A new mapping capability...

Topo.com just put in a new feature. When you are at a spot on the map you would like to pass on to friends, right click on the location you get a URL to pass on to somebody else to see what you are talking about. Great for passing on that special place you want somebody else to visit.

Visit http://www.topo.com/explore & right click on the desired map that you
would like to email. Select "Email this map."

Just checked it out. It's pretty cool. I can see myself using this at the onset of SAR missions to get the general location and topo out to other volunteers.

I consider you all my friends, so here's me:

http://www.topo.com/explore?lat=40.8268345745267&lng=-75.8194580078125&level=5&type=topo

Go directly north between the M and the I in Bloomingdale. When you hit the road, you will be here: N 40°49.698’ W 075°50.527’ Elevation:1035 ft.

http://www.carboneec.org
Come visit if you're ever in the the Jim Thorpe, PA area!

But if I were to go visit you, you would draft me into a SAR mission, and I would have to help carry out the body of some idiot who tried to survive a ... oh, never mind.

Interesting for me to see the detailed maps in USA. I'm a litle map-aholic myself. One thing i noticed as I got the most detiled map is that the height lines are only 20 feet apart. In Norway it's 20 meters! Very good with 20 feet for planning, you see virtually every stone.

But as a planning tool I missed the opportunity to point out a route and have the distance calculated. Is this topo.com the most used planning tool, or are there other mapservices that are even better. Not that I will likely be needing it, but with my addiction to maps I'm just curious.

For those of you over there that are curious of the maps we use here, I use this for trips in Norway http://www.inatur.no/ and this if the trip is in the border distric of Sweden or inside Sweden http://www.inatur.se/ On both sites go down and find a yellow button with something like "kart" on, and press it. Just zoom in and enjoy. For planning in my district I use http://webhotel.gisline.no/GISLINEWebMapExplorer_Salten/Map.aspx?plugin=no And you are all welcome to visit us, the huts are cheap and never crowded. You'll be lucky to share it with someone even on the most popular times of the year.

topo.com is the website for National Geographic's Topo! mapping software. They have a number of products, mostly software for use on PCs and Macs, but some on-line. The software can be used for doing what you ask for, namely drawing routes and getting the distance, profile, total ascent and descent, creating a set of waypoints for a GPS receiver either automatically from a drawn route or from waypoints you designate or download (the download function is popular with geocachers), upload and download to/from a GPSR (waypoints, routes, and tracks), upload routes, tracks, and waypoints to the National Geographic website (or just the Topo division), along with photos that are tagged to a waypoint (they use one of my Denali climbs as a demo for this), and a number of other features.

Unfortunately for you, Otto, the maps are limited to the US, since they are scanned from US Geological Survey topographic sheets. They have been looking into expanding to other countries for quite some time. However, the quality of maps for much of the world is very poor, and many countries ask huge royalties for the needed digital data (if it even exists). From time to time, I do some beta testing for potential new products of theirs (been doing that ever since Topo was a tiny startup company here in the San Francisco Bay Area named Wildflower, around 1990). Just getting the detailed 1:24,000 scale maps for the entire US (all 50 states, plus specialized trail maps) and the software to do all the things they offer has been a massive, and continuing project.

One very interesting product allows loading the maps onto Magellan's Triton series of GPSRs. There are some growing pains associated with this, but this is currently the only way to get USGS 1:24,000 topographic maps onto a GPSR.

Another company, Delorme, has a product called TopoUSA that has vectorized topographic maps at scales from 1:100,000 and smaller, with scanned USGS 1:24,000 maps, plus the potential of buying satellite photographs and aerial photographs to load onto their PN-20 and new PN-40 GPSR. My experience is that, while Delorme makes excellent street maps for computer usage (StreetAtlas), the PN-20 is very slow at redrawing maps as you move from place to place. I have not tried the PN-40. I also have not found TopoUSA as useful as National Geographic's Topo! Delorme also does not make non-US maps for computer.

There are some other competing companies, but these are much less useful.

Garmin has started putting out 1:24,000 maps to load into some of their GPSRs, but these are pretty pricey. They do have maps that can be loaded into their GPSRs, but their mapping software is not up to the level of either National Geographic or Delorme when used on a PC or Mac.

Barb and I have to get back to Scandinavia one of these days. We want to ski the Birkebiner and do some of the big orienteering events. And obviously, as an avid skier, I have to ski in the Telemark district and Christiana (don't remember the modern name, though). Plus Barb wants to visit her Swedish cousins (they live near Stockholm). When we do, I will let you know.

I knew you were retired and a senior Bill, but I'm amazed of how old you must be. They changed from Christiania to Oslo in 1921 I think! Thank you for the info on maps in US, I will try to visit the sites you have mentioned.

Yes let me know when you have decided to take the trip. Looking forward to that. Otto

Quote:

But if I were to go visit you, you would draft me into a SAR mission, and I would have to help carry out the body of some idiot who tried to survive a ... oh, never mind.

Your funny. Naw, we usually get the local Fire Department to do the easier carry outs!

Otto -
No, I'm not that old! I just know of Telemark and Christiana because of reading various histories of skiing. Hmmm, I sure didn't realize that Christiana is now Oslo. Having spent a few days in Oslo, I should have known that.

Many years ago, Barb and I did a bicycling tour of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. We flew into Copenhagen, toured a few days there, took a boat to Oslo, visited some museums and the wonderful park with all the sculptures, then bicycled along the coast toward Sweden (pouring rain every day for 3 days), talked with and cycled along side a huge crowd of people doing some event called March of the Old Time Roads (or something like that), bicycled out to Molle, then to Gothenburg, back across to Denmark at Halsingborg (visited Hamlet's Elsinore, or at least the inspiration for it), ferry across to Hven (they were just starting the restoration of Tycho's observatory at that time), then back to Copenhagen (again in pouring rain). Fun trip, but too much rain, especially since we were tent camping most of the time.

We hope to visit more of the northern parts of Scandinavia next time. Problem is there are too many places in the world we want to go, too many mountains to climb, and at our ages, too little time left. Barbara is 21 years old today (for the 43rd time - she never gets any older, except when it comes to getting senior discounts). I got her a book titled "1000 Places to See Before You Die". We have done maybe 100 of them.

Just joking Bill, as you sure understood. The maps of US were quite good. But as I'm used to 20 merers between the height curves, the terrain looks very steep on the map. When looking at the satellite picture i get a more "flat" country.

Do the maps I posted from my country work OK on your computers? BTW there is a service that gives you the picture of every adress in Norway. http://www.norgeibilder.no/ To find my home just write the adress Støverveien into the "gate" field and 20 in the numeric. (To find the norwegian letter ø you must hold down the alt key, and type 155 on the numeric keypad. When you release the alt key, the letter ø should be ok.) Be sure to have no blanks after the street adress.

Fantastic world we live in, dont you think? You may almost see how ripe my strawberries are.

It took a bit of playing around, but, I did figure out how to get the aerial photo up and zoomed in. There seems to be a limit to the amount to zoom in before the photo disappears, leaving only the street map.

Rather than doing the "secret handshake" (holding down the ALT key and typing 155), I just copied the street and pasted it into the "gate" field.

You can do something similar to this with Google Earth. My street has "Street Level" images as well, though the current street-level image is about 6 months old (before the house was torn down in preparation for building the new house). The aerial photos also are at least 6 months old, since my ham radio tower still shows with the beam antennas still on it.

Great deal. Topozone.com is from the same company as the Mapcard.com I just posted.

Oops, I'm sorry, I confused topo.com with topozone.com a completely different website/company.