26 days to go: Track my progress LIVE with photos!

Feeling real techy today. I discovered this cool combination of two iphone apps which will allow you all to follow my journey in real-time! The ViewRanger app will map my progress as I go, while the Social Hiker app connects my brand new instagram account (...or twitter, flickr etc) to the map locations, placing photos on the map in real-time! That is, as long as I have cellular data.

Now, I probably won't keep this on 24/7 because it will drain my phone battery like crazy, but I will make sure to have it send a daily beacon with photo ... whenever I have service of course.

Take a look below for a sample of what this looks like :)

I will create a dedicated map page once I start the hike so you'll be able to follow along

32 days to go: CDT Maps Comparison Ley to Bear Creek

I went ahead and printed out all the maps for the CDT today and they look really fantastic! I actually got two sets of maps for the trail (Jonathan Ley maps and Bear Creek/Jerry Brown), each has it's pros and cons - I think I might just bring along both. To break it down:

Ley maps (on top in photo) - are great because Jon updates them every year with hiker notes about water sources, trail closures, confusing parts, etc etc. One downside is he does NOT include UTM coordinates (which is for me the easiest way to translate from a known position/GPS location to the map itself). The scale on Ley maps is also a little bit larger than Bear Creek so it's a little tougher to read. That said, his notes seem pretty indispensable!

Bear Creek (on bottom in photo) - the biggest upside here is that Jerry Brown, the creator, also uploads all the waypoints/POIs from his paper maps to his website so that you can download them to your GPS. This is KEY because then you can very easily translate your position from the GPS to where you are on the map and vice versa. Also, as mentioned above they include UTM coordinates which are also great for staying found! The scale on his maps are smaller so they are a bit easier to read. Biggest downside is there are no annotations like on the Ley maps.

So which maps will I carry? I think both. I've heard other hikers have translated Jon Ley notes to Bear creek maps but this sounds like a major pain. I'd rather take a small weight penalty and have more data in front of me (remember, I'll only carry average five days worth of maps at a time). It's overkill but I'm a map nerd ... if that isn't already clear from this post!

PS if you're not familiar, here's a very helpful PDF from Jerry Brown explaining UTM coordinates and how to use his maps in general

PPS also Wired also has some great map/GPS information on her site, including step-by-step instructions to load topo maps and waypoints in your GPS!

34 days to go: Ley maps arrived!

Sweet! Today I received the CD for the Jonathan Ley CDT maps in the mail UPDATED for 2015. Jonathan has volunteered hundreds of hours for this mapping project and everyone trying to hike the CDT is seriously indebted to him ... this CD includes all the maps for the CDT (~200 pages worth) so thanks Jon, gonna print these files at mom's work to save some money ;)

He literally offers this service for free, so it's great to support him with a donation if you use his maps. 

here's his website: www.phlumf.com/travels/cdt/cdtmaps.shtml