[Cdt-l] quad maps unnecessary

[Glen Winters]

The USGS topo's are being updated, the current versions are 2010, 2011 or 2012. http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/index.html free to download and use as you desire. If your printer supports poster printing you could print at home. They do not have the trail information overlaid, at least on the 10 maps I looked at for the PCT area, but do have PDF geolocation data imbedded. They also have older maps that do have trails marked on the maps. Otherwise your correct they are headed to GIS mapping. I wish I knew a bit more about overlaying the trail onto the maps I could make some more options available for hikers. Larger maps designed to print on 11 x 17 paper for a wider field of view for off trail exploring and or getting lost. I'm trying to learn more about it. I'm pretty good at manipulating graphics files, and could easily merge a few maps together, or write a script to do so programatically, cut out the pieces that work best, etc, The difficult part is
 putting back in the map datum other than manually page by page, selecting the correct deviation which maybe a degree off depending on which maps are merged, and making sure the distance scale is also correctly sized, all of which may lead to errors. The National Geographic map software, that has been discontinued, used scanned copies of the older USGS topo maps, from Halfmile PCT maps you can see where the corners of the maps merge from color differences in the maps. It would be nice to get a group together and open source something similar. 

Argentina
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