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 map sheets, you usually get 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.
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. Hence we do not have a
continuous set of GPS waypoints. 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 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.
