The DeLorme Weblog

Last Thursday I was able to share the joys of geocaching with a group of educators and students at the Governor’s Conference on Youth and the Natural World, part of Maine’s Take It Outside initiative.

I prepared for the event by creating a trail map of the University of Maine at Augusta’s trail system. This map was distributed to all of the attendees and the trail data was added to the Earthmate PN-40 devices that were used during the training.

I worked with Steve Engle from the Center for Community GIS in Farmington, ME during the geocaching sessions and also implemented some of his helpful trail mapping tips during the preparation. I’d like to share some of those tips along with other notes on how I used Topo USA and the Earthmate PN-40 to create the Take It Outside trail map.

Before arriving at the UMA trail system I downloaded the high resolution aerial imagery for the area to my device using NetLink’s Map Library. This imagery was very valuable because it showed all of the buildings in the area as well as some of the trails that I was planning to map!

As I began my trail data collection I configured my device to give me the most detail possible. I made sure that WAAS was enabled in Device Setup>System to improve the location accuracy of the device. I also confirmed that the Track Settings on the Track page were set to record points by distance with an interval of 10 feet and that a new track would begin recording when the current track was full. Finally I set the Map page to display the GPS Accuracy and Battery Life info fields so that I could monitor these values while gathering the data.

After I adjusted the settings on my PN-40 I began walking the trails at a casual pace, making sure to hold the device flat, giving the PN-40 the best view of the sky possible. When I approached trail intersections I used one of Steve’s suggestions and created waypoints to help remember areas that I would loop back on or need to return to later.

When I finished walking all of the trails I turned my PN-40 off and headed home to create the trail map in Topo USA.

My first action was to connect the PN-40 and use the Exchange Dialog to transfer the track and waypoint information from the GPS to the Topo USA map.

Here is a screenshot of Topo USA showing the raw track data and the intersection waypoints.

After the GPS data finished transferring I created a Trail layer so that I could clean up the track data and prepare it for use on the printed map and with the geocaching demo PN-40s. I expanded the Draw tab using the More button, right clicked the track segment, and chose Copy To>TrailLayer, where TrailLayer was the new layer I had just created. This changed the track to a trail line style making it look like the other trails in the Topo USA data. For those interested in routable user trails, this is also the approach you would use.

I proceeded to use the draw tools to clean up some of the trails. Areas where I overlapped my track or walked off the trail system unintentionally were corrected using Manage Draw right click commands like Break Line, Join Line, and Delete. In one particular area I walked a loop twice and then drew in a trail by hand to approximate the two tracks. I also used the Waypoint tool to create a Trailhead waypoint and an Augusta Civic Center waypoint. The Draw tab has many powerful tools to help edit and create data that can be used in printing and on the PN-40; Topo USA owners should use the Help to get more information.

After completing the trail edits I used the Handheld Export tab to create a Draw Layer map package with the new trail information. I then used the Exchange Dialog to send the trail map package and the new waypoints to the PN-40.

People attending the geocaching training found the additional trail information very useful when choosing which path to follow to get to a geocache. I’ve seen many cachers tackle challenging bushwhacks that could have been avoided by viewing trails on the GPS that are just out of site in the woods.

When creating the paper map we chose to use additional symbols and line styles to mirror the large sign at the UMA trailhead. I created a custom symbol set in Draw and chose colored line styles to complete the printed trail map data. I added the event sponsor logos and other print objects using the Layout Tools in the Print tab. I did use Photoshop to create a map legend by hand and then added it to the map using the Image tool. I also touched up one of the trail colors after saving the file from Topo USA; the sign had a multi-colored line… a feature request for Topo USA!

This is how the final map turned out… not bad for an afternoon of hiking and a few hours of map editing and print layout!

Post a comment if you’re interested in more details on how to make trail maps with your handheld GPS and Topo USA.

Chip Noble
Team DeLorme