Jesus Malverde wrote:Bob,
You raise an interesting question. FWIW, I use Contact brand covering (clear version) to cover both ink and laser jet printing of maps. Covering one side will suffice, but if you are on a particularly long, wet or abrasive trip/climb, covering both sides (map face and back) will greatly ensure a map that is almost waterproof and and pretty much tear proof. Plus the map can be reused/re-gifted many times.
http://www.amazon.com/Con-Tact-Covering ... B00D8GBO2GThe contact covering processes takes only a couple of minutes at most and can be done the night before the trip.
This seems (to me) like buying a more expensive lens to keep my film camera relevant.
Really, I want to get away from printed maps, not spend more time with them. While it doesn't have the "big picture" view you get from a fold out map, the GPSr maps seem nearly as good in detail as the topos, plus they have all sorts of useful info like old roads/trails, feature names (it's easy enough to figure out what peak that is over there, and I'll know exactly how far it is, too). A month ago I would have said they're pretty fool-proof for knowing where you are, but this
bogus GPS track had me thinking I was heading up the wrong drainage until it corrected itself after about 15min. Still, better than the hours I've been lost on occasion when I failed to read a map correctly. It seems backwards that we spend hours teaching Scouts how to orient a map, adjusted for declination (and omg, why do we still teach UTM coordinates?) and other stuff when their ass is more likely to be saved by knowing how to read a GPSr pointing them back to camp? I'd be the first to agree that knowing how to read a topo maps is highly valuable, so I'm not arguing that, in fact much of the GPSr value is lost if you can't read topo lines.
nartreb, I suspect you have an older model GPSr. My older one had trouble in the woods, but the newer one works almost everywhere with the exception of a narrow canyon or slot. And the color screen is bright enough to read in sunlight (and adjustable for night use, too). And to be fair, neither the GPSr nor printed 7.5' topo maps have enough detail to really distinguish class 2 from class 3 or harder in most cases. You can infer cliffs from a map, but most such areas really need a visual inspection to see if there is a way through. Btw, not having enough detail was one of the arguments against digital cameras initially - in time I suspect that the digital details of maps will far exceed their printed counterpart.
I used to have hundreds of maps I'd printed out from TOPO! (going through a LOT of ink cartridges), saved and categorized by area, reused from time to time, but mostly just a nostalgic collection taking up space on the bookshelf.