A topographic map is considered the best
type of map
for walking and navigation and displays streams and contour lines.
Contour lines show height above sea level and are useful for both
displaying the general shape of the landscape and also for measuring
heights and climbs and descents along tracks.
Mapping Policy
We draw colour topographic maps of walks in our books. These
have been provided to show a track or route location and some of these
tracks are not displayed on other topographic maps. To aid
location of the tracks and routes, our maps show streams, all roads and
tracks and generally display contour heights of 25m or 50m. These
contours give general relief of the landscape but will not show every
ridge, rise or knoll. While
liking the maps and finding them very useful, some have asked for these
maps to have even more
contours. We have considered this and generally will not be increasing
contour lines to 10m or 20m - it is a huge amount of work to do so and
it would
not improve safety on many walks. Maps in
a book
can only be a maximum of a double page in size and often the tracks
and routes will be right on the edge of the page. If you lost the route
you could very easily walk right off the maps in a guide as the maps
only show a small part of an area. With the larger and generally more
detailed topographic paper map sheets or digital maps, you can see
more of the
surrounding country.
It is then harder to 'walk off the map' and also with a map of the
surrounding country you will have more features to use for navigation
hence improving safety.
This is why our maps are designed to
supplement the
information
on
topographic map sheets and not replace them - on all of our maps we
provide a
suggested map/maps to carry and use when walking. Yes we know some
walkers
will refuse to spend the few extra dollars for a map but its very cheap
when compared to the cost of gear, travel costs and food. Guide books
supplement maps and do not replace them. In other words - we recommend
using a map in
conjunction with any guide book.
We use GDA94 for all our Australian grids, this is essentially identical (within 1
metre) to the universal grid format, UTM
GPS
Related to maps, some have asked for GPS plots for all our walks. I
carry and use a GPS for spot checks on our walks these days. However we
dont leave the GPS continually turned on as that requires carrying lots
of batteries and really it is not needed, we do lots of walks of more
than 2 weeks in length. Hence we do not have a
continuous set of single GPS waypoints and hence cannot supply our readers with one. We do provide a grid
on all our
maps
so waypoints can be created for GPS use. As for creating lots of
waypoints for downloading into a GPS from the web - we simply dont have
enough time to create a set by hand and we are leaving that for others to do. If you read our
Online Policy Page you might
understand there is
actually little demand for guide books for overnight walking - for GPS
plots the demand would be much less.
Another GPS issue that has been raised with me is that when we give one
in our books, it is in the format of the grid that is used for the
locally produced topographic maps.
This is so you can directly transpose our maps onto the local
topographic maps and see what
point we are talking about. Of course there are different grids used
around the world and setting up your GPS to use the same grid can
sometimes be a
bit of a hit or miss affair. Unfortunately, not all GPSs use the same
setup, we have used 3 generations of Garmins and the menu system has
been changed each time! So I can only give general advice.
First
change the GPS to display a grid, Change the Position Format from the
default degrees, minutes and seconds to a grid type, UTM/UPS is often a
good starting point as it is the universal grid format. Sometimes its
not the correct choice so scroll through all the options to see if a
special one applies for the country you are in, example is New Zealand
uses its own so if there select that. Then after that you select the
map datum, for all of our current books select GDA94 or WGS84. When I travel to
a new area (another country), I setup my GPS at a known location (the
end of the road is a good choice) as its a known point. It took me more
than 10 minutes the first time in New Zealand as it took some time to
find that they have their own grid system, they actually have two so I tried both. However once I had set up
the GPS it matched the local maps perfectly after that.
One of the nice features of a GPS is that on the walk you can save
waypoints as grid numbers and later on change your Position Format to
degrees, minutes and seconds. Most of the GPS readings you get from the
web were created that way. However it is extremely difficult to
translate degree, minutes and seconds to a position on a map. Hence if
you upload GPS readings from others, use your GPS to change the display
into grid numbers and you will then be able to relate them to maps.
Just note that we have found that some of the web GPS readings have
errors, like all free content, the author spent very little time
editing and checking so be aware of that problem. Thats why I suggest
not to blindly follow uploaded waypoints, instead, alter the display to
show grid numbers so you can check where it is on the map. Most errrors
will then be found. Is this a problem? Well, recently, there
have
been several groups that have had to be rescued who were 'lost' as they
were blindly following GPS coordinates from the web that led them into
very difficult country.
