Gorge+ Mapset Conversion to GPX for BackcountryNav Pro

[discodan7700]

Hello PortlandHikers,

I rec'd a modest mannered request from Airoff to see if there was a way to convert EPs righteous gorge+ mapset for use on BackCountryNav Pro. Did the tiniest bit of investigating and found that EP has wrapped up the mapset in an msi. This is a great idea for insuring folks get his maps setup and accessible with minimal instructions. However... it makes it slightly more unwieldy for someone wanting to reverse engineer it and make it available in other formats. I certainly can move fwd using only the links on EPs blog. Just looking for a little bit of help with these first steps.

Also... EP doesn't appear to accept PMs, so I'm not able to ask him directly for his approval and for some raw map files to play with.

So,

just curious... EP, am I OK to go ahead and proceed with this paltry geometric dilemma? Also, are you able to provide a sample raw data file that I can use for this purpose?

Thanks in advance,

-daniel-

[Koda]

I second this request. I would love a gpx file for use with backcountrynavigator pro.

[Eric Peterson]

Hey Disco, by all means go ahead and try this!

I think the other installer exe might unpack easier? so you can get to the Garmin
.img files. Not sure how this could be translated into a .GPX since a lot of the
data in the .img files are polylines and area shapfiles. I think you would have
to use a program to separate the polylines that are trails into .GPX.

[discodan7700]

Thank you sire

I'm looking at this as a possible starting point:

http://www.geopainting.com/

[Guy]

I know this isn't what you asked but it may be a simple solution for folks wanting to do a particular route on Eric's Mapset with something other than a garmin GPS.

Even if you don't have a Garmin if you can load the free program Basecamp onto a computer you can view the Mapset. You could then trace over the particular route you wanted to use & save that as a gpx file & upload to Back Country Navigator or whatever you used.

Again not elegant but a way to use the information that's available until a better solution is available.

[Eric Peterson]

Excellent point Guy!

But the Geo Painting program called GPSMapedit can extract those polylines I think.

And the Mapset loads into a folder where you can then open those .img files in
mapedit and play around with it, I think it would be quite the undertaking to
try to grab that stuff, but most of the trails are already known existing systems
in the Gorge. Places like the WRT and Kings/Elk weren't supplied so I had to use
my own gps tracks to embed.

Sorry I'm not to much real help Disco, most of the time I'm not even sure myself
how I did any of this stuff but KepNW helped me make that msi build...

[kepPNW]

That GPSMapEdit program looks interesting. It can extract the linework from the IMG files? I admit, I've been curious, but never curious enough to try figuring out how that stuff is stored inside there. I was thinking this tool - http://www.gpstrackeditor.com/ - would be an option for possibly averaging out some of the redundant parallel tracks in there. Too bad my handle isn't "retired karl"!

[Eric Peterson]

Yeah, removing those redundancies is still on my to do list for the Mapset. Problem is
some of the dualities might be a plus since the source where I got a lot of the data
from included old trail alignments that might be useful for abandoned/lost trail hunters...

[kepPNW]

Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be a trick ID'ing the "good" dups from the "bad" ones!

[Eric Peterson]

Might need a enigma decipher machine!