USGS 1:24,000 naps for At Thru-Hike?

[BigPoppaW]

I'm still in the 'considering the plausability of it' stage of planning a thru-hike on the AT and was wondering how suited the 1:24,000 maps put out by the USGS would be? As a follow-up, does anyone have, or know where I can find, a list of which maps I would need to cover the entire trip?

After reading Bill Bryson's book, I'm a little leery about the quality of the official maps put out by the ATC, especially in Pennsyslvania, though if anyone has any personal experience in this regard, I'd love to hear it.

Any input is greatly appreciated...!

[sdoownek]

Why do you need a map? It's not hard to follow the trail......

[Squeaky 2]

the trail is very easy to follow, until you are in a blizzard and 4 feet of snow drops in a day and a half. even in the summer there is places above treeline where you can get caught out. if you are a late finisher at katadyn then you will defenately need them for back up. it would be very rare in the summer that you will need to use a map to follow the trail.

[Peaks]

From what I've seen, USGS maps may not show the current relocations of the AT. And I think you will probably wind up buying a lot more maps and paper than if you use the ATC maps.

My suggestion is to use ATC maps. I didn't have any problems with them.

[joel137]

Ditto,

use the ATC maps, the PA one's worked fine for me.

USGS maps sometimes even have the trail path from the 50's or 40's even on them, rather than the current locations.

[icemanat95]

I'm still in the 'considering the plausability of it' stage of planning a thru-hike on the AT and was wondering how suited the 1:24,000 maps put out by the USGS would be? As a follow-up, does anyone have, or know where I can find, a list of which maps I would need to cover the entire trip?

After reading Bill Bryson's book, I'm a little leery about the quality of the official maps put out by the ATC, especially in Pennsyslvania, though if anyone has any personal experience in this regard, I'd love to hear it.

Any input is greatly appreciated...!

Your first mistake is relying on Bill Bryson's book for anything other than entertainment.

The PA Maps are made from USGS maps...nearly all the AT Maps are derived from USGS topos. The problem with the PA maps of the time Bryson did his little tour, was that they were in black and white and VERY detailed. Lots of contour lines. If you don't know how to read a topo map, those contour lines can be confusing to the eye. Bryson was a complete outdoors boob, utterly unprepared and incompetent to hike, so the maps would definitely have confused the heck out of him.

A little casual training solves that.

The AT maps cover a much narrower scope of information as well. They deal with the AT itself and a few kilometers of ground to either side, allowing the maps to be formatted in narrow strips that are readily folded for easy use. Generally you can fold them so they fit in a ziplock bag and show the section of trail you will be hiking this morning as well as the profile for that section should you choose to reference it. You do need to understand that the profiles are highly exagerrated, with the horizontal distances contracted in relation to the vertical elevation, so some climbs will look a lot steeper on the profiles than they really are. Strangely, the often FEEL steeper than they look on the profiles, but that's purely subjective perception.