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Structure (in the form of questions and answers)
Why I recommend buying printed maps and using them in addition to my traces. Who makes them: My traces are just that - traces of different hikes, where a trace is just a line of where I walked with the GPS turned on and recording. They don't show the other trails in the forest. 7.5 minute maps in Topo! software are good to show mountains, rivers and valleys, in other words geographic features, but were outdated 30 years ago when it comes to trails. So what if you follow my trace and it got overgrown? What if you want to make a hike longer or shorter? Only the trail maps that are regularly updated can be trusted on a trail. Recently published guide books are great as well. They tell you the distances which are not obvious from the maps, they tell you about the parking spots. Are they safe? Are they large enough? They tell you about stream crossings, places where you can get lost, water sources and how reliable they are, etc. They also tell you what to look for - special overlooks, different flowers, animals. They tell you when the best time to visit a particular area is. I put the links to the maps and guidebooks in each of my pages and in the Links page. Here is a general overview of the places to look for hiking maps and guide books that are regularly updated: For the Greater Washington DC area PATC maps and guide books cover most of the trails. Particularly, they cover the AT with all the side trails from the Susquehanna River In PA, to the border of Virginia and North Carolina including the Shenandoah National Park. They cover the whole Massanutten Mountains, most of The Great North Mountains, the whole Catoctin Mountains, the whole Tuscarora Trail (not in great detail), the area around The Great Falls and The Rock Creek Park in DC.
Second good source of updated maps is Trails Illustrated maps by The National Geographic. They cover big chunks of Western VA and Eastern WV.
PA and WV DNR sites have a free map of almost any of their state parks on their respective web sites along with the trails descriptions and park brochures - all in printable *.pdf format.
PA DNR gives out free maps of lots of it big hiking areas, just call and ask.
Maryland DNR sells very good waterproof maps of many of its state parks for a nominal fee.
Montgomery Co., MD has very nice free color maps of all its regional parks with trails on them in *.pdf.
Sometimes guide books have very good maps, which is the case for Monongahela Nat. Forest by DeHart and Sundquist - see the soft copy of the book from The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.
In addition to the PATC guide books, I like books by two Great authors: Leonard Adkins for MD, VA, WV and Jeff Mitchell for PA. They are not just describing trails that everybody knows about , but go out of their way to find and describe original unique places and bring you there.
The main trace format is Topo! by National Geographic. What are its advantages and disadvantages?: There are two general types of hiking software - hardware specific and not. For example, Topo! State Series Software by the National Geographic that I prefer is NOT hardware specific - it will work with different gps brands, such as Garmin, DeLorme, Magellan, etc. Hardware specific software is made by the gps manufacturer, such as Garmin, Delorme, etc. and will only work with that brand.
Each hike may have several different kinds of traces, but there should be at least one - *.tpo from National Geographic's Topo! State Series. That is the most important trace, since using this Topo! software, one can see the trace on top of the most detailed map - 7.5 Minute USGS Map with scale 24,000. Another advantage is that State Series covers almost the whole country. Third advantage is that the software has a lot of good features, such as trace modification, map printing, compass tool, elevation profiles tool, etc. Editing traces is very convenient in Topo!. These tools are better than any other packages as far as I know. A logical question arises: why would anybody use something other than Topo! and why would I put traces in any other format? Here are the reasons: * Topo! has not been updated in several years, and my feeling is National Geographic is planning to kill it. * Topo! allows to download traces and waypoints from the gps, and allows to upload waypoints to the gps. It does not allow to download maps from the gps, or upload maps or trace points to the gps. * Topo! has poor support for the *.gpx - the universal format for all mapping programs. * Topo! has maps only for the US. * Topo! is not cheap if you travel to many different states. For the Washington D.C. Area you only need Topo! Mid Atlantic and Pennsylvania, which is not cost prohibitive. * Topo! removes elevation data from the gps track and uses its internal elevation model to calculate the elevation profile. The elevation data from the GPS track is not very good and so is the Topo!'s elevation profile. Still it would be good to have the data from the GPS available to compare the profile with Topo!'s.
What other types of traces I use and why: *.gpx (xml sub format) became a universal format that any mapping software understands. It's not perfect or great for that matter. I've seen problems opening *.gpx created by one program into another. GPS doesn't support labels, waypoint shapes, compass arrows and other nice features. What it does support is waypoints and trace points. I used to post traces in different formats in this web site, but I will soon remove them and keep only *.gpx. Why? After coming home from a hike I took the gps and downloaded the traces to all my software programs. Then I would go to Topo! and remove the clusters, sections with bad receptions, rename the waypoints and describe them in a MS. Word File. Traces in the other formats will not be touched and will just be posted as is. Now I am converting all the edited Topo! traces to *.gpx and am posting them. This way the traces are edited and the waypoints match with the description. These *.gpx files can be opened with any hiking program. On the down side, they will not have the elevation profile and the labels, compass arrows or symbols that the *.tpo traces have.
Could you give an overview of other programs and their unique features? * Garmin's MapSource (*.gdb). Advantages: Allows to upload maps, satellite imagery, trace points, and waypoints to the GPS and download trace and waypoints. MapSource has the same interface for its hiking, road and boating maps. Garmin has these types of maps for the whole world. Good support for the *.gpx files. Disadvantages: Interface is very unpleasant compared to Topo! and a lot is missing. Expensive, not only to buy, but because one package is per computer and per gps (have to buy a new license for every additional GPS and/or computer). Hiking package is sold separately from the satellite photography from the road package, and from the boating package. Annoying reminders to update, which is expensive as well. It supports only Garmin PGS units.
* Gps Trackmaker (*.gtm). Good free product covering the whole world made in Brazil with great English interface. Has some basic maps, which are not very accurate, but are free. It allows to both download and upload traces and waypoints to/from the gps. It can send traces to the Google Earth and Google Maps. It has the best support of the *.gpx. It allows to georeference scanned maps and use them as a base layer for the traces. * *.gif. I used to make *.gif maps from Topo! to show the 7.5 minute map with my trace on top of it so that anybody can print this map. The process takes a lot of time so I do it only if requested. I have maybe 30-50 traces like that posted, mostly in the Great North Mountains, which is my favorite place. * *.gpx. GPX is a universal XML format. All programs that I know of support it to some degree, meaning GPX can be seen by any program and files can be saved to GPX from almost any program. Since I do trace and waypoint editing in Topo!, I plan to convert all my traces to it from the *.tpo files. It will take a while, though. Remember, these traces won't have elevation in trace points. Garmin GPS also creates *.gpx files, where the waypoints are missing, only trace points remain. On the other side, Topo! exports *.gpx with only the waypoints and no trace points. My convention when posting *.gpx is to put the extension of the program from which it was converted from before the *.gpx extension: e.g. *_tpo.gpx means that the *.gpx was converted from *.tpo, *gtm.gpx - converted from *.gtm, *_gdb.gpx - converted from *.gdb, *_gps.gpx - came straight from the gps. * Google Earth (*.kmz). The free online program along with Google Maps that gives detailed maps for the whole world. It is the only program I have with the Aerial Photography. I use it rarely to find outcrops, pools and wide roads, but can't say I like it and find the interface convenient and useful.
Why and how I edit the Topo! traces and why only in Topo!: Traces have waypoints and trace points. I edit trace points to eliminate clusters and outliers. Clusters are groups of points right next to each other. Clusters are caused by the gps being in the same spot for a long time, for instance during lunch break, staying at the overlook, etc. Outliers are points that you know can't be there. There are two reasons for outliers - initial signal acquisition of the gps and poor signal. The gps determines position from multiple satellites. It chooses the best satellite constellation to get the most accurate position. Unfortunately, it takes time to do that, so the gps initially provides position from the first, not the best group of satellites that become available to it and later on improves this data. Thus, the first few track points are usually very inaccurate and needs to be deleted. As for the poor signal of the gps during its normal work, it occurs when the gps sees enough satellites, but their constellation is very poor for triangulation. This happens when the gps gets its data in the canyon, under thick leaf canopy, between the mountains, etc. Again, in this case the trace points are very far off and need to be deleted. Why I edit waypoints? When I prepare for a hike I draw a trace in Topo! with waypoints for points of interest or turns. The waypoints get transferred to the gps and the map with the overlaying trace and waypoints gets printed. I do the hike, come home and get the track from the GPS to Topo! It has my old waypoints and the new ones which I made during the hike as well as the trace. If I see that the old waypoints match the turns on the trace and points of interest, I keep them, otherwise I move them to match the trace or erase them. I also rename them and put description of the unobvious turns and points of interest in a Word file. Why do I do this process only in Topo!? Because it takes quite a lot of time and is tedious to redo the same editing in several programs.
How hikes are sorted: What is included in the hike
description: Hike naming convention: Go to
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