New online national forest maps, trail mileages, road info

[Joseph Elfelt]

New online maps are now ready for almost all of the national forests in California, Oregon and Washington. Here are the links:
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4_usfs_maps.html

The maps have been improved compared to the earlier version I posted in the
General Hiking Topics not long ago. http://www.portlandhikers.org/forum/vie ... =7&t=17119 (Oops! I should have posted that earlier version in this sub-forum instead.)

The links to the maps have also changed. So if you bookmarked that earlier version of the Mt Hood map, please update your link.

Please read the Tips. There is a link to the tips in the upper left corner of each map.

To the best of my knowledge these are the only free online maps that show trail mileages without making you click anything.

New feature: They are also the only online maps that let you see the forest service roads that are open and roads that are closed by toggling those layers on and off.

[pablo]

Joseph,

In looking at the trails for the Mt Hood Nat'l Forest there are numerous omissions (as mentioned in a comment to your previous post - much of the trail system in the Gorge) and a couple of obvious errors (I suspect a lot more than a couple of errors but doing QA for generally crappy FS trail traces is not something I care to do). The problem here is unless verified by one or more GPS tracks you'll never know what is right and what is wrong. As a computer science project what you've done looks pretty neat but the best you can say is there might be a trail in the general vicinity and the mileage may or may not be even close. You'll want a strong disclaimer about accuracy.

Rob Williams of trailadvocate.org has compiled GPS tracks for every trail in the Clackamas District and provides a GPX file so you can have a look at the original data. That's the way to do it - but it is a lot of hard work.

--Paul

[kepPNW]

Rob Williams of trailadvocate.org has compiled GPS tracks for every trail in the Clackamas District and provides a GPX file so you can have a look at the original data. That's the way to do it - but it is a lot of hard work.

Any idea if that's been integrated into the NWTopos collection (on switchbacks.com)? Sounds like a great resource.

[RobFromRedland]

Rob Williams of trailadvocate.org has compiled GPS tracks for every trail in the Clackamas District and provides a GPX file so you can have a look at the original data. That's the way to do it - but it is a lot of hard work.

Any idea if that's been integrated into the NWTopos collection (on switchbacks.com)? Sounds like a great resource.

The data is freely available on the website, but no one has contacted me about putting all the trails in the NW Topos collection. I do not know if it has been or not.

All of the tracks are from people who have actually hiked the trails, so the data is about as accurate as you can get. There is the occasional GPS jitter, but I think they are as good as you can get at this point. The GPS tracks have highlighted quite a few places where the trail as shown on the map is wildly incorrect.

[kepPNW]

Rob Williams of trailadvocate.org has compiled GPS tracks for every trail in the Clackamas District and provides a GPX file so you can have a look at the original data. That's the way to do it - but it is a lot of hard work.

Any idea if that's been integrated into the NWTopos collection (on switchbacks.com)? Sounds like a great resource.

The data is freely available on the website, but no one has contacted me about putting all the trails in the NW Topos collection. I do not know if it has been or not.

All of the tracks are from people who have actually hiked the trails, so the data is about as accurate as you can get. There is the occasional GPS jitter, but I think they are as good as you can get at this point. The GPS tracks have highlighted quite a few places where the trail as shown on the map is wildly incorrect.

Nice! I'm pretty sure switchbacks isn't out there hoovering tracks randomly; that they're all user-submitted, like yours. Collections like that (and Eric's) are invaluable. I've been sending corrections up to Jon at switchbacks when I see my track at significant odds with the public-data trails, which is mostly what he's had to use down here as most of his contributors are farther north.

[Eric Peterson]

Where do we find the Clackamas Rob Williams data?

Ahh, each individual trail has a GPX file to download ie: http://www.trailadvocate.org/?page_id=58

[retired jerry]

are you nwtopos Rob?

That is a really great map.

What I like is the trails are real accurate. Like I was hiking in the Olympics and a number of trails were real close - any difference not worth mentioning.

I'm waiting with baited breath for it to include the Trinity Alps, Mill Creek Wilderness, Strawberry Mountain (as it fades how hot that was), and Hart Mountain - I should upload tracks of trails for those.

[kepPNW]

I'm waiting with baited breath for it to include the Trinity Alps, Mill Creek Wilderness, Strawberry Mountain (as it fades how hot that was), and Hart Mountain - I should upload tracks of trails for those.

Switchbacks.com > GPS Maps > Northwest Trails - http://www.switchbacks.com/nwtrails/#contribute

Switchbacks.com > GPS Maps > Upload - http://www.switchbacks.com/upload/default.aspx

[retired jerry]

Man, you're trying to shame me into doing it

We have hijacked JEs thread sorry, if that was a GPS downloadable map I'de feel worse about thread hijack

[RobFromRedland]

Where do we find the Clackamas Rob Williams data?

Ahh, each individual trail has a GPX file to download ie: http://www.trailadvocate.org/?page_id=58

If you want to see them all on one map, you can see it here:

http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... Trails.kmz