Wow!

[Cheminer Will]

I know, absurd title to this post, but that is what I said when I looked at your maps yesterday.  Now all signed up and have downloaded Northwest Topos.  What you are doing here is fantastic.  I have hiked all my life and just recently have started trying to map hikes and trails using tracks and my 60CSx.  I have been mostly trying to figure it out on my own, so have not made a lot of progress with the process once a track is on the card in the Garmin.  I have the 60CSx, Garmin's Topo U.S. 2008, and now your NW Topo.  Is there a tutorial here or anywhere else that you know of that would give insight into the best way to get a trail off the 60CSx and onto the computer?  I look forward to maybe being able to provide you with some trails to add to your maps.  At first look, it seems you have many of the trails here in Southern Oregon covered.  But, I hike a lot of lesser known ones and maybe some of those would not be too obscure to add to your maps.

I have a couple of general questions to ask here and then will ask my more specific one in another topic to make searching easier for future users of the forum.

It appears that NW Topo has all the trails that NW Trails has, at least for the area the NW Topos currently covers.  Is this correct?

Trails covers a larger area than Topo right now, but other than that what are the significant differences?  If I am using Topo and getting the geographic coverage I need with that, would there be any reason to also have Trails?

Thanks for this great project!  I hope I can help in some small way as I get more knowledgeable and figure out how to record all the hikes I do.

-Will

[Moun10Bike]

I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the maps!  I don't have a tutorial for pulling data off of the GPS, but I do have some pointers regarding data recording here: http://www.switchbacks.com/nwtrails/default.aspx#contribute.  The main thing to keep in mind is to not do a "save" on the GPS (that reduces the number of points in the data), but rather just copy the tracks directly from GPS to your computer.  This can be done by connecting the unit to the PC and either downloading via MapSource or using Windows Explorer to copy the .gpx files from GPS to hard drive.

Yes, NW Topos contains all of the trails that NW Trails contains, at least within its current area of coverage.  NW Trails is transparent, meaning that it will overlay other mapsets you have loaded and allow you to see the trails on top of the other maps, whether they are street maps, topo maps, et al.  It's handy to have both mapsets installed so that you can see the trails when driving around town and the like.  NW Topos is more of an all-in-one mapset that includes roads, contours lines, hydrology, trails, etc.  It is not transparent, so you can't overlay it on top of other maps.

[The Jester]

With the 60csx you can save tracks to the data card - this has a lot more room than the unit memory.  I then copy the track file from the 60 to a folder on the compter, and use MapSource to open, edit and update it before uploading to Jon.  That way I can note which type of trail each track is (dirt trail, paved trail, dirt road, etc.).  I can also add waypoints into the file (they download differently from the unit) before sending.

[Cheminer Will]

Thanks -  That is what I did on a hike yesterday.  Interesting thing is that although the 2nd of two trails we were on was on NW Topos, the first mile or so of the trail was consistently off about 800 feel to the North West.  The last 5 miles of the trail were right on.  Although I had the only GPSr with Northwest Topos, and hence the trail, we had 3 GPSr's that showed that my 60CSx was tracking properly.  After I look at the tracks in Mapsource to make sure I did it correctly, I will figure out how to send them to Jon.  He could then decide if he wants to correct the first part of the 2nd trail, I guess.  Then he will also have the first trail, (only .7 mile) that goes from the trailhead we used up to the intersection with the 2nd trail we hiked for about 9 miles.

[The Jester]

Depending on where the trail data came from you can see some pretty "messed" up trails.  It sounds like that data came from gov't map data.

[Cheminer Will]

I see.  I thought most of the trails were from users like us.  So since I do so much serious hiking, I guess I really need to become good at saving tracks and offering them to Jon to update the maps.