After already thru-hiking the AT and PCT (and others), I’m now planning on a SOBO CDT thru hike starting next June. I’m placing my orders now for all of the CDTS (“Wolf”) guides and I will request Jonathon Ley’s CD so I can print out his maps. My question is will this be enough? Do I need to also shell out another $258 for the CDTS’ map packs? I already have a number of the relevant Trails Illustrated maps.
Thanks for any advice you have.
Best wishes to all.
FireBall
FireBall
FB if you have not ordered the guides yet give me an email with a phone number. I Have the Wolf guides and would be glad to sell them cheap.
DG
Dad’s Grin
fireball save your self some trouble and buy a gps and get the lay maps.Alot of the time you might choose a different route than the wolf way plus just finding the trail in snow ,high altude,and which road to turn off onto when theres 20 roads but the maps and guides say theres only five.trust me a gps is the way to go and you wont worry where you are all the time
reststop
Reststop is right. You don’t need the CDTS maps but a GPS is a great tool to have in combination with the Ley maps and if you know you’re going to do alternate routes carry your trails Illustrated and/or Forest service maps.
Apple Pie
I only used a gps and the Ley maps. I wasted a lot of money on the Wolf guides that I never used.
Ellie
Can’t argue with the above advice. I liked most of Jim Wolf’s books, but they only work if you’re going his way, which is not always likely.
A GPS is a great tool. I used a small cheap one that did not have maps loaded, in conjunction with the Ley paper maps. Each map has a “compass rose” with a GPS coord at the center, along with a scale. You can put that coord in as a waypoint and hit the “GO TO” function and it will give you distance and bearing to that point. The compass rose is conveniently “upside down”, so it’s easy to plot “backward” to your point. You can find where you are on the map (as long as you’re still on the map, hah) anytime. Great peace of mind. You’ll want to practice this in ideal conditions a few times before you really need it, which could be in adverse conditions.
Garlic
I agree with the above GPS talk but would add that I personally enjoyed the Wolf guidebooks. Maybe they are no longer essential with the advent of the Ley maps and GPS but I did find them useful. Also, I enjoyed supporting Wolf’s cause as he appears to be the one that has tirelessly fought for the CDT for more than 30 years.
Brian
Jonathan’s maps are great, but they don’t show a lot of the side trails and roads, which may end up being information that you need i.e. if you decide to walk around the Knife Edge, the alternate route isn’t on Jonathan’s maps. Same with the JW route through the Cebolla Wilderness. Or if there’s a forest closure due to fire closures, you may want a larger picture than shown on his maps. At the least, it is a good idea to have the national forest maps, which do show all the roads and most of the side trails
Ginny
IMO, Jonathan’s maps are the way to go. Be sure to get the latest addition, 2010, because there are changes every year. A GPS is a positive plus, it WILL tell you where you are and save a lot of miles (trust me). If you are thinking of more definitive maps, like for the Northern Wind River Range, they can be purchased through different organizations like Earthwalk Press and be picked up before hand or along the way at certain outfitters. Unless you want to do side trips, they are not really necessary though.
Lessons learned:
Print the maps on larger paper (numbers, letters and contour lines are hard to read at times). There are different “type” maps used throughout the trail.
Check the print quality periodically while going through the process (it takes a lot of ink to do).
Faded maps are hard to read, especially the color blue (blue equals water).
Recommend one side only, this way you can put them together for a bigger "on the ground " look at things.
Newer objects like power lines, are not indicated on 95% of the maps.
Technology is great as long as it works (GPS). Batteries fail and if the wrong info is put in? You get the idea.
Trust your compass, always orientate your maps before looking at them.
Let the map tell you where you are, not the other way around.
WB, CDT09
I definitely agree with Reststop and others about having the Ley maps PLUS GPS. I’m sure the Wolf guides are great though I didn’t carry them going n/b. I would add one other must have. Buy the Delorme State Topo Atlas’s. They will be invaluable in showing roads, forest service roads, and keeping you from getting “tunnel vision”. So how you doing Fireball?
Robocop
Robocop
I skimmed the above and agree. Ley maps. I may have missed all the GPS recommendations, but I didn’t see the one for a “mapping” GPS such as the Garmin Map60csx (like mine). Using Mapsoure software you can put all the maps for the entire CDT coverage are and hundreds of miles to the E+W. Its the United States TOPO set. There is a Streets version which will have utilities, but you can load both. The giz uses the standard Micro SD memory card, I upgraded to a 1 Gig card for about $30 at best buy.
Pros; batteries last a long time= to around 18hrs on time.
Micro SD card doesn’t have to be formatted. Get one with its own card reader adaptor-which is the body for the Standard SD card, the small plugs into the larger one, you can use the GPS card for any other data you want; phone list, mail drop info, etc just get to town and plug it into a computer…yes, you also need a USB jack for the large card, I’ve seen a few dongles that do that and are small. The mapping features let you nav at night, pan out to where you want to go and make way points, backtrack, create a route on your computer and load it to. It’s waterproof. If you’re solo it’s like having another brain for when you really screw up. Nav above tree line in zero vis fog? Yes. The satellite capture is super fast anywhere. It’s a hell of a morale booster when you’re misplaced, the weather has turn foul, and you really really want to know where the closest possible bail out point is as the crow flies. Seeing the actual mileage in Pan mode can make you giggle like a school girl. Like the time we ran out of mountain money and the other role was in the car, I had the urge; we cut cross country at a full run and made the car miles away with seconds to spare. Always mark you car upon leaving on a hike, you never know. I even map it up and clip it to the bars on my motorcycle for back road exploits so I don’t have to pull a wad of paper out at each intersection. Or us it in the car with the cig jack.
Cons: This one is around 4-$500.00
Other brands and models have better maps, ability to 3D tilt and fly by. I sport this one because it was free to me from a friend. A plain GPS with only Lat and Long works well with just a good map, until you’re out of food and brain dead and can’t compare the two.
My two cents about suggested gear. Your mileage may very.:cheers
Bushwhack
Thanks for all of the excellent advice! I’ve gone ahead and requested Jonathan Ley to send me his CD so I can print out all of his maps on my newly purchased ink jet printer. Thanks to Dad’s Grin I hope to be able to acquire an inexpensive set of the Wolf guides. I already have most of the relevant DeLorme state atlases and Trails Illustrated maps, those I’m missing I will order asap. I also plan to order some of the other maps suggested on Spirit Eagle’s wonderful CDT web site.
Lastly, I agree with all of the helpful suggestions regarding using a GPS on the CDT. To date I have not used a GPS on any my previous long distance hikes, but I plan to buy one so I can practice on my NOBO thru-hike of the Florida Trail starting this coming January. Now which GPS unit to buy???
Best wishes to all,
FireBall
FireBall