi nuts!
Ha! Actually, once I’m actually OUT there I’m pretty flexible and don’t mind winging it. It’s probably because I’ve spent so much time staring at maps that I’m comfortable with it.
EveryTrail is pretty handy, been using it for some time. Thanks for the leads to Acme Mapper and Hillmap, looks like I need to spend some time playing with those. I usually use DeLorme Topo USA for generating my own customized maps, but I’m looking for something better. I just can’t bring myself to spend $50 each for the National Geographic Topo of every state where I play outside (WY ID MT UT CO AZ NV CA)
Yeah, I forgot to mention that as a disadvantage of the topo program. I bought my CA maps years ago (version 2, I think?) and it still runs updates (version 4+ now?) so I’ve gotten years and years out of it, ending up as a pretty good deal. But with the tools that are available online now? I don’t think I’d put the $$ into it.
I’ve found that Google Earth in concert with National Geographic TOPO! makes an awesome combination for detailed route planning. I’ll draw the route in TOPO!, then export it as a GPX file into Google Earth to compare it against the satellite imagery. I’ll edit the route using the path editing tool for the route and the placemark tool to get the best waypoint coordinates. Convert the final KML data back to GPX, and you can import it back into TOPO! to print a paper map. Lately, I’ve been importing the final GPX file into MotionX GPS, which is currently my favorite smartphone app for use out on the trail.
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/poring-over-pore-and-pour/
Great info!
Awesome stuff, Bex. I love the way your brain works.
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Hi guys! This free converter http://gpx2kml.com/ is a good solution to make gpx to kml and vice versa, when needed. Installation isn’t required, just upload files and see the results.
Found this via google, was surprised to find Acme Mapper listed but not Gmap4 http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html as I find latter much more useful – then saw dates an realize this is older compendium, not up-to-date.
A really nice write up… I’m hoping to inspire a 2018 refresh 🙂