ADT Adventure Planning - Mapping Tip 05/06/2017

If you don't know a lot about GPS mapping, your not alone.  But I'm here to help you.  First, lets start

by downloading Google Earth Pro.  It's free these days.

You should start with the roads.  You can construct them using Google My Maps.  Unlike regular Google Maps, this will allow you to save your work to your Google Account and export it to a KML file to open in Google Earth.  It has limitations, such as the track can only be moved about 10 times.  And each map can only have about 10 layers, or segments in it.  There's simple work arounds to these.  If you run out of reroutes, just use a shorter segment.  And if you run out of layers, just create another map.

Some of the trails are named in the various turn-by-turn guides.  You'll need a membership to AllTrails.  This is where adventurists like yourself have recorded the trail on their own GPS's and uploaded the file for others to use.  Not all of the trails that are on the ADT are on there.  And the source may not be accurate.  The reason being is there's no telling what device recorded it, how often it anchored the track, or how good the weather was that day?

When the trail is concurrent with another distance trail, you can download their track data and open it in Google Earth for you to use.

If a named, or unnamed trail that the ADT is on that you can't find on AllTrails and occurs within a national forest, you might find it's path using a USGS Topo overlay in Google Earth.  It's route should be written on the map.  Using the "path" feature, you can trace a track over it.  The source should not be trusted as being accurate.  But down trail, sometimes you have to follow the trail and not the GPS.  When your there, just verify by sight that it's impossible for another trail to be on that course and the one your on is probably right.  Make sure that you continue to run in and out of it, or it's staying parallel.

Using the USDA Forest Service FSGeodata Clearinghouse's Data Extract Tool, 

you'll see that I selected that square icon with the circle and the blue in it.  At the bottom of #1, I choose a forest.  Then in #2, "I checked National Forest System Trails."  In #3, I selected the "Shapefile - SHP - .shp" file format option.  This resource might have some of the trails that you're looking for?

Also, "National Forest Service Roads" might work.  The ADT does take place on some of them.

Your GPS software might not read shapefiles.  You might have to convert to KML.  Since these are just tracks, I'd use something like my Geodata Converter.

If your using a smartphone, or do know, or trust your hand GPS's stock software, somewhere in your manual should be the location of the folder that it reads data from.  I do it this way myself.  But it requires a conversion to the GPX format.  You can convert KML to GPX with GPSVisualizer's "Convert a File" feature.  Select your output format as "GPX," then your file and click on "Convert."  When the next page opens up, right click on the link, left click "save," or "save linked content as" give it a name and save it to your hard drive.