hello eberyone,
I’ll be section hiking the CDT southbound next summer from Colorado to mexico, i bring a garmin vista GPS with me, but i really dont know what is the best map to get:
Maptech Continental Divide
or
Garmin Mapsource topo US ?
i never used a GPS before so help is welcomed!
thanks from France…
french bob
I just hiked the CDT last season and it was great! I didn’t use a GPS, and am not that familiar with how to use them. One thing that will affect which maps you purchase is that there are two organizations that map quite different trails (both the “CDT”)through New Mexico (and some parts of Colorado). One organization is the Continental Divide Trail Society and the other is the Continental Divide Trail Alliance. You will need different maps depending on which route you plan to take. Good luck!
Anish
CDT Maps
If you are looking to find a background map for you GPS the one you are able to download into a Garmin unit is the Garmin Mapsource Topo US. If you have an older Etrex like we did you should still have enough memory to preload all the maps for your trip and avoid uploading more maps while you are out there.
Along with the background map in our GPS we just brought Jonathan Leys maps and Delorme Atlas pages and occasionally would buy Topo maps along they way.
Mat
mat
i was just wondering, which one is better for the CDT route proposed by Jim wolf.
I know that the Garmin topo US worth it, but maybe the MAPTECH map is more precise with the CDT route, i’am a newbie about GPS…
Thanks
french bob
Jim Wolf’s guidebooks are the best ones. He describes different routes and explains the advantages of each. (i.e. in the Bob Marshall, if the water levels are low, you might want to take Clack Creek to Pentagon Creek. If the water is high then you don’t want to cross Pentagon Creek.) He gets a lot of feedback from hikers each year on his routes and various alternate options.
Jonathan Ley’s maps show the routes he followed and some alternates - either the official trail or Jim Wolf’s routes that he didn’t take or routes that others have heard of or ones he thought looked interesting on a map. (He likes peak bagging and off-trail travel.) He doesn’t show all the possibilities and doesn’t even show all of Jim Wolf’s routes correctly - but they are very helpful.
The Westcliffe books describe the official trail, but skip a lot of detail (i.e. water sources and trail junctions). Aside from Colorado, they aren’t very good. The official trail in New Mexico is now quite different from the route described in the Westcliffe book in three places - the Bootheel, the Carson, and the Rio Puerco.
Most hikers create their own route as they go - a combination of Wolf, Ley alternates, and ones that they create on their own, either by accident or on purpose. (i.e. if you miss a turn, you get to figure out what is the best way to get back on track. It’s up to you to read the guidebooks and look at the maps to decide which combination of routes you want to take. It makes preparing for the CDT a bit more complicated than the other trails because you won’t know which is the BEST route for you if you don’t know what the alternatives are, or why they are alternatives.
ginny
“CDT Maps If you are looking to find a background map for you GPS the one you are able to download into a Garmin unit is the Garmin Mapsource Topo US. If you have an older Etrex like we did you should still have enough memory to preload all the maps for your trip and avoid uploading more maps while you are out there.”
I don’t know how you managed that. From what I can tell there’s 113 maps total with a couple alternatives that take just over 26 MB’s, whereas the “older GPS’s” only hold 24 MB. Even if you narrowed down your starting and ending points, it would still seem to be over the GPS’s limit.
Sly
Yes, i just do Cololrado+NM this year, but memory is not an isssue since my future Garmin Vista cx has a 32mb sd memory included.
My main concern is about what route to choose, it looks a bit complicated to me, to know by advance what will be the best route to follow.
I just received the guide books from Jim Wolf so i dont know yet if the Ley maps will be suffucient for route finding, but i heard that Colorado has good trails, easy to follow, is it true?
french bob
Bring the National Forest maps in NM as well as Jonathan’s. We also carried the BLM maps. Jonathan’s maps are great, but they don’t show a lot of the side trails/roads, etc. When you are hiking they are essential for keeping yourself found. We used the TI maps in Colorado. When you are on the Colorado trail you should have little trouble routefinding, but much of Colorado is not on the CT. When you are at altitude, there is sometimes very faint tread in the meadows or through the rocks. The maps were very helpful. They also helped when we needed to do alternate routes because of weather, etc. We had altitude problems on one trip. High winds blew us off the route we had planned a couple of times and snow forced a change of plans in the South San Juans and aroudn the Knife Edge. None of the alternate routes we took were shown on JL’s maps.
As to NM - our website - www.spiriteaglehome.com - shows the new route in the Bootheel. It was a good one, aside from the roadwalk into Silver City. There has been a lot of new trail construction in the Carson. Trouble is, there are places where the new trail ends unexpectedly and you are on your own getting back to the old route. Good maps are essential.
Ginny
French Bob,
Yogi’s CDT townguide has a section that charts all the maps you need to upload the Mapsource maps to your GPS including the alternates. Jonathan’s maps also include the alternates.
Of course if you want/need a bigger picture you’ll want TI, FS, USGA or BLM maps or perhaps the pages out of a Delorme Gazetteer. Yogi’s guide also give the page numbers you’ll need out of the Gazetteer.
Sly
I believe that Garmin Mapsource is the only one you can use to upload maps to a Garmin unit, because they conveniently own the software. The other software companies allow you to upload waypoints only I think, not the maps. Is this true?
NEMO