National Geographic has free USGS quads in pdf for whole US

[vibramhead]

Here's a handy new resource.

[CampinCarl]

Wow, this is way cool. This should help lessen taking letter-sized screenshots off the full topos and pasting them into Word to print on my letter size printer at home.

[miah66]

Any way to tell if these are geo referenced? As in, can I locate myself w/ a gps using PDF maps on them?

[Peabody]

I don't see the benefit here or at least there are better options in my opinion.

Printing a 8 1/2 x 11 GEO referenced PDF from Caltopo can be done for any location and at any scale. Also, CalTopo has many map types, so you're not limited to a 22 year old USGS topo map.

I'm not affiliated with CalTopo, just a huge fan.

[CampinCarl]

I don't see the benefit here or at least there are better options in my opinion.

Printing a 8 1/2 x 11 GEO referenced PDF from Caltopo can be done for any location and at any scale. Also, CalTopo has many map types, so you're not limited to a 22 year old USGS topo map.

I'm not affiliated with CalTopo, just a huge fan.

Thanks Peabody, I hadn't really played around with all of Caltopo's features and you're correct, it is a much more customizable option for exporting to geopdf / printing.

[Lurch]

I guess they're kind of handy.... Unfortunately most interesting places in the gorge love to span map boundaries, and you're just adding more boundaries within that, so the likelihood you're going to get your entire hike on a single page is even less now.

I'm not a fan of his borders, but CalTopo is a good tool for this, will generate geotagged pdf's for you, and can establish multi-page printouts that are specific to what you need/want.

I'm also a huge fan of the Forest Service quads for use, when available. They're a dramatic saver in toner/ink, and tend to be a little clearer. They do sacrifice some information off the map though to accomplish that, so it's a little bit of a tossup.

[Guy]

I don't see the benefit here or at least there are better options in my opinion.

Printing a 8 1/2 x 11 GEO referenced PDF from Caltopo can be done for any location and at any scale. Also, CalTopo has many map types, so you're not limited to a 22 year old USGS topo map.

I'm not affiliated with CalTopo, just a huge fan.

Wow, I didn't know you could do this that's very cool. Last time I checked out Caltopo a few years ago the interface seemed very clunky. Much better now, opened an account!

Thanks for the tip.

[sprengers4jc]

Another Caltopo fan here. One of my favorite features is the layers of land management (under map overlays) so you can see all the publicly-owned lands. It easily opens up so many options for custom, offtrail trips and eliminates the guesswork of whether or not you are trespassing.