what's an app ?

The maps aren't being updated and many are out of date regardless of what app you're using. Gaia Pro doesn't have better maps but more features making it easier to use.

help.gaiagps.com/hc/en-us/arti…16161927-What-Is-GaiaPro-

Yikes!!!!!

I think I'll pass on that, thank you very much.

There are no better trail maps in general. There are for specific local regions, when trail clubs get sufficiently interested, or when NatGeo sees a market. But then you pay through the nose for them, because that's how the trail clubs get funded. The government got out of that business in the first Bush administration. It is no longer a priority for any government agency to have accurate, up-to-date topographic maps of the US. We have better ones of Iraq than we do of the US, because the Defense Mapping Agency is interested in Iraq.

That's why I do my own maps. For some of the places I hike, I can't get good maps anywhere!

I don't know where you're hiking, but if it's "near enough" to the Appalachian Trail, I may be able to help a little.

First, check kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html - zoom way out and try to zoom in on your area. If you're "near enough" you'll be able to zoom in all the way to level 15. If you can't, shoot me a private message with your latitude and longiitude. I might be able to enlarge the map a little to accommodate you. I surely don't have the compute resources to do the whole world, but I don't fall apart on doing the whole AT and might be able to push the boundaries a little bit farther.

If where you hike is on the map, we can try to get the map on your phone.

In BackCountry Navigator, choose "Map Layers".
In the screen that appears, choose "More Map Sources".
In the next screen, choose "Custom Map Source (beta)"
In the next screen, choose "New Custom Map Source" (it'll be the only choice the first time you do this)

Now you have a whole list of stuff to fill out. The URL is the hard part, it has to be typed exactly. Note that all the brackets are curly braces! (It's probably easiest to just change the beginning and end of the one that shows up there by default.)

Name: Kevin's Map
Min Zoom: 5
Max Zoom: 15
Tile Type: JPG
Tile Update: IfNoneMatch
URL: kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/tiles/{$z}/{$y}/{$x}.jpg
Background Color: #000000
Batch Download: Yes

When you hit 'Save', you'll see 'Kevin's Map' in the custom map sources. Select it.

The app should remember it, so that it will appear in the 'Map Sources' dropdown the next time you go to 'Map Layers'.

For my aged eyes, the print on this map is pretty small. I also hit the Menu button on the phone, select 'Settings', then 'Display Options', then scroll down to find 'Map Magnification' (ignoring the scary warning), and change 'Magnify Map by' to '2 Steps'.

It may or may not have good data on trails where you are. If not, we may be able to find more data sources to integrate into it. It most likely will NOT have building footprints, fence and field lines, Public Land Survey monuments, benchmarks, and the other good stuff you expect from the government maps. Sorry. (In the case of benchmarks, the data were never digitized, and exist only in decaying paper files in two USGS offices.) The road network coverage should be decent, likewise the streams, rivers, ponds, lakes. Land cover and topography should be as good as USGS maps, with the possible exception that you may spot a radar glitch or two. (The topography derives from the Space Shuttle's imaging radar, and I know of a few spots where it's very wrong. Fortunately, they're tiny, and obvious.)

A LOT of its data comes from Open Street Map, which is why I beg people to please go out and help map. That's how maps get better, nowadays. Nobody, including the government, can afford to pay the pros to go survey them, so citizen mappers wind up doing all the work.

I could do a lot more with it, and I do try to improve it from time to time. It's usually a few months between when I rework the whole map, since it's a fair amount of effort, the final compute job to put it together takes a couple of days to run, and the computer makes it beastly hot in my home office while it's running.

Please don't share this too widely. If my bandwidth starts getting hammered by hundreds of people using it, I'll wind up taking it down (and most likely putting it up on a different URL, so private message me if it goes away).

I'm pretty much ok with having it here. It won't inconvenience me much to take it down if it starts getting hammered. I'll just shift the flag to a different URL.

I'm hoping that if enough people in the community hear about the project, I might get some help working out a better hosting solution.

Good thread.