interactive maps?? how to?

[garyp]

Is there a place you can create interactive maps.

I am attempting to do something like this map on this site.

http://www.redwoodhikes.com/SequoiaNP/PearLake.html but I want to customize my map?

[Connie]

That is a beautiful website.

The Home page has a contact email.

I am using iPod Touch. If you are using a PC browser, perhaps Page Source will "credit" the map software and reveal more how that webpage is made. Maybe not.

Ask, and tell us. I would love to document my hikes as beautifully as that one.


I did Search: Maybe Gmap4 will be helpful?

http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4_examples.html


Please share what you find out.

[mississippi_dan]

There are some places to create maps. I use Google Earth. Trail to Pear Lake sample below. If interested I can describe the process used. I will be out of town for a few days.
Dan
29417

[Connie]

I have National Geographic TOPO! Montana.

It looks good. I don't think it looks as good as the map at that website.

[upstream]

CalTopo will do much of what you want. You can draw routes or points. You can import GPX files. You can see it on many different maps. If you log in through google or yahoo, you can save your maps.

Here is an example (http://caltopo.com/map?id=1940) that I did for a recent hike.

I usually use the forest service map plus add the "shaded relief" layer at 20% transparency. The forest service map doesn't show forest as green, but it is more up to date than other layers. I print scale maps in pdf form, and take them to a printer for printing on heavy bond with a laser printer and get very good quality maps that I use for bushwhacking.

[Tennessee Viking]

EveryTrail app

[garyp]

There are some places to create maps. I use Google Earth. Trail to Pear Lake sample below. If interested I can describe the process used. I will be out of town for a few days.
Dan
29417
i would love to know how you did that.

[mississippi_dan]

There were two things used for this map:
1) the USGS topographic maps from an internet map server (ArcGIS) and
2) the trails that are in the Google earth layers.

Download and save the topographic map index file from ArcGIS directory
(NGS_Topo_US_2D.kmz 683 bytes).

http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/NGS_Topo_US_2D/MapServer/kml/mapImage.kmz

Open this file from Google Earth. It will be in Places. Sometimes you can zoom out if the topo tiles don't completely fill the screen. Sometimes I uncheck this layer until I zoom almost to the area of interest. The view tilts or north changes when panning, on the keyboard press n (north up), then u (resets view to top down).

Add the trails. Some parks, like Sequoia and Yosemite, are on Google Earth. Click on Layers, Then expand More-Parks/Rec-US National Parks-Trails.

You can add other layers, even adjust the transparency. You can add other places as kml or kmz. These are sometimes found on the internet. If you find trails in formats other than kml or kmz there are conversion tools. I can probably convert most formats.

Hope this helps. Dan

[garyp]

what computer program are you using?

[mississippi_dan]

*Google Earth* This free software from https://www.google.com/earth/ is installed on my computer. The topographic index file (NGS_Topo_US_2D.kmz) is a separate small file that when opened from Google Earth instructs Google Earth to get the topographic map tiles from the internet. Google Earth, by default, uses satellite or aerial photographs depending on the zoom level.

The trail map image I made was saved using one of the icons on the toolbar of Google Earth.

[1azarus]

Maprika will work. It is just available as a phone app.

[Another Kevin]

I think that my answer may be beyond your level of ambition. I do quite a lot in the way of full-custom mapping, using a wide variety of government and open-source databases.

Most of the time, I accumulate the data in a PostGIS (http://postgis.net/) database. I do editing, and sometimes paper map generation, in Quantum GIS (http://qgis.org/en/site/), which is near-professional-grade GIS software. For maps destined for a mobile device, I typically use Mapnik (http://mapnik.org/) to generate a tiled image. (Sometimes this tiled image becomes a basemap for further Quantum GIS work). The current version of my Northeast hiking map is http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html - please be kind to that server, it's on my home network. If you're interested in pursuing this route, I can surely help.

I'm afraid that i don't know of very many good "hands off" ways of doing what you want, at least if you want results that I'd consider attractive. As I said, I'm fairly ambitious.

[gubbool]

Huh? I must have missed something in question/replies.

Online map making is pretty simple at http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ lots of features and lots of ways to use them.

Check out lifeat2mph/pinhoti for my work using that free tool; read the displayed menu for info.

I also have maps for the BMT, CT, ASRT. http://lifeat2mph.com/maps.html

[Wise Old Owl]

Yea found this software recently on this website.

http://www.everytrail.com/guide/half-dome-hike/map#poi-0

[johngo]

Well, I'm not sure if anybody ever really answer the original question.
Assuming you're still interested, I will attempt an answer.
I have done a little bit of website design and graphics work, and it looks like all that is happening on this interactive map is that each time you click it it is loading a new image file over the top of the previous one, and the image files have more trails drawn than the previous one.

[johngo]

And, as far as making beautiful maps, I highly recommend Caltopo. They have recently added a new map layer called "mapbuilder topo" that has shaded relief, trails drawn in nicely, and eliminates a lot of the clutter like wilderness boundaries and section lines usually found on standard USGS topo maps.

Here is an example of the Mountaineer's Route on Mount Whitney, and the normal walk up hiking trail. 1 to 24,000 scale, prints on a standard eight and half by 11 paper, and has a 1 km UTM grid. I made this in about 30 seconds for free and Cal topo. (I found the GPX tracks on line and import of them.)

If you would like to make maps like this, go to YouTube and search for "Caltopo" to see some excellent tutorial videos that will help get you started.

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