What Trail maps are you using?

Yeah, I took a bunch of classes to learn it and then was disappointed how little money there was in the fun part of the job. But I did make some cool maps of the local off road parks.

 

I learned most of the GIS knowledge over the past 10 years of going to GIS/cartography related meetups and then over a year working on Recreation.gov and testing out most of the options out there for mobile apps.

 

I was dragged into GIS and Orthomosaics kicking and screaming. The agency I worked for did post disaster mapping with drones and they needed a team lead....I was available.

Three plus years of watching a drone fly back and forth in a grid pattern did me in. I’ve heard flying them recreationally is fun....wouldn’t know but I’ll say 10+ hours of flying a day plus 10+ hours of crunching data every night was enough to make me feel that if I never created another map as long as I lived would be just fine.

 

lol

All my GIS is all on the job training as well. Out of necessity with my remote sensing work (mostly satellite radar stuff), you kinda have to just figure it out. The data us meaningless unless you can figure out what it represents on the ground.

I've been voluntold for projects, too. That's how I became the Water Use Specialist. You miss ONE meeting...

 

Now WASH I actually enjoy...

 

they haven't lost their popularity with those of us who know and love them

 

Free users get a subset of the trail database. Paid users get "All Access".

 

1. Get an old Android phone with a gps chip from a friend who no longer uses it
2. Download Gaia Maps Pro
3. Select the area on the map and download the area.
4. Record your trip with gps the whole way.

Total cost: $gaia subscription ($19.99/yr i think?)

 

I buy my map folios in boxes of 150 at Costco. I just write "Overlander" in sharpie on the front so I can still hashtag it.

 

Hopefully you don't rely solely on electronic maps.

 

Especially with an old android phone... and the android version of Gaia...

 

Have you had bad experiences?

 

Backcountry Navigator. Gaia is also awesome

 

I’m using map.me on iPhone. There plenty map to download. Once it down you can use without service.

 

GIS is cool, specially you have access to the database. But it’s not free for everybody to use.

 

QGIS would beg to differ

 

that’s nice too know, almost got my gis minor in college.

 

I'm surprised it wasn't brought up, ESRI has a strong grip on the government and therefore the training pipeline but my instructors at least told us about it.

 

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but onX off-road is pretty damn decent. Simple and accurate. They also have 3D map layouts now. Gis is good, but access and “know how” in order to use it isn’t too easy to come by.
https://www.onxmaps.com/

 

I assume you mean ArcGIS. GIS is not a brand.

But yeah, it's not free. Neither are most things. People have this weird tendency nowadays to want stuff and not have to pay for it.

Again, GIS isn't a brand.

I first heard about onX from the latest Offroad Adventure series.

I mean aside from pandering to the "overland" crowd, onX seems to be a pretty cool system. For me, 3D maps are pretty far down the list of necessary items when navigating offroad, but having the trail, campsite, and public lands overlays is pretty cool. Although those things aren't that hard to add yourself if you know where to look (i.e. google, lol).