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The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has topographical maps arranged in the typical 7.5 minute quadrangle format, available for free viewing & download online for all of the US. Links: USGS Topo Maps USGS Map Locator and Downloader

A topographic map, as we see here, is made up of a number of lines. Every point on a given line is at the same elevation. Where the lines get closer the slope is steeper, and vice versa. But that doesn't tell you directly which way the slope is going, so they put numbers on the lines - the slope goes up towards the higher numbers. These numbers indicate the ...

Omnimap seem to have all 1:50k maps with a delivery time of around two weeks. However, Omnimap are quite expensive (US$ 16.95 per sheet). By comparison, MapWorld New Zealand charges NZ$ 7.90 (US$ 6.50) per map. Land Information New Zealand have a (probably incomplete) list of international resellers. This list includes Omnimap. Probably some of the domestic ...

In the UK your best bet is to use the Ordanance Survey website where you can purchase maps: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/ I've used the getamap feature which is great at creating your own maps! Which is useful if your hike goes over several map boundaries - often the case in the Lake District!! You can also use Bing maps which has OS map data ...

Check this link out: http://peaklist.org/misc/links_to_map_resources.html It contains this and many more countries: UNITED STATES TOPOZONE.COM If all sites could be just like topozone. Topozone has a seamless map of the US at all published USGS scales; 1:24,000, 1:100,000, and 1:250,000, and 1:63,360 for Alaska. Recent changes to topozone mean that you ...

Letterboxing is very much the precursor to geocaching, although it's available in relatively limited places compared to the former. Dartmoor is where it was invented, and is thus the most popular place - you can easily find some boxes just by looking under "suspicious" rocks. I believe it's also available elsewhere in some areas in the US, though I'm not ...

I'm a kiwi too (a director of Hiking New Zealand.com) We do remote guided small group trips around NZ . Some of us are starting to play around with digital map solutions. A Good one I found is BackCountryNavigator PRO, cost a few bucks but is excellent. can download maps for when you are out of Internet range and your GPS works on it. Don't use Google maps ...

The USGS Fort Collins Science Center published the following map of the conterminous United States in 2005: It has been published as a factsheet with a PDF (that can be zoomed for more detail): Watts, R.D., R.W. Compton, J.H. McCammon, C.L. Rich, and S.M. Wright. 2005. Distance to the nearest road in the conterminous United States: U.S. Geological Survey ...

That's actually a very difficult question to answer, since there's a lot of ambiguity about what's a "road," etc. Some geographers in Alaska tried to tackle a similar question here, in an Alaska Dispatch article.

That would make you a 'naked geocacher'; a player who searches for geocaches by using a map, not a GPS. It's not uncommon, though it is a minority section of the international geocaching community. I cached naked for my first 40 hides, using maps and satellite images from Google Earth - it generally requires more preparation and a longer search at GZ but I ...

I have not done any geocaching but as I understand it, you get the coordinates of the cache and then you go find it with a GPS. Well, you don't need to use the GPS if you don't want to. If you know the coordinates, you can search for it with a map and compass. It will just be harder.

You don't say what area specifically you're looking at, or what your budget is - but Anquet seems to do a number of electronic copies of standard OS maps for prices I wouldn't consider unreasonable here. Of course, if you mean the whole of the UK / Europe then the cost will be high, but I don't think there's really much getting around that. It unfortunately ...

Below are some resources for US vector data. The links do provide gdb format downloads that will drop into a garmin for example. The format that you are looking for is a shapefile though. Those are the most standardized format for vector data sets but are very clumsy to work with. http://fsgeodata.fs.fed.us/vector/index.php ...

From personal experience, I would say that maps made by an organization that focuses on the area in question are the most accurate. For instance, here in the Easter USA, I wouldn't head out on the Appalachian Trail without a map from the ATC or into the Adirondak Mountains without a map from the ADK. Maps by an organization like this are typically updated ...

I don't know of a site that lists all trails in the US. This is probably because trails are managed by the same patchwork of authority that manages the land. There are various federal, state, regional, town, and private groups that manage land that contains trails open to the public. The best I can advise is to pick a small area you are interested in and ...

The data from the old wind forecasts probably came from NOAA, and it's available here. The raw data is in the form of GRIB files. You can do a search for "GRIB Viewer" and find some apps that will work. You can also search for "GRIB KML", and might be able to download grib files in a KML/KMZ format that can be shown on Google Earth or Google Maps.

Palomar do a few US cities in their Crumpled City range - San Francisco, New York and Chicago. The Find do a range of Trail and National Park maps in Tyvek (scroll down on this page to find them)

Quick tips: Go to http://www.i-needtoknow.com/milford/maps/index.html They have several links for hikers, including maps. One you might check out is the Department of Conservation's online maps at: http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/ Also, Google says there's another site called www.kiwifootpaths.com that may be useful...

I am only familiar with US topos, but a point the other answers miss is that the US Geological Survey have mapping standards, and most non-USGS maps (at least in America) match the USGS standards. I'd suggest you start by learning the standard symbols in your area. Make up flash cards and you can easily quiz yourself as you have a few minutes (this is a ...

With these maps it's all about elevation - just remember a few main points: Each line represents a constant elevation (height) - so if you walk along that line you'll be walking flat. The numbers represent the elevation, the higher the number the higher you are. Usually it's in something like metres or feet above sea level, check the key/legend (UK/US!) ...